NBA: I am the god of basketball

Chapter 221 The rocket is so strong?
The NBA's best players for November are LeBron James of the Miami Heat in the East and Wang Chao of the Houston Rockets in the West.

Both teams have achieved good records in the past month. The Heat have 12 wins and 3 losses, while the Rockets have an exaggerated 16 wins and 0 losses.

While the team's record is outstanding, the personal data of Wang Chao and James are also extremely luxurious.

詹姆斯场均27分8.9篮板6.5助攻，投篮命中率53.3%，三分命中率43.5%。

And Wang Chao's data is even more exaggerated, averaging 30.8 points, 10.6 rebounds and 10.1 assists per game. In addition to averaging a triple-double in 16 games, he also has 2.4 steals and 1.1 blocks per game. The explosive performance of +40+8 is slightly inferior, but the offensive and defensive ends are perfect and impeccable. At least last season, some people will criticize Wang Chao's defense. So far this season, some people are almost holding a magnifying glass. Can't find anything wrong with Wang Chao in the game.

"This is the strength of three regular season MVPs, four championship winners, and two Olympic gold medalists! Wang Chao is already the undisputed strongest No.1 in the league."

"The Rockets are invincible, with 16 consecutive victories leading to the championship!"

"Who else in the league can stop Wang Chao and his Rockets? The Heat, the Lakers, and the Thunder have all fallen under the Rockets' iron heels one after another. Looking at the league, they are no longer invincible!"

Whether it is the latest strength list or the championship odds list, the Rockets rely on their excellent record to catch up from behind, overtaking the Lakers and the Heat successively to reach the top. Although the regular season has only started for a month, it seems that the championship has already been set.

Time entered December, and the Rockets' winning streak continued.

On December 12, the Rockets fought the Lakers again and easily won again.

The season of the Lakers can be considered precarious. In the first month of the regular season, Nash and Paul were injured one after another, which made the original bad record worse. After losing to the Rockets, the record was 9 wins and 9 losses. It is obviously far from the strong championship team that everyone expects.

Especially the much-anticipated league No. [-] center Dwight Howard's performance in the Lakers was extremely disappointing.

In the 18 games played so far, Howard has averaged 18.5 points and 11 rebounds per game, which is not at all the feeling of being a giant in the interior as people imagined.

This is actually natural. Howard's own style is a blue-collar player, but his physical fitness is too strong, which makes him seem omnipotent at his peak. Once his mobility and explosive power are weakened due to injuries, Howard's deterrent power will also be reduced. will fall rapidly.

The decline in the level of the offensive end is still secondary, and the sharp decline in Howard's defensive dominance at the basket is the most terrible.

Howard during the Lakers period completely lost the peace of mind of the entire team guarding the basket by one man during the Magic period. The defensive radius has been reduced again and again, and the ability to protect the frame has continued to decline. More importantly, Howard, who advocates happy basketball, came to the metropolis of Los Angeles. After the City of Angels, he completely let himself go. He played very high every day, and he could often see his laughing expression on the sidelines of the game.

Such a competitive attitude naturally caused dissatisfaction with Kobe, the leader of the Lakers.

How could Kobe, whose desire for victory has reached the point of paranoia, bear it? When the team was in a disadvantageous situation, Howard was still there heartlessly laughing and joking?
Because of this matter, Kobe has criticized it many times in interviews without naming names.

But even though they didn't name them, everyone knows who Kobe is targeting. Of course Howard also knows, but so what?
You have four championships, and I have three. Why am I much worse than you?I lost twice in the finals, why do you judge me?

Even Howard, who had no championship in the past, would not accept Kobe's set, let alone Howard, who now has three championships and his historical status has risen sharply?
Kobe blamed him in front of the media, Howard didn't save face at all, and directly fought back when he was interviewed by the media.

"I have always played like this, and I don't think there is anything wrong with this style. Joking doesn't mean that I have a problem with my attitude. On the court, I also go all out to win. Happy basketball makes me play. With more passion, the performance will be better, which is why we won three consecutive championships during the Magic period."

As the saying goes, don't slap someone in the face when you hit someone, and don't expose your weaknesses when you curse someone.

Howard said that his personality has nothing to do with his playing. He has to talk about the Magic’s three consecutive championships. Two of the Magic’s three championships were won by the Lakers. In [-], the Lakers also defeated the Magic to win the championship in the finals, but overall, the Magic has definitely been the biggest winner in the past few years.

Because of this interview with Howard, Kobe was so angry that he didn't take the initiative to talk to Howard for a few days, and the relationship between the two cores began to become tense.

In fact, Kobe's mood is completely understandable. His time is running out. Unlike the original history of holding five championships, Kobe now only has four championships. At the end of his career, he naturally wants to win as much as possible. Many championships.

The formation of the F4 lineup by the Lakers can be said to be his last chance.

In the past 18 games, after the team fell into a passive situation, Kobe really worked hard to win. He scored 2 games with 40+ points and 6 games with 30+ points. Currently, he averages 28.4 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists per game. In the third place in the scoring list, second only to Wang Chao and Durant, slightly ahead of Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks.

But no matter how hard he tries, it will be of no avail. The problems facing the Lakers at this stage cannot be solved by him alone or by him and Howard. Kobe at the end of his career peak, plus Howard affected by an injury, is really powerless to change the status quo.
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The Rockets' winning streak was finally fixed at 19 consecutive victories, which failed to break the Rockets' best winning streak in team history, which is the 22-game winning streak set during the Yao-Mai combination period.

But even so, the record of 19 wins and 1 loss is enough to satisfy the Rockets fans.

After the winning streak ended, the Lakers still maintained a very high winning percentage, only losing one away game against the Spurs, and defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder again at 109:94 at the end of the month.

At the end of December, the Rockets' record came to 12 wins and 29 losses!
According to this rhythm, maybe the Rockets will break the league's best regular season record of 72 wins in the regular season of the Bulls. After all, even when the Magic won 70 regular seasons before, the Rockets did not have such a dominance in terms of record performance. force.

This is also a matter of course. During the three consecutive championships of the Magic, although the defense was also at the top level of the league at that time, in fact, the entire defensive system relied heavily on Howard. The team's perimeter Wang Chao + Leonard + Butler's defensive combination is obviously completely incomparable.

On the offensive end, the Magic's outside line is basically dominated by a large number of shooters, and the only one who can really hold the ball and attack independently is Wang Chao.

The Rockets are different. The insider Yao is the core of the ball-handling offense that kills Howard in seconds. When he is physically fit, his lethality is comparable to that of Shaquille O'Neal. During the period, he was also an inside player who averaged 24 points per game and averaged 20+ points per game for nine consecutive seasons. A behind-the-back jumper with one hand is also a special skill.

In terms of perimeter, regardless of Wang Chao, although Leonard and Butler are now mainly off the ball, they are also players who can attack with the ball, even if their technical level is still a little immature in the high-level confrontation in the NBA. But it keeps growing and improving every day.

Whether it is the offensive end or the defensive end, compared with the Magic during the three consecutive championships, this Rockets team has more choices, more changes, and the fault tolerance rate and upper limit are naturally higher!
The time has entered January 2013, while the regular season continues, the All-Star voting is also in full swing.

As early as mid-December, the alliance announced the results of the first round of voting.

Without any suspense, Wang Chao became the top voter in the first round of voting, and he was ahead of No.2 James by a lot of votes.

By January 1, the results of the third round of voting for the All-Stars have also been determined.

Wang Chao continued to lead the votes with an absolute advantage, while Kobe, relying on his recent strong personal performance and high popularity, achieved a comeback against James and ranked second, and James could only rank third.

The three rounds of voting are over. In fact, the results of the NBA voting will basically be finalized. The results of the final round of voting are difficult to shake the top players.

Sure enough, after all four rounds of voting were over, the starting players for the All-Star Game were officially determined.

Wang Chao was elected as the All-Star vote leader with an absolute advantage of 170 million votes. The players with higher votes in the West are Kobe, Durant, Dayao, Paul, Howard, Griffin, Garnett, Duncan and others.

According to the distribution of positions, the starting center in the Western Conference is Dayao, the starting forwards are Wang Chao and Durant, and the guards are Kobe and Paul.

This allocation is actually somewhat controversial. First of all, Wang Chao's position this season is actually a point guard, but the league still placed him as a forward during the All-Star break. After all, only Durant is the most popular forward in the West. Then there are Griffin, Duncan, Garnett and other power forwards.

And there is Paul at the guard position. It would be a bit ugly to squeeze Paul to the bench.

Secondly, Howard, known as the number one center in the league, was squeezed out of the starting lineup by Dayao and became a substitute, which is also reasonable.

Although Dayao's scoring average has dropped slightly compared to last season due to the increase in scoring points this season, he currently averages 28 points and 16.2 rebounds in 7.7 minutes per game.

This statistic is inferior to Howard's average of 18+11 per game, but the Rockets' record is too exaggerated, and with Yao's super popularity in China, it is only natural to squeeze Howard out of the starting lineup.

However, although he lost his All-Star starting position from the East to the West, with Howard's strength, there is no problem in being selected as an All-Star substitute.

The five All-Star starters in the East are Rondo, Wade, James, Anthony and Bosh.

Howard and Garnett switched to the West, which instantly dropped the quality of the star players in the East. They couldn't even find a decent center. Thanks to the league's restructuring of the All-Stars this season, the center position was canceled and the voting points were reduced. There are two positions for forward and guard, so Bosh, as a power forward, became the starting center in the East.

In this way, the Heat have three players selected as All-Star starters, which is quite rare in the history of the league. It can be seen that the Heat's Big Three are definitely the top three Big Three combination configuration.

(End of this chapter)