Chapter 346: If hard work is useful, then what do you need talent for?
The 19-game winning streak is the longest in the 2017 season, marking the official rise of the Kings.
However, perhaps Zhang Feng has brought too many surprises to fans and the media, but this news has not set off too much discussion on the Internet, and fans and the media have nothing else to say except lamenting that the king has been too strong recently.
Fortunately, Kings fans take the 19-game winning streak very seriously, and in the game against the Clippers at home on the 12th, all the Kings players enjoyed a warm welcome from the fans when they played, and the fans all gave a standing ovation, and the applause lasted for 3 minutes.
This scene was seen by the visiting Clippers players, the last time Zhang Feng almost set 3 records on their heads, this time even if Doug Rivers did not hold a mobilization meeting, the Clippers players secretly vowed to fight for a breath, not to mention that they just defeated the Warriors, Louis Williams scored 50 points, and the entire Clippers team is full of fighting spirit.
After the start of the game, led by Austin Rivers and supplemented by Luis Williams and Miloš Teodosic, the Clippers backcourt players launched a crazy package against Zhang Feng.
How crazy is it? As long as Zhang Feng receives the ball, Austin sticks it up, and after half time, Luis joins the bag, if Zhang Feng passes, the two disperse, if Zhang Feng does not pass the ball, then the Clippers will send another person to deal with Zhang Feng.
The Clippers' strategy is to hurt 100 people and 80 to lose themselves. But this routine did cause a lot of trouble to Zhang Feng, and Bogdan and Justin did not have a high shooting rate, and the first quarter ended, and the Kings fell behind the Clippers 21-26.
In the second quarter of the game, the Clippers' wrap-up strategy remained unchanged, and David had to send Hill to play a dual-point guard strategy, and then put Bogdan at the No. 3 position to ensure that Zhang Feng and Hill could have a higher shooting percentage after passing the ball.
After such adjustments, the Kings made consecutive shots, but the Clippers still insisted on the trap tactics, and the two teams fought until the second official timeout in the second quarter, and the Kings overtook the score 42-40.
Unexpectedly, after the official timeout came back, the situation changed abruptly, the Clippers let Jordan Jr. stand in the elbow position on offense as a shaft, and used cross-cover to create a dislocation for Grifeng, several offenses, Griffin easily faced Bogdan, although Griffin's speed was not as fast as Bogdan, but Griffin used his explosive advantage very smartly, and scored 8 points in a row.
Fortunately, the Clippers were unable to crack David's tactics defensively, and the two teams were tied at halftime.
During the timeout in the middle court, the Kings decided to use a two-center and two-point guard tactic after discussing in the locker room to deal with the Clippers' outside misplaced offense and crazy packing.
In the second half, the king directly offered a double point guard and double center tactics, David was still a little worried, but he didn't expect this tactic to work wonders immediately.
Offensively, Zhang Feng and Hill took Randolph and Costa on the inside as the main passing objects, and the Clippers were able to defend the inside due to the outside package, and Randolph and Costa were flexible after receiving the ball, and they did not aim at shooting, but forced the Clippers players to shrink to the inside to assist in defense, and finally handed the ball to Zhang Feng or Hill who cut the ball, so that the King's offensive efficiency improved again, and scoring was easier than before.
Defensively, because of the existence of two centers, the Kings gave up entanglement with the Clippers at the three-point line and switched to using the 212 zone defense strategy.
At the end of the third quarter, the Kings pulled away and led the Clippers 88-78.
In the final quarter, the Clippers failed to figure out a way to crack the Kings' two-point guard and two-center tactics, but the fighting spirit of the Clippers players was not affected in the slightest. Austin has been ferocious in defense; Grifeng changed the style of attacking with dribbling under the crotch on the outside, and repeatedly asked for hand-to-hand combat with Randolph and Costa on the inside, although the shooting rate was low, but it consumed Randolph and Costa very uncomfortable, and even paid 3 fouls; Coupled with Jordan Jr., who also seemed to suddenly open his mind, grabbed 3 offensive rebounds in a row, the Kings have not been able to expand the score again, but were caught up by the Clippers by 3 points.
The Kings held a seven-point lead until the final two minutes of hand-to-hand battle, and the Clippers began to execute foul tactics with Luis missing a three-point shot.
The target of the Clippers' foul is Costa, he doesn't play much this season, David sometimes sends him to the court either in garbage time, or in special circumstances like this game, he basically didn't shoot much, this foul, the Kings up to the owner, down to the fans began to worry.
There's no way not to worry, because it's about 20 consecutive wins, and the game is at home, everyone can go to the nightclub together if you win, and if you lose, you can only face the disappointed eyes of the fans and the unwillingness to have your winning streak interrupted.
It was because he wanted to win so much that he was worried about Costa executing the free throw.
As the saying goes, 'what are you afraid of', Costa missed 2 free throws on the first time, Jordan Jr. grabbed the rebound strongly, the Clippers accelerated to counterattack, maybe the plan was achieved, the Clippers got a buff boost, Luis turned his head and hit 3 points, and the Kings had a lead of only 4 points.
Turning back to the king's attack, as soon as Zhang Feng got the ball, the Clippers fouled Costa, but fortunately, Costa hit 1 of 2 free throws, and the Clippers could only attack from the backcourt.
To stabilize himself, Rivers called a timeout. After the timeout, the Clippers covered Luis with all the players, and the players of the two teams squeezed together at the three-point line, but Jordan Jr. had an idea to return to the interior alone, Luis passed the ball to assist, and the Clippers chased another 2 points.
Seeing that there was only a three-point lead left, David decisively called a timeout.
After the timeout, the Kings replaced Costa and sent Willy and Buddy, and the Clippers had no tactical foul targets and could only play positional battles with the Kings, but Zhang Feng still called for a 3-point shot after halftime in order to be safe.
Luckily, Zhang's 3-pointer hit and the Kings led by six points with just one point remaining.
The Clippers without a timeout could only bet on 3 points, but Luis no longer felt it, and the king relied on Zhang Feng's mid-range shots at the two free throw lines to lead by 10 points, winning the game without danger and winning 20 consecutive victories.
The 19-game winning streak failed to attract attention, and the 20-game winning streak finally made fans and the media reflect on it.
"The Kings are currently very much like the Rockets who won 22 consecutive games that year, relying on a leading star and a bunch of tough benches to win, but today's West is more competitive than the West where the Rockets were back then, and I don't know how far they can go."
TNT was the first to use the Kings and Rockets to compare and publish articles, and NBA TV and FOX Sports followed one after another.
"Young king, bright future, Chinese players finally dominate this league?"
"The Kings have risen to become the biggest dark horse of the season, the Rockets are off to a strong start, and the Warriors are ushering in new opponents?"
If before the 20-game winning streak, the media's biggest expectation for the Kings was the second round of the playoffs, now the media's expectation for the Kings has changed to whether they can win the Warriors.
This is the most direct recognition of the strength of the Kings, after all, in the past three years, the teams that can challenge the Warriors, from the Cavaliers to the Spurs, from the Thunder to the Rockets, are all teams that can compete for the championship.
After the game against the Clippers, David decided to take a day off to rest the team, considering that there would be two back-to-back trips and a wave of six consecutive road trips ahead.
I don't know if the excitement of the winning streak has not yet dissipated, or if he is full of expectations for making history, the whole team of the Kings has not rested, and they all tacitly go to the training base to practice.
This scene made David sigh with emotion, and in his coaching experience, he had never seen players work so together to achieve victory, and he paid for the whole team to rub it out of his own pocket.
On the 14th, the Kings visited Stamps to challenge the Clippers. Perhaps stimulated by consecutive losses to the Kings, the Clippers played harder in this game.
It's a pity that the Clippers' routine was figured out by the King, and the Clippers failed to achieve results no matter how desperately they tried, and the two teams only fought for two and a half quarters, and the King's lead reached 20 points, and the disheartened Rivers sent a substitute in the fourth quarter of the game and gave up the game directly.
After entering garbage time, David sent Giles, who had returned from injury, to play.
Giles came on the court, and the Kings cheered him on, even though it was his first official NBA game, even if he was recovering from a major injury, he still lived up to the title of the No. 1 high school student in the United States, facing the Clippers bench, he shot 5-of-9, cut 10 points, and also grabbed 4 rebounds, handing over a good answer for his NBA debut.
The Kings won 21 games in a row against the Clippers, but not only did they not have time to celebrate, but they also had to travel overnight to Oklamar City, where they will take on the Thunder on the road.
The Thunder formed the Big 3 this season, but their opening record was very unsatisfactory, but after later adjustments, the cooperation between the Big Three became more tacit, and they got a wave of consecutive wins, and even rushed to 6th in the West at one point.
But recently they have suffered another wave of consecutive losses, and the ranking has reached 8th in the West, and there are not many wins ahead of the Pelicans in 9th in the West, and Anthony has adjusted to lead the bench.
Therefore, playing against the Kings at home is very important for the whole Thunder team, after all, Thunder fans still have expectations for the Thunder to achieve good results in this game, and they have also defeated all the Warriors, the recent losing streak fans feel that there is a problem with the run-in, as long as they can defeat the Kings who have been in the limelight recently, then all the confidence can be quickly returned.
At the same time, the Kings are also very eager to win to bring the winning streak to 22 games, you know, 22 consecutive wins can tie the Rockets for fourth place in the NBA winning streak.
Both sides very much want to win, David and Donovan were interviewed before the game to each other's 'poisoned milk', and in terms of players, Zhang Feng also 'joined the ranks of 'poisoned milk' to praise the Thunder Big Three is very terrible, but I didn't expect that Wei Shao, Anthony, and George were interviewed together, and the three of them moved out of Zhang Feng since they entered the league All the big names have praised Zhang Feng 'poisoned milk', and finally said that it is an honor for the three of them to be able to play with a young talent like Zhang Feng.
So far, the match between the two teams has attracted a lot of attention.
On the day of the game, as soon as the Kings bus entered the parking lot of the Chesapeake Energy Arena, he was surrounded by a group of reporters.
After entering the stadium, Zhang Feng thought that he would not need to continue the interview, but in the face of the microphone of his old acquaintance Maggio, he couldn't refuse.
Unexpectedly, Maggio didn't ask him what he thought of the game, but instead told him a piece of news.
"In the All-Star second-round voting results just announced by the league, you overtook Giannis and LeBron in a row to become the vote king by 1828546 votes, and according to that number of votes, you will be one of the starting backcourt players of the Western Conference All-Stars, and the other player, based on the results of the current vote, will either be Curry or Harden, what do you think about that?"
This question is not easy to answer, because once this vote is maintained, Curry and Harden will inevitably not be able to start, although Zhang Feng's strength is well deserved, he will not be criticized as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian at the beginning, but offending Curry or Harden, the two supergiant fans, will not do him any good.
After thinking about it for a while, Zhang Feng said: "Thank you very much for your support to me, I will continue to play more exciting games to give back to everyone, if I am lucky enough to be an All-Star, I will definitely do my best."
is neither humble nor arrogant, Zhang Feng's answer did not pretend to be an All-Star player, nor did he leak the meaning of disrespect for Harden, Curry and other Western backcourt stars, and the most important thing is that he did not show that he did not dare to compete with Harden and Curry at all, so that he could neither offend neutral fans nor live up to his fan support.
Naturally, Maggio was not satisfied, and she asked Zhang Feng a few more questions before ending the interview.
After the interview, Zhang Feng began to warm up, and after another half an hour, the game between the two teams officially began.
All fans want to see Zhang Feng collide with the Thunder Big Three, it is best to play back and forth, and in the last minute of the battle, it is exciting to force out the lore tactics on both sides.
Unexpectedly, the game entered the second quarter, and the battle situation was one-sided.
In terms of offense, Wei Shao couldn't break through Zhang Feng, but he cooperated with Adams to block and dismantle, continuously formed an air cut and quickly down, and scored easily many times.
After the king made adjustments, the Thunder changed their strategy again, letting Adams respond in the elbow area, and handed the ball to Anthony and George.
The most terrifying thing is that Anthony and George both have a wonderful hand, how to shoot, and Justin and Willy also ate fouls because of excessive defensive actions.
At the end of the third quarter, the Kings trailed by 20 points, and Zhang Feng made a desperate three-point shot, but even if he hit consecutive shots, it failed to affect the Thunder's offense at all.
In the last 2 minutes of the game, the king still scored 15 points, and the unwilling Zhang Feng commanded the whole team to 'cut' Adams, but he didn't expect Adams to hit two free throws in a row, and Zhang Feng's ultra-far trilogy came to naught.
In the end, the Kings lost the game 98-110, ending their 21-game winning streak.
After the game, the number of posts on major basketball forums discussing the game exploded.
"No way, the Thunder triumvirate broke out collectively, and the Kings lost for an excusable reason"
"I don't think so, the problem is still with the Kings players other than Zhang Feng, who can't guard not only Anthony and George, but also Adams and Roberts."
"Can't blame them, they've worked very hard"
"If hard work is useful, then what do you need talent? Before the trade day deadline, the Kings management should make a move, and as a Sacramento native, I don't want to see Zhang Feng make a 'decision' after years without a championship like LeBron."