Chapter 100: The End of the Regular Season
As we move into March, the schedule becomes more intense and intense.
The Wizards' schedule for March was not particularly friendly, with 10 of the 16 games being on the road, three of those 10 on the road, and four in a row on the road.
Among these away opponents are the Lakers, Celtics and Magic, which are the top teams in the league, and a slight mistake is likely to be a wave of consecutive defeats.
But the dense schedule and fierce confrontation can easily lead to injury risks, and Wang Xiao has to start preventing this from happening.
Since the beginning of March, the Wizards' daily training volume has begun to decrease, and at the same time, the playing time of the main players in the game has been slightly reduced, and players who are over 30 years old such as Butler and Jamison are scheduled to rest on the road.
In such a situation, the Wizards' record has been affected somewhat.
The Celtics, the Hawks and the games against direct rivals Magic all lost, and thankfully the Magic didn't have a good time in March.
At the beginning of early March, the Magic team fought hard to catch up, winning seven consecutive games at one point, directly completing the catch-up with the Wizards' record, the two teams have the same record, only half a win behind the Wizards in terms of mutual wins and losses.
In the away game against the Wizards, the Magic's Howard small universe exploded, shooting as high as 67% of the free throws, directly smashing the implementation of the Wizards' shark-cutting tactics, thus defeating the Wizards and completing the overtake in the record.
Fortunately, the imposing Magic team suffered a wave of two consecutive defeats, and the Wizards immediately seized the opportunity and caught up.
At the end of March, the Wizards still had a narrow lead over the Magic in second place in the East by one game.
By the end of March, the Wizards' record had reached 52-22, and the winning rate remained above 70%.
Such a fantastic record has made Washington fans not know how to describe it!
The last time the Wizards had a record of more than 50 wins in a season was back in the 70s, when the Wizards were still called the Bullets, and they traded All-Star center Elvin. Hayes, and with Hayes as the core of the team, he won the best record in the team's history, 60 wins and 22 losses!
Since then, the Wizards have never won more than 50 games in any one season.
It's 2010 in the blink of an eye, the Washington Bullets have become the Washington Wizards, the owner of the team has died, and Arenas, who is regarded as the hope of reviving the team, was traded away, no one expected that in such a turbulent year, the Wizards could play such a fantastic record!
At this moment, even a fool understands the reason why the Wizards have such a good record.
Wang Xiao! It was his arrival that brought something special to the Wizards.
50 wins in a single season!
The comeback Jordan failed to do it, and Chris who grew into an All-Star power forward with the Wizards. Webber didn't do it, and General Arenas didn't do it either, but Wang Xiao did it in just one season! And it's so effortless!
You know, there are still 8 games left until the end of the regular season, and the Wizards, who have already won 52 games, can win at least half of these 8 games, and the Wizards' record will come to 56 wins or even more!
In fact, it's about the same as the fans expected.
After surviving the heat of March, all that remains is the final finishing touch of the regular season in April.
In the final eight games in April, the Wizards went 6-2 and finished at 58-24, with a 70.7% winning rate, ranking second in the East behind the Cavaliers, who won 62-20.
The 58-win record is not only second in the East, but also in the second place in the league.
The Los Angeles Lakers, the first in the West, finished with a 57-25 record, losing one more game than the Wizards, while the Magic, the Wizards' direct rivals in the East, have a 56-26 record.
The end of the regular season has also made the season's awards gradually clearer.
The first thing to determine is naturally hard data honor.
Kevin of the Trailblazers. Durant became the new scoring champion with an average of 31 points per game, and became the youngest scoring champion in league history at the age of 21 years and 197 days!
Although with the performance of rookies such as Curry and Harden, people no longer question Wang Xiao's vision, and even praised Wang Xiao's insight more than once, Durant's explosive performance still shocked fans.
However, Durant alone cannot fully show Wang Xiao's ability.
Stephen. Curry's scoring in March and April dropped slightly, and by the end of the regular season, he was averaging 26.5 points per game, which was fifth in the league behind Durant's 31 points, James' 29.7 points, Anthony's 28 points and Kobe Bryant's 27 points, followed by Wade's 26.4 points, followed by Monta Ellis' 25.5 points and Nowitzki's 25 points......
He averaged 25+ points per game in his rookie season, and the last player to score such a high score was Michael. Jordan, but Curry and Jordan are very different because his main means of scoring is the three-point shot.
This season, Curry averaged 10.7 three-point shots per game, shot 43%, and hit 4.6 three-pointers per game, excluding a few rotational breaks and games missed due to illness, Curry played in 77 games throughout the season and made a total of 354 three-pointers throughout the season!
That's an almost terrifying amount!
You know, the previous NBA league's three-point shooting record was made by Ray Ray. Allen's 269 in the 05-06 season!
And Curry, a first-year rookie, actually raised this record from 269 to 354 in the first season!
Curry became the new three-point king almost without any suspense, and at the same time, the average of 26.5 points and 6 assists per game also made the selection of this year's rookie of the year out of suspense.
Of course, Curry isn't the only winner in life.
Wizards' sixth man, James. Harden's performance this season has similarly shocked the four.
Although the average of 18 points and 8.4 assists per game is not as good as Curry's, it is definitely the top data in the league, and the average of 8.4 assists per game ranks sixth on the league's assist list.
Although it is far inferior to Curry in the selection of the best rookie, with such data, the award of the league's best sixth man is basically properly won.
The Wizards' two rookies exploded, while the team's two veterans slipped a little.
Antoine. Jamison is averaging 17.8 points and six rebounds per game this season, while Butler's scoring has plummeted to 15.2 points from 20.8 last season.
This is a matter of course, the ball and the number of shots are limited, Curry and Harden occupy a lot of the team's shots, Jamison and Butler naturally have a lot less shots, this season, they do more is to stand in the bottom corner or top arc, using the threat of three-point range to help Curry and Harden pull space.