Entering the Timberwolves' first warm-up game, Wudao left a deep impression on the Timberwolves' management.

Unlike owner Glenn Taylor, the coach of the team has been much more cautious in setting the martial arts right.

It's not a strange thing in the NBA that players are out of shape on a given day or for a certain period of time, and they're playing amazingly.

Whether Wudao can become a starter or not, we must look at the stability of Wudao, only players who are stable enough can have the possibility of stable starters.

So in the days that followed, Philip Sanders joined the practice round. The Timberwolves' intra-team practice games are played by players at the target center, after all, it is the home court, and it is very important for the players to adapt to their home court.

The basketball hoop in the target center seems to be tailor-made for martial arts, and in the next few days of practice matches, martial arts still maintain a high level of performance, no matter how Philip Saunders changes the formation, no matter what kind of tactics the opponents of martial arts use.

Martial Arts is always able to slash crazy points on the opponent's head.

After a few days of games, his personal average has even reached 36 points per game.

In today's basketball environment, such an average of points per game is really a bit sensational. Philip Saunders and the rest of the team management have thoroughly recognized the martial arts in their hearts, but they still need to test the upper limit of the martial arts before they can officially correct the martial arts.

Practice matches, after all, practice matches.

When Takedo played with the players, although the intensity of the game was not bad, neither Garnett was able to "give it his all" when defending Martial Arts or Tom was defending Martial Arts.

When playing with Martial Arts, even though the alignment has been blown up by Martial Arts, they still deliberately control their defensive actions when defending, and their defenses are quite clean.

But in fact, whether it is Garnett or Tom, when they play against other teams in the regular season, they actually have a lot of small actions in their hands.

In this era, if you want to defend your opponent well on the front line, some things are already "standard".

And Garnett and Tom's defense, even if there were a lot of small moves in the regular season, their defense was already clean relative to a certain part of the players.

There are some villains in the NBA who choose to punch when they can't play.

Some of the defensive moves are not aimed at the ball at all, but completely towards the person.

The "defensive intensity" that Martial Arts is facing now is, in Philip Saunders' view, far from enough.

However, in ordinary training, Philip Saunders of course can't tell his players to give Wudao some intensity that shouldn't be on, he can only ask the referee to make the blowing penalty scale a little wider when holding the ball in Wudao in ordinary training.

Intensify the intensity of confrontation.

After a few days of practice, Garnett and Tom also noticed that the referee's penalty was relaxed. Therefore, when defending, some physical contact given to Martial Arts becomes more frequent.

Under such a defense, Wudao's offensive efficiency has really declined.

The average points per game finally slipped to around 30.

Although it was still a terrifying scoring efficiency, it finally made the other players breathe a sigh of relief.

Thirty points per game, although it is still a little scary, but it is still a normal human being.

Wu Dao's personality is quite cheerful, and his strength is strong, although he refuses to carry a shoelace water bottle for Tom, the big boss, but in addition to this, Tom and Wu Dao get along well.

Garnett is a broken mouth, he always likes to talk trash when facing martial arts on the court, and for him, martial arts is not used to it, and he often uses trash talk to return it after responding with basketball.

The trash talk of the English language is too lethal for the martial arts, and the trash talk of a Zuan like him has no way to break the defense of the martial arts.

After experiencing the martial arts studied by Zu'an, after the trash talk was translated into English, it really made Garnett a little broken.

One day Martial Arts scolded Garnett for being anxious, and this guy used his hanging eyes to sarcastically mock Martial Arts.

The next day, Wu Dao gave Garnett a shirt, and kindly told him that the shirt was made of fine cotton.

Although Garnett only has high Chinese, and he did not listen well to lectures when he was studying, in such an environment, how could he not understand the purpose of martial arts emphasizing cotton.

The angry Garnett shouted that martial arts was racial discrimination and that he wanted to find a martial arts duel, and in the face of Garnett's unreasonable request, martial arts of course accepted it gladly.

It just so happened that Fujima Shinichi's gym also opened a branch in the city where Martial Arts was located, and Martial Arts warmly invited his teammates to visit, and by the way, accepted Garnett's invitation to a duel.

It was also after that day that although Garnett was still trash talking when he was playing, he didn't mention the duel with martial arts.

That is, after that day, the voices of the martial arts teammates to the newcomer of the martial arts were obviously much softer.

Although Wu Dao and Garnett are constantly talking trash when they are on the court, and there is not much intersection between the two off the court, it is not necessarily true to say that the relationship between the two is in full swing.

More than a month after Martial Arts joined the team, Philip Sanders often played in a team with Martial Arts and Garnett, Marbury and Tom when he was training.

When they play against each other, the two of them are very unfriendly, but when they are on the same team, the two are very compatible.

Garnett is known to be a tough guy who plays the defensive end.

The system that the Timberwolves have built around Garnett is a defensive counterattack.

Build a tough defense around the interior of Garnett, Tom and others, and quickly switch and counterattack after blocking the opponent's attack. This is the way the Timberwolves serve best.

The arrival of martial arts easily integrated into the system of this team.

Martial arts have a sense of co-defense, but to be honest, it's not really the top, his best is one-on-one single defense, no matter what kind of opponent it is, trying to solve martial arts one-on-one is not an easy thing.

But as long as there is someone to help, it is relatively easy for a player with strong individual strength to break through the defense of the martial arts.

And Garnett can also make up for the lack of martial arts on the defensive end.

Garnett is quick on his feet, very mobile and, more importantly, very good at it, happy to make up for what his teammates miss.

Garnett's attitude on the defensive end is similar to Duncan's.

Although the personality is not very coordinated, but in terms of ball style, Wu Dao and Garnett are unexpectedly compatible.

And Tom himself is not a very ball-possessing striker, as for Marbury, although he also belongs to the kind of ball-holding core, he is a person who is willing to share the ball for the team.

Therefore, when Wu Dao and these people formed a team, they played very smoothly.

The regular season of the NBA 97-98 season officially began on 10.31.

In September and October, NBA teams start with warm-up games, which are often referred to as preseason games.

The purpose of the preseason is to warm up, expand the influence of the league, expand the market and facilitate ticket sales, the second is to allow the team to see the quality of the rookies, and the third is to let the team run in the lineup and let the players adapt to the regular season in advance.

Generally speaking, all teams in the warm-up stage will not use their strongest system, and the vast majority of teams will try out the new lineup a little and then stop at the beginning.

Before the start of the NBA preseason, Wu Dao also heard that Duncan, the top pick in this year's draft, represented the team in the summer league and has begun to adapt to the intensity of professional basketball in advance.

Wu Dao wanted to participate in the summer league and practice his skills first, but his request was ruthlessly refused.

The NBA's Summer League was not officially established as an official tournament until 2007, and before that, the so-called Summer League was actually an "unofficial" game in which the team organized its players to participate on their own.

These tournaments are hosted by local cities or teams, and there are many teams from the minor leagues that participate.

Generally speaking, the 1.2-year rookie on an NBA team, or the unsigned free agent on the team's scouting, will participate in the summer league to raise their profile and get to know the player better.

The stage of the summer league is also a stage for rookies and free agents to show their worth.

But Philip Saunders felt that there was no need for martial arts to participate in that kind of competition.

On the one hand, Martial Arts has shown his terrifying strength in his usual training, and his value does not need to be reflected in the summer league at all, and on the other hand, Philip Saunders does not want to increase Martial Arts' exposure.

Martial Arts is the secret weapon of their Timber Wolves in the true sense, and he doesn't want Martial Arts to be exposed so early.

Yes, it is true that Wudao has shown almost inexplicable offensive ability in team training, but in the NBA, no player can stand the enemy's research and targeting.

The later the strength of the martial arts is revealed, the less time it will give the enemy to react, which is what Philip Saunders thinks.

Without the opportunity to raise awareness of the summer league, Martial Arts has no regrets.

Because he heard another message.

Duncan, the world's most notable champion, was deflated in the summer league.

Duncan finished with 14 points and eight rebounds against the Jazz's second-year center Oster Tuag in Summer League.

It sounds like a good statistic, but this statistic doesn't live up to the expectations of Spurs fans at all, and it's not worth his status as the top pick.

What's more, data is data, and Duncan's performance on the court did not satisfy the fans.

Wu Dao didn't know that Duncan's debut would pull his hips like this, in his heart, Duncan was the "No. 1 forward in history".

And this game also laid the groundwork for the 97-98 season, when the Jazz gentleman swept the Spurs.

Seeing Duncan's Waterloo in the summer league, Wu Dao's originally floating heart also sank.

During this period of time, the team training match, the martial arts played a little too smoothly, so that he felt that he was going to be invincible.

But seeing that Duncan, who was also invincible in the team's training match, was deflated, Wudao immediately became a lot more humble.

Duncan eats deflated, a vigilant person, but it is martial arts.

As mentioned earlier, in this era, the NBA's preseason games have not yet become the norm, and the games are all organized and promoted by local teams.

Although the Timberwolves don't let Wudo play in summer league, it is absolutely essential for the team to experiment with new rosters before the regular season.

After all, the test of training results has to be the arena, right?

The Timberwolves' swing made them have to find some "equal" opponents to play in the warm-up game.

In the end, the management of the Timberwolves chose to invite the Warriors and Nuggets to a few close matchups.

Among them, the Warriors, which are "one notch stronger" than the Timberwolves, in the 96-97 season, they played an "excellent" record of 30 wins and 52 losses, and missed the playoffs.

The Nuggets, on the other hand, are on the same "level" as the Timberwolves, who played 21 wins and 61 losses last season.

These are all famous Western "powerhouses", and in the eyes of the Timberwolves management, they are just right as opponents!

And the Warriors and Nuggets agreed to the invitation of the Timberwolves without much thought.

They both chose rookies in this year's draft, and against the Timberwolves, a team with "some" strength, both the Nuggets and the Warriors felt it was a good training opportunity.

So in the time of September.

The Timberwolves invited the Nuggets from Colorado to play a practice game in Minnesota.

Today's Nuggets, it is really a "bad team" with little strength.

The team's salary cap is Briant Stich, a standard guard worth more than $4 million.

The offensive ability of this defender is better than nothing, and the ability of the passing team can only be said to be visible.

And the team's No. 2 man is a guard with the same salary level as him, Sherman Douglas, whoa, is 183cm tall.

In fact, there is no need to list the extra data, and the rest of the nuggets are just some "stinky fish and rotten shrimp" that can't be put on the table.

If you want to talk about the biggest player, it is that Eric Williams, the 14th pick in the first round in '95

A man who was able to cut an average of 20+ per game in the regular season in the 97-98 season.

It's just a pity that I got injured after four games.

And in a team like the Nuggets, Eric Williams can play an average of 20+ per game doesn't mean how awesome he is.

Home game against the Nuggets.

The Timberwolves are taking it very seriously!

The rookie was pressed to the bench and did not get the opportunity to start playing.

In the third quarter of the game with the Nuggets, the Timberwolves, led by Garnett, Tom and Marbury, played 77-59 and led the opponent by 18 points.

After the third quarter, Garnett, Tom, Marbury and other starters went off the court and replaced them with a rotation led by Old Terry, and Wu Dao also got the opportunity to play in the last quarter.

But in the face of an opponent who had no fighting spirit, Wu Dao only scored 12 points hastily, and was finally led by Old Terry to end the game with 95:73.

His NBA rookie season began in earnest.

(End of chapter)