Bishop of the Abyss

Chapter 107 107. The New Season Comes

At the beginning of October, the NBA new season preseason officially arrived.

The preseason is the league's arrangement for each team to adapt to the rhythm of the game as much as possible through actual combat for each team before the new season.

Even if each team will not go all out in the preseason, and will only play a symbolic fight, the preseason is still very useful for teams that have undergone huge lineup changes during the offseason and need to adjust.

The league does not arrange many games in the preseason, with an average of about four to five games per team.

These games are enough for the team to find out the deficiencies in the preseason, determine the start of the new season in advance, strive to stand out as soon as the season starts, and reduce the negative impact of players' overindulgence throughout the offseason.

In the preseason stage, Luke mainly focused on matching the lineup and honing newcomers. The main players like Garnett only played about 15 minutes.

After all, at the level of Garnett, he no longer needs preseason games to prove himself. He just needs to use this time to find out the state of the game and strive to integrate into the team immediately after the start of the regular season.

Too much playing time is likely to cause players to face injuries in the preseason. This kind of thing happens every year, and it is also the last thing every team wants to see, because it is too unlucky.

In the new season, Luke intends to let "Glove" Payton replace "Alien" Cassel as the starter.

Although Cassel's competitive state on the court is good, and he was selected as a substitute for the Western Conference All-Star last season, but Cassel is 36 years old after all, and the defensive end has become more and more difficult. This is definitely not as good as "Glove" Payton excellent.

Even though "Glove" Payton is also a veteran of the league, Payton never relies on speed on the defensive end, but more on experience and rhythm.

To be honest, "Alien" Cassell's career is not at the same level as "Glove" Payton. Payton is more stable than Cassell on both ends of the offense and defense. The position of starting point guard in the new season is definitely very important Peyton is none other than.

Especially during the offseason, the Timberwolves practiced vigorously with the defensive system established by "Glove" Payton and Garnett. In this situation, even Luke couldn't help but want to see how well the two could play together what an overall performance.

In the first game of the preseason, the Timberwolves faced the old acquaintance Sonics in the Western Conference semifinals last year.

Since the Supersonics were swept by the Timberwolves 4:0 in the fourth place in the playoffs last year, the management fired the head coach McMillan, and the team is temporarily taken over by assistant coach Bob Weiss.

Luke feels sorry for McMillan being fired by the management. Strictly speaking, McMillan can be regarded as an excellent basketball coach, at least one grade better than assistant coach Bob Weiss.

It's just a pity that McMillan met the invincible Luke during his contract year, and McMillan's best perimeter blocking tactics were also easily cracked by Luke, which made the outside world obviously underestimate McMillan.

However, although McMillan was dismissed from the Supersonics in the offseason and lost his job, the pioneers who had a discerning eye immediately offered McMillan a four-year contract.

If nothing else happens, McMillan will be able to restart his coaching career in Portland in the next few years. As long as he doesn't meet Luke in the playoffs, no one in today's league will dare to underestimate this guy McMillan.

It is worth mentioning that, including McMillan, an old and unlucky guy, Luke played a round of the playoffs last season and only met four teams in total, but ended up dismissing three coaches.

At present, only Spurs coach Popovich is left to persist, and it is hard to say how long he can persist.

During the regular season, some fans gave Luke the title of "Coach Terminator", but it didn't spread at that time.

But with the end of last year's playoffs, Luke almost proved his reputation as a "coach terminator" with practical actions.

The lineup changes for the Supersonics in the new season may be big or not. What is not big is that the Supersonics offered a high-priced contract this season to keep Ray Allen. At present, the core player of the Supersonics is Ray The twin stars composed of Lun and Lewis sit in charge.

As for the big changes, it is because the Sonics have changed a batch of role players this season, and compared with last season, there are obviously many new faces.

Jerome James, who could have signed a contract of at least tens of millions in the offseason, only signed a three-year $1500 million contract with the Knicks.

As for the reason, it was just because they ran into the Timberwolves led by Luke in the playoffs, and the maximum salary contract that flew to the mouth was abruptly changed into a pension contract.

Although this contract is okay at first glance, but in this era, center forwards are more expensive than other positions. If you compare the contract of "sugar man" with nearly 600 million yuan, the contract of Jerome James is nothing at all.

After the start of the game, the Timberwolves once had the upper hand in the situation, and even fans watched the Timberwolves play more easily than last year.

The starting lineup sent by the Timberwolves in this game is: "Glove" Payton, Madman, Szczerbiak, Garnett, and Magloire.

This lineup is obviously stronger than that of the Timberwolves last year. Although Karl Malone averaged 11.4 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game last year, the 40-year-old Karl Malone will inevitably be physically weak.

Especially in the final quarter of the game, Karl Malone's shooting efficiency will often start to decline in a straight line. Luke can see this but can't do anything about it.

Who made Malone the main inside rotation of the Timberwolves last season.

The starting center of the Timberwolves in the new season has become the former All-Star player Magloire. Magloire is only 27 years old this year, which is the golden stage of a center player.

Compared with the aging Karl Malone, Magloire is obviously more energetic on the court.

The offensive end can run and jump, the defensive end can grab and defend, and with the "Wolf King" Garnett, who has the top defensive ability in history, it directly pushes the rhythm of the Timberwolves to a climax.

In addition, the coaching ability of Bob Weiss, the new supersonic head coach, is far inferior to that of McMillan.

After Bob Weiss took office, he directly overturned McMillan's tactical background last season, and moved closer to the pick-and-roll from the original pure outside shooting team.

Regarding this point, I can’t say whether Bob Weiss’s change is right or wrong. It can only be said that Bob Weiss’s coaching level is average. .

When the first quarter of the game between the two sides was over, Luke knew that the Supersonics might find it difficult to even make the playoffs in the new season.

If there is not much change in the core lineup, the Sonics can only rank 10-12 at most.

Bob Weiss's coaching ability is really too hip, so stretched that even if Luke took the initiative to serve as an assistant coach to Luke, Luke would not bother to use it.

At the end of the game, the Timberwolves easily beat the Supersonics by 31 points in this not-so-intense preseason game.

Even Luke was not interested in watching the technical statistics after the game, because the playing time of the main players in this game was suppressed by Luke to about 10 minutes.

In this case, they can beat the Supersonics by 31 points. Luke doesn't know whether this Timberwolves team is too strong or the opposing Supersonics team is too weak!
In short, Supersonic coach Bob Weiss had a gloomy expression after the game, as if this game broke his beautiful fantasy about the new season.

By the way, it also reminded him of the fate of the former head coach McMillan who was kicked out.

(End of this chapter)