I'm not really a brutalist striker

Chapter 87 87. Third in the Eastern Frontcourt!Kenyon Martin?When I come back, take him away!
The league has arranged a total of four games for Christmas this year, and one of the most interesting matchups is the Nets vs. Spurs.

Last year's playoffs, the two teams, the spurs and the nets, met in the finals. However, the sophistication of the spurs was obviously superior. With the excellent individual performance of the troika, they finally eliminated the nets with a big score of 4:2 and successfully won the 2003 championship trophy.

In the finals, Tim Duncan, who averaged 25 points, 15 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocks per game, also took advantage of the opportunity to win the third finals MVP of his career, and pushed the beast champion Kenyon Martin to the ground for frantic friction , Both offensive and defensive ends played unparalleled personal dominance.

If it wasn’t for Kidd’s 20+8+8 quasi-triple-double in the finals, the Nets might not be able to hold on to six games, at most five games, and they would have to be sent home by the Spurs for fishing .

Based on the mentality of being a fool if there are hot spots, the league deliberately arranged for the Nets and Spurs to compete again in this year's Christmas game.

Both the Spurs and the Nets are one of the biggest favorites in the East and West. The Nets currently rank second in the East, while the Spurs temporarily surpass the Timberwolves and rank first in the West.

This powerful dialogue at the highest level in the league attracted many fans to watch.

Both teams have many outstanding league stars. The Spurs have a troika composed of Parker, Ginobili and Tim Duncan, while the Nets have Kidd, Jefferson and Kenyon Martin. Composed of the New Jersey Trident.

Although in terms of overall strength, the Spurs are slightly stronger than the Nets, the strength of the two teams is about six or four, the Spurs are six, the Nets are four, or even less than [-]%, only in the early [-]s.

However, the Nets' athletic ability is obviously better than the Spurs. With Jason Kidd as the passing master, the Nets can easily wear down the Spurs through a lot of defensive counterattacks and running without the ball. defense.

Even if the Spurs' defensive efficiency surpasses the Timberwolves and Pistons this season and ranks first in the league, the biggest flaw of the Spurs' defensive end is their lack of athletic ability.

Even a disciplined defense like the Spurs can suffer when the opposing team starts running relentlessly.

There is no doubt that the Nets, which have many outstanding stars such as Jefferson and Kenyon Martin, are an extremely athletic team.

With Jason Kidd able to launch a counterattack immediately after taking off the rebound, the Nets' average points per game through defensive counterattacks this season is second only to the Atlanta Hawks, ranking second in the league.

And relying on the team's excellent defensive counterattack and the fiery three-pointers of the outside shooters, the Nets firmly suppressed the Spurs throughout the game. Until the end of the three quarters, the Nets still led the Spurs by 12 points.

Entering the last quarter, Jason Kidd showed the role of his team's brain, helping the Nets to firmly control the score and keep the lead until the end of the game.

Helped the team beat the Spurs by 11 points in the away game. While winning the Christmas game this season, they also avenged last season's finals.

In the whole game, Jason Kidd scored 19 points, 11 rebounds, 12 assists and 3 steals, connecting the entire team's offense with a triple-double.

And under Jason Kidd's many passes, Kenyon Martin, the champion of the beasts, also performed well. He played 37 minutes, made 14 of 9 offensive shots, 6 of 3 free throws, scored 21 points, 9 rebounds and 2 Steal and 2 blocks, managed to get back some face on Tim Duncan.

With the victory of this game, the Nets have risen to the third place in the league this season, surpassing the Minnesota Timberwolves, second only to the Lakers and Spurs, and becoming one of the three teams with the highest probability of winning this season one.

In other words, all teams in the East that want to hit the championship are bound to pass the Trident of the Nets this season.

As a team that just reached the Finals last season, the Nets' scoring champion Richard Jefferson only contributed 18.5 points per game, but the real strength of this Nets lies in Jia Sen Kidd's tandem.

Under Kidd's excellent command of the court, the Nets have five players averaging double figures this season, and nine players averaging more than six points per game.

It can be said that the Nets are a truly all-people team. Unfortunately, this lineup of the Nets is doomed to lack the ability to attack at critical moments. Once the game enters a stalemate, it is difficult for players to stand up and score easily.

Otherwise, Jason Kidd, who would not have been forced in the playoffs last year, would have scored 20.1 points per game, setting a new high for Kidd's playoff career.

It is worth mentioning that even with the regular season, Kidd has never averaged more than 20 points per game in any season.

In the playoffs last year, Jason Kidd still averaged 20.1 points per game when he reached the finals all the way. From this data, it is not difficult to see how difficult it is for the Nets to score key points this season. .

The lack of offensive ability in the final quarter is also one of the reasons why the Nets lost to the Spurs in the finals. No matter how good they played in the first half, the Nets will always be reversed by the Spurs in the second half. On the sidelines, there was nothing he could do.

At the press conference after the game, some reporters asked questions about Kenyon Martin, who performed well in this game.

When the reporter asked Martin, in Martin's mind, who is the best Beast player in the league, Kenyon Martin smiled lightly, and pointed to himself without hesitation.

"I don't know why you would ask such a stupid question. The answer is obvious. The best beast player in the league must be me."

"There are many power forward players who are better than me in the league, but when it comes to dunks, no one can compete with me!"

Kenyon Martin's answer made the smile on the reporter's face even brighter: "But I once saw a group of polls on the Internet. 57% of the fans believed that the most passionate beast player in the league is not you. It's the Eagles' vulture."

"These people firmly believe that the vulture is the most powerful beast on the field, and the fans who support you only account for about 22%. Do you have any opinion on this?"

The smile on Martin's face began to solidify, and even the atmosphere around him gradually became awkward.

Just when Jason Kidd was going to bypass this question and was about to find a step for Kenyon Martin, he saw Kenyon Martin lower his voice with a gloomy face.

"Vulture?"

"I'll play the next game against the Hawks and let people know who's the toughest beast in the league."

"It is undeniable that Vulture is a passionate player, but it is ridiculous for the fans to rank Vulture on my head."

"I will use facts to prove that no one can be wilder than me on the court. If the Eagles can enter the playoffs, I will let him know what is a real beast on the court!"

----

At the same time, Souter didn't know that his ban was innocent.

Of course, even if Suter knew about Kenyon Martin's remarks, he would probably just laugh it off.

After all, the pattern of people still needs to be amplified. Suter and the "CBA star" who showed his hips as soon as he entered the playoffs and played in the CBA in the shrinking season really have nothing to say.

When it comes to the game, Suter will naturally go all out and tell Kenyon Martin, the former No.

After Christmas, the first round of voting for this season's All-Star Weekend has begun.

The All-Star Weekend is officially held around mid-February every year. Before that, there will be four rounds of All-Star voting. In the end, the sum of the four rounds of voting will directly determine the candidates for the All-Star 12 list.

In order to avoid too many players in each position, and players in a certain position are too low in popularity and have no strength but cannot be selected for the All-Star Game, the league divides the voting into three areas.

They are defenders, forwards and centers, which are what people call the backcourt, frontcourt and midfielder.

The voting rules in the early [-]s were largely different from those of later generations. Today, the All-Star voting is entirely done by fans.

Whoever has a large number of fans can be sent to the All-Star Game abruptly, instead of being infinitely compressed in the proportion of fan votes like in later generations, and to a large extent can only rely on the media, not the fans.

It is precisely because of this that the "Chinese giant" Yao Ming was able to overwhelm the "Shark" O'Neal in his rookie season, and was selected into the All-Star Game as the starting center in the Western Conference, shocking the league in one fell swoop.

The number of fans from China is too large. Even if the strength of Yao Ming's rookie season is not enough to be selected for the All-Star Game, Chinese fans still use hard power to recommend Yao Ming to the All-Star Game, even surpassing "Shark" O'Neal to become The center player with the most All-Star votes in the league last season,

You know, O'Neal, who was No. 1 in the league last season, only got a little over 100 million votes.

Yao Ming, who averaged less than 13+8 in his rookie season, became the third most popular player in the league with 120 million votes.

Second only to Kobe, McGrady, and Vince Carter in All-Star votes.

This season is also the same. Not long after the first round of All-Star voting started, Yao Ming has already won more than 30 votes, ranking first among the center players. affected.

As a comparison, "Shark" O'Neal, who led his team to the second record in the Western Conference, currently only received votes in the early 20s.

Although there are four rounds of All-Star voting, if nothing else happens, Yao Ming, a second-year rookie this season, will still overwhelm "Shark" O'Neal and play in the All-Star Game as the starter in the Western Conference.

Of course, although Yao Ming's All-Star votes from China are exaggerated enough, they still can't threaten Vince Carter's position as the All-Star vote champion for the time being.

After all, Carter's popularity in the past two years has been too high. Since Michael Jordan announced his retirement from the Wizards again, Carter, as "Jordan's successor", can be said to have gained huge popularity and traffic from it.

Even though the Raptors' record this season has been reduced to the bottom of the league, Carter's popularity has always remained high, and he is one of the fans' favorite stars.

In addition, the most surprising thing is that Suter actually ranked third in the frontcourt of the Eastern Conference in the first round of All-Star voting, second only to Vince Carter and Jermaine O'Neal, earning a full 16 votes.

As for Kenyon Martin, who just yelled at Suter in the air not long ago, he only had more than 8 votes, which barely reached half of Suter's and ranked fifth in the frontcourt of the Eastern Conference. It can be described as extremely embarrassing.

This is because Suter is currently in the suspension stage and cannot compete in the game, and his popularity has been somewhat affected. Otherwise, Suter will definitely have a higher number of votes in the first round of All-Star voting.

Reality is like a brick, hitting Kenyon Martin's head hard, so that Martin, who has been living in his own world, has to recognize the reality and open his eyes to see who is the most popular in the active league The Brutalist players!
Even if the record of Martin's Nets is obviously better, in terms of popularity, Suter, whose style of play has exploded, is obviously more popular with fans.

It is worth mentioning that Steve Nash also received 14 votes, temporarily ranking fourth in the Eastern Conference among backcourt players, second only to Iverson, Tracy McGrady and Jason Kidd. As a substitute player, he was selected as an Eastern Conference All-Star.

The only thing to pay attention to is whether Baron Davis, who plays for the Hornets, will come from behind. The vote gap between Nash and Davis is very small, as small as only three digits, and a gap of several hundred votes.

This kind of gap is basically a matter of a few minutes to counterattack. The competition in the backcourt of the Eastern Conference is much fiercer than that of the frontcourt. It is still unknown whether Nash can be selected as the Eastern Conference All-Star.

However, according to the current trend, as a first-year rookie, Suter will very likely be selected for the All-Star Game in his rookie season, and he will take the lead in widening the gap with LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and others.

After all, as of now, James has only received about [-] All-Star votes, and Carmelo Anthony has only [-].

In order to counterattack Suter in the next three rounds of All-Star voting, the difficulty is no less than that of Yao Ming's counterattack against Vince Carter and become the All-Star vote leader this season.

It is foreseeable that once Suter is finally selected to the East All-Star, the competition for the best rookie of the season will become very beneficial to Suter.

After all, the All-Star is still a very valuable honor in this era. All the players selected for the All-Star are well-known in the NBA. They are either amazingly strong or outrageously popular.

Being selected as an All-Star not only means that this player already has a certain strength in the league, but also means that this player's future is more secure than other players!

----

The time entered January, and since Suter was suspended by the league, the Eagles have suffered successive defeats in the recent period.

As of January 1, the Eagles' record after Suter was suspended was only 8 win and 18 losses. The team's record also fell to 18 wins and 50 losses. May fall out of the playoffs.

And Suter still has seven games to usher in a comeback. For the Eagles, this period of time is undoubtedly a bit difficult.

At the same time, Hawks general manager Rick Sander also became more and more dissatisfied with Terry Stotts' coaching performance. ultimatum.

If Stotts' performance is still as bad as ever in the next two games, then pack up and get out of Atlanta as soon as possible.

Mike Woodson, who was squatting at the door and heard Rick Sander's roar, sighed. He secretly took out his mobile phone while going to the bathroom, and dialed Suter's phone number decisively.

"Hey, Coach Mike, are you looking for me?"

"Sue, I need you!"

"???"

"I think it won't be long before I may be promoted to head coach. According to my inference, this time will not exceed two games at most!"

"But being promoted to the head coach at this time is really a fucking thing!"

"There are still seven games suspended, so we must hurry up and prepare for the battle! Trying to surprise me immediately after my comeback, I am really a little flustered now, I need you so much, Vulture!"

"..."

After bowing his head in silence for a moment, Suter asked over the phone: "Who is my first opponent after my comeback?"

Woodson sat on the toilet and pushed his glasses. After thinking for a long time, he said uncertainly: "The schedule is too long. If I remember correctly, your first opponent after your comeback should be the Nets, and you The player that needs to be matched up is Kenyon Martin."

"It's a tough battle for the team, a tough battle that's going to be hard to fight even with all your strength."

"Kenyon Martin?" Suter on the phone smiled lightly, "When I come back, kill him!"

　come back tomorrow

　　
　
(End of this chapter)