After winning the Christmas game, the Bulls' overall mental state has improved significantly, and the atmosphere in the locker room has changed a little better.

However, what followed was more brutal treatment by the league in terms of penalties.

The Bulls obviously have the best forward group in the league and one of the best interior configurations, but in the games after the Christmas game, they almost every game was more than 10 free throws behind their opponents, and in a few games the free throw difference was even more than 20.

For this phenomenon, Bulls fans have undoubtedly created a lot of momentum online, cheering for the efforts of the Bulls players on the court, and complaining about the physical violations suffered by the Bulls players on the court.

However, there was no official response to this.

Over time, both inside and outside the league have accepted the status quo of the Bulls playing home as they do away and away as a graveyard.

All in all, the bulls are too strong, let's weaken a wave!

There's not much to say, with George, Jr. has regained his form, and the Bulls have won most of the games even in very unfavorable free throws.

By the end of January, when the All-Star voting results were announced, the Bulls had a 33-16 record and rushed straight to the second place in the East.

And the Heat, who are the first in the East, are only 2 wins away.

In fact, if the league can give the Bulls the same whistle treatment as the Heat, the Bulls have surpassed the Heat and regained the top of the East.

However, the regular season ranking does not affect the results of the Bulls in the playoffs.

In the playoffs, even if the whistle treatment is still not adjusted, the Bulls are confident that they can beat an old opponent like the Heat in a seven-game series.

Having said that, the All-Star voting results have been announced, and Doon, who has made a comeback this season, has lived up to expectations and has become the All-Star vote king this season.

But in terms of votes, it did not pull away hundreds of thousands of votes for the second place as in previous years.

This year, Doon received only 1.64 million votes, followed by Durant, the new king of the league, with 1.58 million votes, and then the son of the United States, Thick Eyebrow, with 1.55 million votes.

As the saying goes, there are talented people from generation to generation, and each has led the way for hundreds of years.

Now the NBA has also entered a stage of innovation in which a new generation replaces the old.

Durant's popularity skyrocketed because of last year's NBA championship and Olympic gold medal, and the talented future star Thick Eyebrows is also popular with the league.

Doon's return to the NBA has certainly attracted the attention of many fans, but some old fans can't spare their energy because of livelihood or age and other issues, and they will pay attention to and support Doon again.

This situation is somewhat sad, but it is indeed an inevitable phenomenon of historical development.

In the 80s, there were still demon birds competing for hegemony, and now how many people miss them?

The era of Jordan and the big four centers in the 90s is not far from now, but except for Jordan and O'Neal, there are usually no one on the street wearing their jerseys.

Now, most of the stars of the 96 golden generation have retired from the NBA stage.

In more than ten years, in addition to the occasional mention of old fans who remember their youth, who will miss the era when the four quarterbacks and the four big forwards went head-to-head?

Fortunately, Doon has left his own footprints in this era, and it is dazzling enough to be called an era.

And the teammates around Doon will also benefit from this and become a part of Doon's legend.

Just like this season, Ibaka caught the last train when the results of the fourth round of the All-Star voting were announced, becoming one of the three Eastern Conference All-Star starting forwards.

On the contrary, Curry, because Doon plays guard, occupies the place of guard, and lost to Wade by more than 100,000 votes in terms of voting, so he can only participate in the next All-Star game as an All-Star backup guard.

In addition to Curry, Whiteside is also on this year's Eastern Conference All-Star bench list.

That said, this season the Bulls have four single-season All-Stars!

In fact, it is not surprising that the Bulls were targeted by the league and suffered greatly from penalties during the game.

But the team and the players themselves played very hard, they were very resilient and they won game after game.

The head coaches of all teams in the league know the ability of the Bulls players and the strength of the Bulls' core players.

Because of this, the Bulls are strong enough to be recognized by the head coaches of other teams.

That is, George and Xiaoka were recovering from injuries before, and it took some time to adjust after returning to the game.

Otherwise, the Bulls could pull out a starting lineup with all five All-Stars.

Having said that, after Ibaka and Shiraibian got their wish, they also began to rest the burden on their shoulders.

On the one hand, it has reduced unnecessary ball possession, and on the other hand, it has also liberalized private life a bit, returning to the stage where the game is the game and life is the life.

All-Star weekend is just around the corner, and there's no need to play hard all the time.

In the regular season, you can win normally, but there are other players in the team anyway!

Besides, I was finally selected as an All-Star, what if I got injured before the All-Star Game started?

Ibaka and White Edge are not bad, they are just human beings.

The vast majority of NBA players are like this, the contract year explodes, and the contract is signed immediately back to normal levels, which at first glance looks like a fraudster.

It can only be said that the star has the pursuit of the star, and the role player has the survival of the role player.

It is also because in the NBA, everyone has different demands, and each other's interests and pursuits may conflict, so at this time, the head coach of the team and the boss of the team need to stand up and solve such and such problems.

Bulls head coach Scott Skels noticed that Ibaka and White were slacking off in their play and were not as focused as before when playing, so he quickly adjusted the rotation arrangement and replaced Green, Crowder, Vucevic and others one after another.

One thing to say, in last year's playoffs, Green's performance was remarkable.

It's that as an unconventional weapon, Scott Skels doesn't use Green too much time.

Especially this season, the Bulls have broadcast a bit more games in the United States, with a full 46 games.

A lot of bad guys don't say they can keep to themselves in the regular season, and there are often many more wasters in the regular season than in the playoffs.

However, because the playoffs are broadcast live in the United States, millions, tens of millions of fans are tuning in, so all actions will be amplified, especially unnecessary and unreasonable actions that do not rush the ball and go directly to people.

The Bulls have won the championship by hard power before, and Scott Skels naturally will not reuse Green, who may become a double-edged sword.

However, Ibaka and White have fallen into a bit of a mental set, and Scott Skells has had to prepare more for the playoffs.

Considering his contract is expiring, Scott Skeles will undoubtedly want to pick up a few more championship rings in the final years of his time with Doon.

As a result, in a few regular season games in early February, the Bulls' rotation changed a lot.

Sometimes even All-Stars like Ibaka and White were relegated to the bench.

Of course, there were a few games where I didn't play at all, so I just arranged a rotation break.

Serge Ibaka and White Wing are no fools, although they are unhappy to be at the mercy of Scott Skells and relegated to the bench.

But it was also clear that Scott Skeyles was beating them in this way.

It turns out that even if the Bulls devolved and rested two All-Star insiders, they still have the ability to hit the weak team!

Not to mention, even in a game of strong dialogue, the Bulls' outside line also has Dhorn, Curry, George, and small cards, which are overwhelming the whole league, and it is easy to play an advantage.

A lot of times, the Bulls don't particularly care about the scoring ability of their interior players, and like the Bulls in the Jordan era, they don't need Rodman to score on the inside.

The Bulls need Ibaka and White Rim to provide quality defense, rim protection, and rebounding protection, like Rodman.

If Ibaka and Byakumi don't want to do the dirty work, someone else will do it.

Anyway, in the NBA, the last thing there is is a shortage of blue-collar players who do the dirty work.

It just so happens that the Bulls have two more All-Star interior linemen.

Before the trade deadline arrives, we can finally exchange something useful to come back.

The top interior stars can't be replaced, so it's definitely no problem to change some blue-collar interior players who make do with it.

After being frightened by Scott Skels's operation, Ibaka and White did be honest for a while before the trade deadline.

No matter what Scott Skyles arranged, they chose to do it.

And Scott Skels also accepted it when he saw this, and relegated Green and Vucevic to the bench.

The rest of the Bulls' players have also become much more honest after Scott Skels knocked the Tigers.

Throughout February, Scott Skels, as the head coach of the Bulls, did a lot of commotion, but the Bulls' record not only declined, but became stronger.

With the exception of six consecutive away games in the West, where one game was lost, the rest of the games ended in victories.

Before All-Star Weekend, the Bulls had already chased their record to just one game away from the Heat.

If this momentum can be maintained, there is no hope that the Bulls will overtake the Heat to become the No. 1 team in the East before the end of the regular season.

Although there is not much hope of 60 wins this season, about 58 wins is still very promising.

In the case of being targeted by the league and in the case of unfavorable penalties, if the Bulls can play such a record, as long as the main team in the playoffs is not injured, this is undoubtedly another championship that has not run.

……

Fast forward to February 13, and the New York All-Star Weekend begins.

This year's All-Star Weekend was hosted by the Knicks and the Nets.

The initial warm-up performances, as well as the Rookie Challenge, the Shooting Star Contest, the Skills Contest, the Three-Point Contest, the Slam Dunk Contest and other small events, were held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the home of the Nets.

Only the last day of the event was staged at Madison Square Garden, New York, the home of the Knicks.

Speaking of which, there are really not many people from the Bulls at this All-Star Weekend, just Doane, Curry, Ibaka and the white four.

The main reason for this is that the Bulls' main roster has been short of people this year.

For the sake of the team's record, Scott Skels had to fight to the core, so the rookie could not be developed, and he had to be sent to the development league.

Even if Bojan is left in the rotation, he doesn't get a lot of playing time.

So far, Bojan has averaged only 4.2 points, 1.3 rebounds and 0.8 assists in 13.7 minutes per game.

With this data, there is naturally no chance to participate in the Rookie Challenge.

As for Gobert and others in the Development League, they are also a little less powerful and have no chance to be selected as an All-Star in the Development League, otherwise, they can still participate in this All-Star Weekend with Doon and others.

Besides, George and Xiaoka have All-Star level strength, but they didn't have enough ball control before, and they couldn't immediately play enough data to be selected as an All-Star after returning from injury.

Since the All-Star Game can't be played, there's no need to come back to All-Star Weekend to join in the fun.

George and Jr. consider that after the All-Star Weekend, the Bulls will inevitably rush to the second half of the regular season, and the physical consumption will definitely be not small at that time.

Considering that the current physical condition is only half adjusted, I am worried that I will not be able to bear it by then, so I did not come to the All-Star Weekend to mess around and waste rest time.

In other words, although there are not many people coming to the Bulls during this All-Star Weekend, there are a lot of projects to participate in.

In addition to competing in the All-Star Game, Doon also has to participate in the Shooting Star Competition.

And Curry and Whiteside also signed up for each other's good projects - three-point and dunk.

However, these small projects of this year's All-Star Weekend have come to some ruthless people.

Although the shooting star is just for fun, it also attracts magicians, big birds, and Pippen.

By the way, Pippen was Doon's teammate, and then he didn't have it.

In addition, this year's three-point contest is the most lively in recent years, with a full eight people participating!

In the end, it was Thompson and Irving who accompanied Curry to the finals.

Curry came to All-Star Weekend to play, and he didn't take the three-point contest too seriously.

Anyway, the honor of the three-point king has long been there, and this final is also relatively wavelike.

After all the shots were made, there were more than four seconds to spare, which was simply inappropriate, and because of this, only 25 points were scored.

And Thompson, who couldn't stop his hand, relied on his excellent touch and top-level shooting skills to score 27 points in the final of the three-point contest, and then successfully defeated Curry to win the three-point championship.

As for the slam dunk contest, White was eliminated in the first round.

It can only be said that in the slam dunk contest that LaVine participated in, no matter how good the others were, they were just a foil.

LaVine has a good talent in jumping and a lot of work, even Gordon is also talented, but with just one or two tricks, he can't kill LaVine in seconds, and he can only be dragged to death by LaVine in the end.

And Doon, as the dunk king ten years ago, and a free throw line dunk master similar to LaVine, also came to the dunk contest this time, and gave LaVine some encouragement on the sidelines before the game started.

After LaVine picked up the slam dunk king trophy, he also said in public: "I grew up watching Doon dunk, which has benefited me a lot!" ”

After this battle, Doon accepted a slam dunk king disciple, and the NBA also added a descendant of Doon.

It's just a slight inadequacy that the Doon heirs are not as sensational as Jordan's successors.

After the side dishes were eaten, it was finally the turn of the big meal.

On February 16, the last day of the All-Star Weekend, at Madison Square Garden, New York, the All-Star Game is about to start. (End of chapter)