Bishop of the Abyss

Chapter 172 172. The New Season

The time came to October, and as the defending champion Timberwolves set off a wave of training frenzy in the league, fans became more and more interested in the upcoming new season.

Throughout history, the NBA has never been as full of gunpowder as this year. Before the season started, each team began to prepare for the game in advance and launched a secret contest.

The only bad thing is that some players relax too much during the offseason, which makes the body unable to bear the overloaded training dose in a short period of time.

So throughout September, there were reports of many players being injured due to training in the league.

Even though most of these players are role players in the middle and lower reaches of the league, there are also players like Tony Parker and "Old Fish" Fisher among them.

Parker tore his left chest muscle during weightlifting training and is expected to miss at least the first six games after the start of the season. It's a terrible start for the Spurs.

It is worth mentioning that after being upset and eliminated by the Clippers ranked seventh in the Western Conference last season, Popovich's current coaching position has become unstable.

If Popovich hadn't put a lot of energy into the Spurs over the years, the Spurs management would have let Popovich pack up and leave.

However, although the Spurs management is still willing to give Popovich some time, within a limited time, if Popovich leads the Spurs and still looks like this, it is only a matter of time before Popovich is dismissed from get out of class.

The San Antonio ball market is already very small, and the Spurs owner is one of the league's least willing to spend money.

The Spurs' main income now comes from home tickets, advertising investment, and league bonuses for entering the playoffs.

The strength of the Timberwolves has prevented the Spurs from seeing any hope of winning the championship in recent years. Fortunately, Spurs owner Peter Holt has very low requirements, as long as the team can continue to enter the playoffs and ensure that it is profitable every year.

In this case, Popovich's high coaching salary has naturally become a burden. Popovich's salary is among the best in the coaching industry, second only to several legendary coaches such as "Zen Master" Jackson.

If the Spurs are destined to miss the championship, and the team's lineup and even the assistant coach can lead to the playoffs, Popovich's situation will become more and more embarrassing.

Especially compared with the Timberwolves coach Luke, Popovich was almost not scolded to death by the fans.

.........

At the beginning of October, the preseason schedule arranged by the league has been released.

The preseason is mainly for the league to let the teams adapt to the competition in advance, so that the teams can directly enter the state after the season starts, and experience less running-in.

The core lineup of the Timberwolves has changed a lot during the offseason this year, and the players' status has fluctuated, and they have not cooperated with each other on the court. The occasion of the preseason is just right for the Timberwolves to train.

Throughout October, the league arranged a total of five preseason matchups for the Timberwolves. The schedule is not intensive, and the intensity of the competition is also not very high.

In the preseason, Luke mainly focused on matching lineups and debugging tactics. Basically, the starting lineup of each game will undergo some changes, and the playing time of veteran players is not high, leaving more time for rookies.

After five preseason games, the Timberwolves have only three wins and two losses.

Although the entire Timberwolves team did not take it seriously in the preseason, and the playing time of the main players was controlled within 15 minutes, Luke still found many hidden dangers after these five games.

Among them, Kevin Garnett, who is the star of the team, did not play much time in these five games, but his shooting percentage was only 40.6%.

Garnett's poor performance made the coaching staff a little worried. Now that the regular season is about to start, the coaching staff can only pray that Garnett can gradually regain his touch through fighting and supporting the game, and restore the personal dominance of the three consecutive MVPs last season. .

In addition, there are not a few players who performed hotly in the preseason. Iguodala, Artest, Gerald Wallace, Rondo, and Millsap all contributed to the preseason. Nice individual performance.

The starting set that Luke matched the most throughout the preseason was: "The Glove" Payton, Iguodala, Artest, Garnett, and Ben Wallace.

In the first position, although Rondo is young, he is better than "Glove" Payton in terms of speed and reaction ability, but Rondo is after all the first time to play in the NBA league.

Luke intends to let Rondo sit on the bench for the first half of the season to learn more from "Glove" Payton, and then gradually start to replace Payton in the middle of the season to reduce the chance of Rondo hitting the rookie wall.

Rondo’s ball quotient and on-the-spot adaptability are very strong, and there is no need to adapt to this. What Rondo needs to adapt now is how to become more comfortable under NBA-level defense, increase his own score while reducing personal mistakes efficiency.

And during the offseason, Rondo conducted a lot of three-point training under Luke's specific arrangement, but the accuracy during training is different from actual combat. Rondo still needs to adapt to the length of the NBA three-point line in actual combat.

Otherwise, when Rondo's passing threat is far greater than his offensive threat, Rondo is likely to face the scene of being infinitely shorted in the NBA.

This defect will become very fatal in the playoffs, so if Rondo wants to secure the position of the Timberwolves' starting point guard, he must develop a three-point threat like Payton.

At least the three-point shooting rate must be increased to more than 30%, so that Luke can put Rondo on the court with confidence and avoid three-on-five scenes on the offensive end.

As for why it is three-on-five, because once Daben leaves the penalty area, Daben will become no threat on the offensive end.

…………

With the official end of the preseason, at the end of October, each team is about to usher in the journey of the 06-07 season.

This year, the league has arranged a total of four opener matchups, and the defending champion Timberwolves will naturally bear the brunt.

The Timberwolves' opponent in the opening game was the Dallas Mavericks, who caused a lot of trouble last year.

The biggest operation of the Mavericks during the offseason is to renew the contracts of Nowitzki, Terry, and Josh Howard and other core players at the same time.

If nothing else, these players will still be the core of the Mavericks' championship in the next few years.

In addition, the Mavericks have also strengthened a few players in the free market, but these players are very average. Except for the rookies who were not selected in the draft, they are leftovers that other teams do not plan to renew.

No way, the salary space for the Dallas Mavericks to renew the contracts of the three core players at the same time during the offseason has basically been locked.

Like the Timberwolves, the Mavericks can only sign some veterans with a basic salary or newcomers who have not yet been developed to try.

It's just a pity that the Mavericks are far less attractive than the Timberwolves. At least Chris Webber rejected the Mavericks' invitation and turned into the arms of the Heat.

(End of this chapter)