Chapter 164: The General Trend of the Alliance

After the interview, Chang Wei did not continue to delay in Philadelphia, but returned directly to New York. However, he has given himself an extra task, which is to pay more attention to the current situation in the league while giving Harmon recovery training. Although the memories of his previous life are still quite clear, Chang Wei can't guarantee that his rebirth has changed something.

Now that the NBA has reached the final stage of the sprint playoffs, the 29 teams in the league are divided into three categories, one is to maintain the current ranking and don't care too much about the outcome of the game, one is to grit their teeth and work hard to win in the hope of raising the ranking higher, and the other is to plan to lose until the end of the day to compete for the top pick.

However, the top eight in the West are basically decided, leaving only the Suns in fourth place and the Spurs in fifth to fight for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. The last two playoff spots in the East are fiercely competitive, with the Magic, Pistons and Bucks all hopeful, and the 76ers under Brown have secured a playoff spot, but they are not easy, with the fifth-placed Hornets having the same record as them, and the 76ers are in front of the rankings only by winning and losing, and the slightest mistake will be squeezed down.

Chang Wei is not too worried about the 76ers, even if they have not achieved anything in the playoffs this season, and when Mutombo joins next season, they can become a strong team in the East that can challenge the Lakers. Therefore, Chang Wei is more concerned about the other strong teams in the alliance, and he wants to see if his rebirth has affected the general trend of the alliance.

When Chang Wei was at Villanova, he trained three stars, Brand, Maddy, and Battier, who joined the Clippers, Raptors, and Kings, respectively. The Clippers still haven't finished in the top eight this season and are still in the bottom of the West, while the Kings are just stuck in the eighth position, but when they face the mighty Lakers, it will be difficult for Battier to change the outcome of the game alone. The only one who has the potential to disrupt the game is the Raptors, who now have a top-tier forward combination of Carter and Maddy, as they did in their previous lives, and although they can only rank sixth due to experience issues, they definitely have the quality to take down any opponent.

Of course, if you just look at the overall strength of the league, then this season is not much different from Chang Wei's memory. The last decade of the 20th century undoubtedly belonged to the Bulls, who won two consecutive championships under Jordan's leadership, during which Jordan left the NBA for two seasons to play baseball, thus making a short-lived Rockets dynasty.

These two teams have already won eight of the ten championships, and the remaining two championships are divided between the Spurs and the Lakers, who are also the most terrifying teams at the turn of the century. Chang Wei's rebirth did not change their growth trajectory at all, after all, O'Neal was dug by them from the Magic, and Kobe Bryant was traded to the Lakers before Chang Wei's rebirth, as long as the duo can be guaranteed to play the most powerful, it doesn't hurt to change the role players around them a little bit with one or two faces.

As for the Spurs under Popovich, only Duncan is now the only one in the GDP team who wears the Nerazzurri, and Parker and Ginobili are still polishing their skills in Europe. At least until the "OK Combo" falls apart, the Spurs won't have to think about any chance of coming out, and that championship was a gift to David Robinson.

It didn't take long for the regular season of the NBA1999-2000 season to finally come to an end, with the top eight spots in the East and the West being the Pacers, Heat, Knicks, 76ers, Hornets, Raptors, Pistons and Bucks, and the Lakers, Trail Blazers, Jazz, Spurs, Suns, Timberwolves, SuperSonics and Kings in the West. Chang Wei only planned to watch the game between the 76ers and the Raptors, and the Kings were destined to be abused by the Lakers, so they had to be sorry for Battier.

The 76ers' first-round opponent is the same record as the Hornets, who are not to be underestimated, and Coleman, the 1990 No. 1 pick, is still the league's top interior player. But Brown's response is simple, no matter how strong you are, I'll rely on Iverson alone, who averaged 25.8 points, 3.8 rebounds and 5.8 assists in 44.3 minutes per game in the series. What makes Chang Wei speechless is that no one in the 76ers has scored more than 15 points except him, and Snow, the team's No. 2 man, can only score 14.5 points per game, although the 76ers beat their opponents 3-1 to advance, but only one of them scored more than 100 points in four games.

In comparison, the Raptors' game is more exciting, after all, there are two cousins, Carter and Maddy, and the viewing is absolutely guaranteed. Although they are only sixth in the East, they have played well against the third-place Knicks, and Maddy gave his opponent a disadvantage at the beginning of the series, and he scored 34 points, eight rebounds and five assists in a single game to help the Raptors get off to a good start. However, the Knicks were the Eastern powerhouse of this period, and they won three games in a row to advance directly to the second round, and despite losing the series, Maddie has already made a name for himself in the league.

In the second round, the 76ers faced the top seed in the East, the Pacers, and from this round onwards, the series also became a best-of-seven series. The Pacers, who were more evenly matched, came up and took a 3-0 lead over the 76ers, pushing them to the brink. Although the 76ers then won two games in a row to tie the score at 2-3, they were eventually eliminated by the Pacers.

Iverson also took on a heavy load in this series, averaging 44.5 minutes per game and 26.5 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game. This kind of performance can be interchangeable with the Pacers' number one star Miller, but the Pacers' No. 2 star Jalen Rose averaged 22 points per game and made a huge contribution to the Pacers on the offensive end, compared to the other players of the 76ers.

After being eliminated, Brown didn't say anything, all he thought about was the answer that the latter gave him when he interviewed Chang Wei some time ago, this 76ers still rely too much on Iverson's strength, and when he can't solve the opponent alone, the outcome can already be predicted. Although Brown has a lot of criticism about Iverson's personality and style, it doesn't mean that he will be stupid enough to give up this top point guard, and maybe it's time to find him some better help.

Chang Wei was not surprised by the defeat of the 76ers, which was originally the biggest shortcoming of the one-man team. Even if he is as strong as Jordan, he failed to lead the Bulls to win the championship when he was alone, let alone Iverson? However, this also made Chang Wei more interested in joining the 76ers, and this team is indeed a good experiment.