Chapter Seventy-Nine: 15 Consecutive Victories, the Sun Wants to Go to the Sky?
At this time, the strength of the Heat team is very different from when it won the championship a few months ago.
The championship in '06 seemed to drain all of O'Neal's energy, and it was also the last good performance he played near the end of his career.
In the 06-07 season, O'Neal's average data per game slipped to 17 points and 7 rebounds, falling below the average of 20+ points per game for the first time in his career.
Not only that, but injuries also began to hit in a steady stream, and O'Neal only played a total of 40 games throughout the 06-07 season.
The Heat are not only plagued by injuries, but also Wade, this season, his knee problems began to gradually appear, although he can contribute an average of 27 points, 4.7 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game in the regular season, playing extremely well, but only 51 games played, not much better than O'Neal.
Wang Chao remembers very well that the Heat team's final record in the 06-07 regular season was 44-38, ranking fourth in the East, and then was swept out of the playoffs by the Bulls 4-0 in the first round of the playoffs.
The old and ineffective Big Shark was traded away by the Heat in the middle of the following season, and the big injustice who chose to take over happened to be hoping to have a super center to fight Duncan's Suns on the inside.
The game between the Suns and the Heat happened to be played with Wade and O'Neal both injured.
With the team's two strongest core players out on the lineup, how can the Heat be combative?
Although the Heat also have Alonzo on their roster. Mourning & Gary. Payton's two Hall of Fame-level players, but it's '06, not '96, and both of them, whose athleticism has declined sharply as they get older, have already become marginal figures on the team, and they continue to stay with the Heat just to see if they can get an extra championship ring with the team.
Not surprisingly, Gary. Payton will choose to retire after this season, and Mourning will also choose to retire and leave the league after holding on for half a season.
For the Suns, facing such a Heat team is an easy game, which is not much different from facing the Grizzlies, SuperSonics, Celtics and other teams at the bottom of the league.
At 108:89, it was another easy big victory, and the Suns won their 15th straight game and soared all the way on the road to winning streaks.
The league is shocked, the Suns are going to heaven!
So far in the regular season, the Suns have played 21 games, and in those 21 games, they have a 19-2 record, a 90% win rate!
Such a start, looking at the history of the league, is very rare, if the Suns can always play the entire regular season according to this winning rate, I am afraid that even the Bulls' 72-10 regular season record will be broken!
Of course, no one thinks that the Suns are really strong enough to be Jordan's invincible Bulls dynasty, and although they are amazed by the Suns' winning streak, most people believe that the main reason why the Suns have been able to go all the way is because the opponents in the previous schedule are not strong enough.
Among the teams that the Suns have played before, only the Mavericks, Jazz, and Spurs can be regarded as real strong teams, and the absence of the two cores of the Heat team is not a reference, and in the hands of these three teams, the Suns lost two games, and only relied on Wang Chao's hand to win the Spurs.
They are also Western teams, and they will play each other three times in the regular season, and the Pistons and Cavaliers on the Eastern side have not played against the Suns.
Once the opponent's strength level rises, the Suns' winning rate will inevitably begin to decline, and there is absolutely no way to maintain such an exaggerated winning rate at this stage.
Of course, with such a bright start, it is not impossible for the Suns to play more than 65 wins as long as they can keep the team fully healthy, at least 60 wins guaranteed, and play a little more consistently.
In the Suns, with the deepening of the schedule, the ball ratio has basically stabilized.
As Wang Chao expected, Stoudemire, who was in a recovering form, still became the player with the most shots per game on the team, averaging 14.4 shots per game and averaging 21.2 points and 8.9 rebounds per game.
This is slightly different from Wang Chao's memory, originally in the 06-07 season, Stoudemire should have averaged just over 20 points per game in the regular season, but this is normal, the Suns have Wang Chao's deterrent point outside the three-point line, and no team dares to shrink the defense line easily.
And when the power forward Marion also pulls out the outside, the space on the inside is completely vacated, forming an environment that is enough for Stoudemire to face 1v1.
The offensive environment has improved, and Stoudemire's shots have naturally increased.
That's all right, two seasons ago, when Stoudemire was on the rise in the 04-05 season, averaging 26 points per game in the regular season, he averaged 16.7 shots per game.
……
In the Suns, the second most shot is Barbossa.
Barbosa averaged 32.7 minutes per game as the team's sixth man of the year, some of which overlapped with the starters, but at least half of that was when he was leading the bench when the substitutes were on the pitch.
With the main team, Barbosa certainly doesn't have many opportunities to shoot, but in the bench lineup, he is the brightest boy and enjoys unlimited firing rights.
Because of this, Barbossa can also average 13.8 shots per game and score 18.1 points per game, ranking third on the team.
Barbossa is Marion's average of 13.2 shots per game, Marion's shots have plummeted a lot from last season's 16.9, but there is no way, who has made the Suns score so many points this season?
He doesn't shoot much from beyond the three-point line, just over 30 percent, and most of his offense relies on receiving teammates to assist layups under the open basket or catching the ball in the open space, so he doesn't make many foul free throws, averaging just 16.8 points on 13.2 shots per game.
Wang Chao ranks fourth in the team in terms of average shots per game, averaging about 12.5 shots per game, accounting for 11.2 shots outside the three-point line, and the three-point shooting rate is as high as 49%, which also allows him to score 19.2 points per game with 12.5 shots, ranking second on the team's scoring list.
There is no doubt that Wang Chao's scoring efficiency is enough to satisfy the head coach of any team, D'Antoni is full of smiles whenever he sees Wang Chao during this time, looking at the whole league, averaging 19.2 points per game, and almost completely not possessing the ball, can the player who does not shoot many times find a second? If you add his annual salary of less than 500,000, I am afraid that it is unique in the history of the league.