Junior Basketball says

Chapter 291 Getting Ready
When the Timberwolves players' physical fitness finally met McHale's requirements, Love had also flown back from Turkey.As expected, the U.S. men's basketball team won the World Championship, and the MVP was awarded to their team's scoring leader Durant.Although Love himself didn't win any awards, a world championship was enough for him to brag about his awesomeness for a while.

However, Love is different from Xu Hao. He applied for a three-day rest period from the team. He also needs to take a good rest while he is suffering from jet lag.After Love rested, the team officially began to enter the tactical training stage.McHale is well aware of the severity of the old K's rule of the army. Charlizeman also said that Love's body is fine, so he didn't let the latter continue to practice physical fitness, and directly started to practice tactical running, and seized the time to prepare for the new season. be prepared.

The Timberwolves had a good chemical reaction last season. Xu Hao and Love also did a good job in the core position of the team's inside and outside line, but McHale is actually still not satisfied.The reason is simple. He feels that the average number of shots taken by these two young people is a bit low, especially Xu Hao. If the game situation does not require him to score points, he prefers to send assists to his teammates.This is of course no problem with other teams, but the Timberwolves need his offensive firepower.

So this time he slightly modified the tactics, requiring Xu Hao and Love to have more shooting rights, and others to pay attention to opening up space and creating scoring opportunities for them.As for Jordan, who plays with Love, he mainly does some pick-and-roll work. Love does not need his help in singles in the low post. He only needs to focus on grabbing rebounds.

The other players of the Timberwolves have no objections to the head coach's arrangement. They know that this is what the two young cores deserve.They have positioned themselves very correctly. In the next few seasons, what they have to do is to provide more support to the core players, do the tasks assigned by the coach on the court, and do their best to contribute. .

The training camp is not long, and everyone cherishes this opportunity very much. When the regular season officially starts, it will be replaced by games.Therefore, everyone is very serious during training, including the two newcomers. Needless to say, Webster's tactical literacy, even Harward is working hard to keep up with the old players. He hopes to become a new member of the team. Season rotation lineup.

The enthusiasm of the players makes McHale very satisfied, and he seems to have seen a bright future for the team.Timberwolves will obviously start the new season with Xu Hao, Ellington, Brewer, Love and Jordan. McHale thinks this lineup is very easy to use, and they are also the strongest in each position of the Timberwolves. It would be foolish not to.

However, McHale has no intention of letting them fight their opponents in the preseason. Although the Timberwolves' starting lineup is no secret, he still hopes to let them rest as much as possible and go in the best condition. Dealing with the regular season.In McHale's view, preseason games are basically irrelevant. It is better to give other players some opportunities and let them go on the court to find out the feeling.In McHale's view, the main players only need to play about 20 minutes per game.

This year, the Timberwolves have a total of 8 preseason games to play, and one of them is back-to-back. I don't know who arranged it. McHale has already made up his mind to start all of them in the second game of back-to-back.Among these 8 games, the Timberwolves will face the Lakers who eliminated them in the playoffs last season in the first game, followed by the Knicks, Nuggets, Pacers, Pistons and Bucks, and they will have to play again in the last two games. Play the Pacers and Bucks once, and that's the whole schedule.

The good news is that the Timberwolves only have 8 away games in these 2 games, which are the fourth game against the Pacers and the eighth game against the Bucks, which means that they don't need to travel long distances, just wait for their opponents to come to Minnesota. .It was this arrangement that allowed McHale to suppress his back-to-back anger in the preseason and did not scold his mother in the office.

However, what McHale didn't expect was that Jackson did even better than him. He hid all the main players during the game, leaving only Odom, a sixth man, to come up with the substitutes to make up the numbers.Feeling speechless, McHale only allowed the main players to play for 15 minutes, leaving the rest of the time to the substitutes. In the end, the Timberwolves defeated the Lakers 111-92.Originally, the media wanted to hype up the first-round matchup of last season's playoffs, but they didn't expect that both sides were so deceitful and had no material to speculate on.

Then the Timberwolves defeated the Knicks and Nuggets respectively. This time, the opponent used their main lineup to start. However, their head coach had the same plan, letting the main players play for a while and then replacing them on the bench.McHale didn't care. Everyone was planning to train, so there was no need for the main players to fight on the court. It didn't matter who won or lost. Wouldn't it be nice to sit on the bench and watch the ball and chat?You can also observe the performance of the substitutes by the way.

But soon the Timberwolves' three-game winning streak came to an abrupt end in front of the Pacers.Of course, the opponent didn't have the cheek to put the main players on the court for a long time. It can only be blamed on the Timberwolves' own players who feel too bad.McHale didn't express any thoughts on this defeat. Losing in the preseason is a very normal thing. As long as you don't have a [-]-[-] point defeat, he doesn't bother to say it in the locker room.

Then the Timberwolves played another wave of three consecutive victories, but one of the games against the Bucks was called overtime, and the two sides also scored more than 120 points, which is a rare big score.Fortunately, the Timberwolves finally killed their opponent with Sessions' three-pointer at the buzzer. McHale was very satisfied with this. I have a little more confidence in the team's prospects for the new season.

However, the embarrassing thing is that in the penultimate game of the preseason, the Timberwolves actually lost to the Pacers again. It is a bit unreasonable to lose to the same opponent with one home and one guest.McHale is also puzzled, obviously everyone is in the same boat, why do we always lose?It's fine to lose on the road first, but lose at home?This is a bit of a pain in the ass.

Fortunately, one of them is a Western team and the other is an Eastern team. They only need to play against each other twice in the regular season every year. If they play against each other in the playoffs, they will have to reach the finals at the same time. The possibility is infinitely close to zero.If everyone is in the West, or even in the Northwest Division, maybe McHale will have to hold a meeting with the players to help them find the reason.

(End of this chapter)