After the All-Star break, the 2017 NBA regular season will come to an end.

The competition in the west is as fierce as ever.

In previous years, at the height of competition, the West had 50 wins before it would make the playoffs.

It was in the '07-08 season, and the Denver Nuggets barely managed to make the playoffs with 50 wins and eighth place in the West.

After the 13-14 season, the Mavericks, who were eighth in the West, were 49 wins.

What is this concept?

In NBA history, the team with the lowest number of regular season wins, excluding the shortened season, was the Washington Bullets in 1978, with a 44-38 regular season record.

This result is not perennial in the current West to enter the playoffs.

There are also rockets like the sixth-place champion in 95, with 47 wins, and they can't make the playoffs in some seasons.

The cruelty and fierceness of the competition in the west can be seen.

It's out of the box for the Kings to catch up with the top-ranked Warriors.

After the All-Star break, the Warriors were already unbeatable, quickly widening the distance between them and the teams behind them.

The Kings' main rivals are still the Spurs and Thunder.

I have to say that sending Leonard away is a loss for the Spurs, but getting Booker and Wiggins at once is a loss for Severn.

Wiggins didn't live up to his potential with the Lakers, and he worked hard with the Spurs to still not live up to his full potential.

However, in comparison, he is already an All-Star level forward, and under Popovich's tutelage, the defense is much stronger.

The Spurs' team basketball team basketball was still quite powerful in the regular season, and they finished in third place in the West after the Kings.

In fourth place in the West, with just one win separating the Spurs, is the Thunder.

As the defending champions, the Thunder's momentum at the start of the season was very ferocious, and they were once equal to the Warriors.

But without Li Liang, the team's squad depth, continuity, and endurance are greatly reduced, and they have returned to the routine of Wang Bang in the past.

Moreover, injuries hit the Thunder in the middle of the season, and there were no major injuries, but small injuries continued.

This undoubtedly affected the stability of the Thunder in the regular season, and the ranking also fell to the fourth place, with a win gap with the Spurs.

The fifth to eighth places are battleground for the Lakers, Clippers, Jazz, Grizzlies and Trail Blazers.

There was also a Rocket, and after sending off James Harden, the Rockets were out of the playoffs.

Fifth to eighth, whichever is placed in the East, are all teams that can compete for the top spot in the East.

It's a pity that they are in the West, and even if they make the playoffs, the odds of getting off the gram are quite low.

In the face of such fierce competition in the West, Li Liang's Kings team recuperated and did not work hard with other teams.

Although Li Liang gave Rondo, Gordon and others bruising pills at the beginning of the season, the bruising pills only make the players not easy to get injured and recover quickly after the injury is healed, but it does not guarantee that the players will not be injured at all, let alone that the players will be in good condition.

Therefore, Li Liang began to expand the team's rotation early on and control the players' playing time.

Li Liang doesn't like to take rotational rests, and he strives to keep the playing time of his main players below 35 minutes.

The whole team played the last dozens of games of the regular season in a stable standby state.

Because of Li Liang's relaxation in strategy, the King's performance in the second half of the season seems to have returned to the unstable state at the beginning of the season.

Win four or five, lose one, win three or four, lose another.

However, looking at the specific performance on the field, you can see that it is not so simple.

The Kings lost mostly to some weak teams and couldn't make the playoffs.

In this kind of game, Li Liang will use it to practice his hands, so that substitute players and players at the end of the bench can play more.

Winning is naturally good, and losing is also a lesson learned at that time and rehearsed the lineup.

For Li Liang, whether he can be the first in the regular season is not particularly significant.

After all, in the playoffs, the benefits of high rankings are really small.

82 games, desperate for a season, and the benefit in the playoffs is one more home field.

Judging from Li Liang's own historical playoff record, the number of wins away from home is more than at home.

He's the quintessential away dragon, some classic games, scoring frenzy, all played on the road.

Therefore, Li Liang does not care whether the series has a home court advantage at all.

In addition to coaching the game, Li Liang's other great pleasure is tweeting.

Since the new launch of Twitter this season, Li Liang has become a Twitter maniac.

There are three main things to tweet about: 1. Pre-game predictions, 2. Post-game comments, and 3. Interaction with Donald Zhuang.

As the head coach, Li Liang is a bit controversial, and he actually made pre-game predictions.

However, after half a season, everyone found that Li Liang's prediction accuracy rate of victory and defeat was amazingly high, reaching 70 percent, close to 80 percent.

This is a very high prediction accuracy, and he doesn't predict his own team's game, he only predicts other teams.

In some upset matches, Li Liang can often predict the right.

Even if the prediction is wrong, when you look at the game process, it is really a god that it is not far from what Li Liang said.

Sometimes he predicts the score, and it's so accurate, which is a little scary.

In fact, it is very simple, because Li Liang can simulate the results of the game in [Stern's Simulation World].

Because Li Liang's prediction was accurate, it was called "the beacon of Sacramento".

For a while, even bookmakers would refer to Li Liang's Twitter predictions.

And the second post-game review has robbed many media experts of their jobs.

Because Twitter has a limited number of words per message, Li Liang can't go into a long speech.

But he can always make the sharpest and most accurate comments with the least number of words.

Fans see the excitement, and after every game, the NBA first person can be seen pointing fingers at everyone else.

Today James defends the waist, tomorrow Curry has a problem with his dunk selection, and the day after tomorrow Harden has too many free throws.

Anyway, in terms of the ability to create topics, Li Liang is still the only one, and there is one empty gear behind.

Coaches and expert commentators from other teams are aware of one thing: this thing is really watching the game.

After each match day, Li Liang would take time to watch the video footage of other teams' games made by the video editor.

In particular, he will carefully study the videos of Western rivals such as the Warriors, Thunder, and Spurs.

Have a more objective and clear understanding of them in your mind.

In this way, when it comes to the playoffs, it can be targeted.

Moreover, Li Liang's tweets are true and false, false and true, and you don't know if he is joking or telling the truth.

But some of the ideas are so unique that other coaches in the league follow him on Twitter to listen to his recitations.

Of course, these two contents are mainly things in the basketball circle, and the influence is mainly in the basketball circle.

The third content is different, and the commander, Donald Laozhuang, is now interacting on Twitter.

In fact, the NBA circle has always been at odds with Donald Zhuang, like James, who stands on the other side of the platform and often satirizes Donald Zhuang.

Li Liang is different, after the two "don't fight and don't know each other" on Twitter last time, he often sang and reconciled with Lao Tang on Twitter.

Especially when Tang Laozhuang came to China, Li Liang played an explanation role at this time.

In fact, before the election, Tang Laozhuang liked to beep China on Twitter, and he had good things to say.

For now, it's mostly good words.

Of course, he didn't really want to praise China, but took the opportunity to satirize his predecessor.

At this time, Li Liang either sang the opposite tune or arched the fire, and occasionally agreed with his arguments.

In fact, Don didn't take it too seriously at first, because his tweets were carefully planned by the team and showed the results.

But after a long time, Don and his team realized that something was wrong.

People's attention to Bruce Lee seems to be starting to be on an equal footing with Donald.

The first reaction after seeing the Commander tweet is often "I'll go see how Bruce Lee responds." ”

It's kind of scary.

This means that Donald's carefully planned Twitter governance may be mixed in by a foreign athlete.

Under the influence of Li Liang, the number of tweets posted by Lao Tang in March and April, especially the number related to China, decreased.

Of course, as the playoffs approached, Li Liang's Twitter posts were also decreasing.

He's about to face the biggest and toughest playoff exam of his career.