On the evening of December 29, on the South Coast of the United States, at the American Airlines Center Arena, the "big battle" between the Heat and the Hornets was underway.

Both managers pulled out all the stops...... of them are trying to figure out how to lose.

Balloon Scott, the master of the field, and Pat Riley, who is probably the best manager in history, are both trying to replace those who play well and lose as much as possible.

Both teams can't afford to win, and at this stage, both managers are working on the season for the future of the team.

Pat Riley has to worry about losing, but he also has to think about what Wade can bring back in return.

Pat Riley doesn't want players who have been developed by the Hawks to avoid overpowering the team and being on the brink of the playoffs and ultimately achieving nothing this season.

He wants the Hawks to select people who are just starting to develop, or players who don't help much on the offensive end, Pat Riley believes in the Eagles' vision, the Hawks' vision is too vicious, the Hawks can select Millsap with the first pick in the second round, and give a four-year contract with a total of 5.22 million US dollars as the player selected with the 24th pick in the first round, obviously has a lot of confidence in Millsap.

Riley wants to be a player, to polish himself, to increase the sense of belonging to the team, and he doesn't want the kind of player who has integrated into other teams.

Or maybe it's a player like Prince, who doesn't play much on the offensive end, but can affect the game, and has a high trade value.

The point is that Prince is very loyal, just like Wade, and he will not leave easily when he arrives at a team, which is the best quality of Prince.

Pat Riley offered a trade that the other side couldn't agree to, and the Hawks turned it down, which he expected.

Speaking more specifically, there is no guarantee of the condition of a player who has undergone minimally invasive surgery until he recovers and plays again, even if he is just 25 years old.

It's not so easy for the Hawks to take advantage of Pat Riley, and even if no one is optimistic that Wade can return to his previous form, Pat Riley won't let go easily.

For Pat Riley, the biggest problem is that Wade's cruciate ligament tear without a meniscus is the first since injury records in the NBA!

Unlike Jordan's fracture, Wade damaged his cruciate ligament in the case of meniscus removal, and what he has to do is that all teams are extremely reluctant to let players do minimally invasive surgery, and there are many examples of blood collapse after minimally invasive surgery at the age of twenty-six or seventeen, so far, except for the Hawks, no team has shown the slightest inclination to want Wade.

This is a tricky question for Pat Riley.

But Pat Riley still wants to bite the Hawks, but what exactly he wants to get, Pat Riley himself has no score now.

If the Eagles had simply refused when he hadn't replied that he was running out of chips, Pat Riley wouldn't have thought that much.

But the Hawks responded, with a feeling of wanting to gamble on a small probability event of Wade's recovery, and Pat Riley was naturally more aggressive, with two options, one being to get chips that could be used to trade superstars or All-Star players, and the other being to supplement role players.

Pat Riley also knows that the asking price is too fierce, the other party will definitely not agree, the momentum is good, at most wait a year or two, the role players will grow up, and they will immediately be a dynasty-level lineup, especially Liu Mang will probably enter the peak in another year or two, and Maddie is only 28 years old, so people are not in a hurry.

……

……

On December 30, the Hawks' game day against the Nets arrived.

I talked to Pat Riley again during the day, but I still didn't get along.

For the Hawks, no matter what kind of return is used to get Wade, 100% strength will be lost this season, Wade is sure that he will not be able to return until next season, Liu Mang may use injury medicine to help Wade treat some injury hazards, but he will definitely not do something contrary to common sense like using superstar value to accelerate recovery.

In this way, the Hawks will not trade Wade at a particularly large price, which will be a big mistake.

The trade is at a standstill for the time being, with both teams weighing in.

Liu Mang is not in a hurry, anyway, there is no way to partner with Wade this season, this season's games still have to be played one game at a time, and then beat the Nets first!

At seven o'clock in the evening, the game between the Hawks and the Nets began.

After the game started, the Nets gave Liu Mang a very special feeling.

Carter and Kidd seem to work well together, but there is no communication during the whole process!

The Eagles' style of play is very simple, Liu Mang and Prince or Rondo and Battier are sandwiched by Carter, and the offense is normal to play.

This season, the Nets pointed to Carter scoring to win, with Kwame Brown and Marion guarding the basket, the Nets' weak interior offensive ability is basically helpless, and the outside open shooters give them a chance and they can't shoot.

On the offensive end, Maddie or Rondo holds the ball, and Liu Mang is responsible for shooting.

Liu Mang played 35 minutes in the game, shooting 14-of-31 from the field against Kidd's defense, 5-of-10 from three-point range, and scored 42 points, and the Hawks easily defeated the Nets 110-95 to win two straight games.

After playing the Heat to get used to it, playing the Nets, Liu Mang played more freely, scoring 40+ in three consecutive games, helping the Hawks improve their record to 20-11 and ending the journey in 2006.

……

has increased by 0.2 points per game, and Liu Mang's average points per game have increased to 29.6 points.

At this time, Arenas, who had come to Atlanta to prepare for the game against the Hawks, was going to cry!

At the start of the season, there was almost no one in the league competing for the scoring title, and Arenas opened the season two months ago to top the scoring charts, thinking his spring was coming.

Although the Wizards are only on the verge of the playoffs, he has stood out individually.

Who knew that Liu Mang was fighting, and suddenly began to score points!

Three consecutive 40+ games! It's been 40+ 7 times this season, and it's only been two months! Arenas thinks it's good to get 7 40+ times in a season.

Arenas felt that Atlanta's winters were unusually cold......

……

Liu Mang didn't take the matter of winning the score to heart at all, and the scoring champion was not unwon, he had already won it twice, and he couldn't attract his attention.

He scored high points and shot a lot of his playing time just to give his benches an advantage to squander when they came on and give his younger teammates a chance to make mistakes.

Only by making mistakes can you find your own shortcomings and then improve them.

Liu Mang doesn't know when he started, but he began to like the feeling of seeing the new players in the team improve little by little.

After playing for two months in the new season in a situation with a blank future, Liu Mang gradually liked this feeling, his teammates did not play well, he needed to work harder to win, and he also liked this sense of struggle.

If there was an occasional situation where a substitute could open up so he could sit and watch, he would be happy to do so.

2006 ended, with the exception of the Hawks, who played only 31 games, the Lakers only played 33 games, and most teams played between 34 and 36 games.

On the eastern side, the Cavaliers and Heat are still fiercely competing for the first place in the East.

The Hawks are secure in third place due to the Heat's three-game losing streak.

The Raptors have a 19-15 record and are fourth in the East.

The Heat's 18-16 is still fifth in the East, but there is no gap between them and the 17-18 Magic team in sixth place in the East.

Starting from sixth place in the East, the winning percentage of other teams in the East has not exceeded 50%.

In the West, the Mavericks are the first team in the league with 30 wins and 5 losses, and the first team in the league to win 30.

The Lakers are 26-7 and in second place in the West.

The Spurs are a close second with 23 wins and 11 losses.

The strongest teams in the West are still these three teams.

Due to the collapse of the Heat, the Hawks have no pressure on the record for the time being, and it is no problem to maintain the top four, and the first and second Hawks have no intention of fighting, insisting on fighting, and the main force is ruthless, like the Heat This season before Wade's major injury, it is still possible to let Wade play more than 40 minutes per game, but it is bound to have an impact on the progress of the Hawks' role players, and it is also a huge impact on physical fitness, this season Maddy, Jason Terry and Kwame Brown, these players who have played a lot of time in the past few years, All of them have more or less poor performance due to lack of physical strength in the distal joints.

Since there is no pressure on the record, Liu Mang does not pay much attention to unimportant opponents.

In the next 10 days and 6 games in early January, the opponent is relatively weak, not as scary as the Suns, Mavericks, Lakers, Heat, and Nets in a five-game row...... It's choking.

With four months to go, a total of 51 games, the Eagles' schedule immediately switched from the easiest in the league to the toughest in the league.

There were 17 races in January, 12 races in February, 16 races in March, and April was the easiest again, with only six races in 15 days.

The 10-day, six-game stretch from Jan. 1 is a relatively easy opponent for the Hawks to get used to a difficult schedule.

Wizards, Grizzlies, Rockets, Timberwolves, Celtics, Bucks.

With such an opponent, Liu Mang's attention is focused on bargaining with the Heat.

Liu Mang is not in a hurry, he works hard to score when he plays, tries to grab rebounds, helps the team win, and spends his free time with the owner, Coach Kruger, and negotiating with Pat Riley.

Although Wade's surgery was successful, the minimally invasive surgery on his knee was bound to have a big impact on Wade's explosiveness, and Pat Riley became the more anxious one.

……

……

"Uncle, come and see, the voting results of the first phase are out!"

At nine o'clock in the morning, Liu Mang had just finished running, practiced a set of shots, came back to take a shower, and was ready to sleep back to sleep, when he was pulled to her room by little Lori.

The computer screen shows the results of the first phase of voting for the 2007 All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas.

The new All-Stars will not be held at any team's home stadium, but in Las Vegas, where the desert Gobi is a little green.

Liu Mang was pulled to the computer, and the first thing he saw was the Eastern All-Star vote.

Kevin Garnett ranks first in the East with 1.16 million votes.

This is expected, Garnett's popularity is already high, just like in the original time and space in 2008, when he arrived with the Celtics, he immediately became the ticket king, and when he arrived in the big city of Chicago, he played such a good regular season record, ranking second in the MVP list, and becoming the only two players in the East to break one million votes is expected.

Garnett temporarily ranked first among Eastern forwards with 1.16 million votes, and James ranked second with 970,000 votes.

In terms of defenders, Liu Mang ranked first with 1.05 million votes, and Maddie ranked second with 990,000 votes.

There are fewer stars in the east, so the votes are more concentrated.

However, the center forward position is not concentrated, with three players having more than 400,000 votes, but none of them having more than 600,000 votes.

Among them, Dwight Howard has 590,000 votes, beating Kwame Brown with 510,000 votes and Milicic with 460,000 votes, temporarily ranking first in the Eastern center!

Howard averaged 17 points, 13 rebounds and 2 blocks per game, Kwame Brown averaged 14 points, 10 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game, and Milicic averaged 13.6 points, 9.4 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 2.8 blocks per game.

Ben Wallace, who ranked fourth in the Eastern Center, only had 110,000 votes, and the Eastern Center votes were basically taken by the three of them!

However, this number of votes surprised Liu Mang.

"Happy boys are so popular!" Liu Mang said in surprise.

"Happy boy? Uncle, you're giving people nicknames again. Little Lori glanced at Liu Mang.

"Dinah, does that guy giggle when he's fine? Laugh when he wins, laugh when he loses, isn't he just a happy boy? Liu Mang pinched Little Lori's face and said.

Little Lori didn't resist, Liu Mang's intimate actions towards her have become less and less recently, her face was pinched and she rolled her eyes and said: "Uncle, you read a lot, Dinah can't say you, and when Dina also goes to college, Uncle can't say Dinah." ”

"Dinah, when you were in college, your uncle went to study for a master's degree."

"Uncle is too much! Dinah must tell her mother that you want to bully Dinah for the rest of your life! ”

“……”

Liu Mang looked at the indignant little Lori speechlessly, why is it not the same as she looks, her figure is getting taller and taller, but she is still so ...... Sprout......

However, Liu Mang felt very fascinated by Howard's popularity, in the original time and space, even when his state collapsed later, his data was not bad, and his performance on the court was good, but since 2014, he suddenly couldn't enter the All-Star, not only the All-Star bench, but no one voted for him as a starter, and before that, he had won the All-Star vote king many times.

One more point......

Maddie has been put on guard again this year.

Obviously, Maddie's popularity is still higher than James's, and Liu Mang feels that the league has done everything to make James an All-Star starter! It's too casual to change Maddie's position!

Liu Mang and Xiao Lori complained about the league's bad behavior of praising James, and continued to look at the votes in the West.

Yao Ming's 1.22 million votes ranked first in the West and was also the temporary all-star ticket king.

The forwards were excessive, with Gasol getting more votes than Duncan......

Gasol had 810,000 votes, Duncan had 760,000 votes, and Anthony and Nowitzki had 390,000 and 370,000 votes, respectively......

Follow Yao Ming to have meat to eat.

In terms of guards, the sworn rivals of the 96 generation dominated, Iverson ranked first among guards with 1.01 million votes, Kobe Bryant ranked second with 980,000 votes, and Nash, who was also the 96 generation, was sad again......