Chapter 621: Every Dog Has His Day

The only thing that could have been worse for the Warriors than a buzzer-beating three-pointer was a buzzer-beating three-pointer off the board. It was demoralizing.

Losing away twice in a row and then being forced into overtime at home was also very demoralizing.

Even though the Warriors had experienced many big moments, when faced with this sort of situation, it was impossible for them not to be a bit sad.

In the surrounding stands, all the fans had already stood up to view the match, but their cheers were not as loud. There had been 48 minutes of intense battle with both teams tieing with each other multiple times and overtaking the other team. It had exhausted the stamina of most fans. The fans were already hoa.r.s.e from all the cheering. The hawker wandering in between the stands selling beverages had become the busiest person in the stadium.

After a short break, overtime began.

Overtimes lasted only five minutes. If one were to divide it up, each team would get around seven to eight chances to attack, so every offense was extremely important.

Dai Li did not make any tactical arrangements. Now, he could only believe in the judgment of the veterans.

The veterans chose to drive inside with the ball. Even if they were unable to score, they could get a foul and obtain free throws. For superstars who had world-cla.s.s skills, it was the most stable scoring method.

The Warriors continued implementing their previous tactic. They still emphasized shooting outside the three-point line, which relied heavily on the form of the players. It was the most dangerous scoring method since three-pointers gained one more point that normal shots.

Both sides played against each other for around four rallies, each scoring six points. The Warriors made two three-pointers while the Clippers managed to get four free throws and one layup.

Seeing the veterans driving below the Warriors’ basket like a cannonball before twisting and turning their bodies as if they were made of dough while performing their layup, one could become a little teary-eyed.

These old fellows really wanted that champions.h.i.+p ring.

Not only Dai Li was touched; the commentators and the fans in front of their televisions were as well.

“Wood collided directly with a paint player. The guard looked for contact with the center, it looks like suicide!”

“Howard still dares to make a layup like that? Is he not afraid of destroying his knees again?”

“This drive, look at how Raymond twisted his body!”

“Vincent, oh, wow, he is flying. Oh my G.o.d. Although he forced a foul with this, his fall looks devastating! He’s already 39 years old…”

Everyone could feel that these veterans were all putting their lives on the line when they played. Each of their drives and breakthroughs looked as if they had gambled their entire professional careers on them! No matter how much they had to sacrifice, they were going to win.

Crazy. This group is crazy! It’s just a game, do they have to do it to this extent? Do they think that they are supermen? If everyone played like this, the insurance company would definitely go bankrupt! Dale thought.

Dale had already won three champions.h.i.+ps so, for him, the fourth champions.h.i.+p would just be a bonus.

It was not only Dale; the other players on the Warriors team also had similar thoughts, especially the starters. They all had champions.h.i.+p rings, so they did not think it was necessary for them to put their life on the line to obtain something they already owned.

“These old guys are hot in their head, it’s better not to compete with them!”

“They’re not afraid of injuries, but I’m still afraid of injuries! The season has almost ended, I have no intention of spending my entire summer in the hospital.”

“With the age of these old veterans, they’ll retire in a year or two, but my professional career still has a long way to go! They’re the barefooted who aren’t afraid of me, a person wearing shoes. Forget it, it’s better for me to back down a little and show some cowardice!”

“It’s the last year of my contract, and I’m still hoping to sign a 100 million dollar contract next year. If I get injured now, my large contract won’t happen. No, I have to endure. For the large contract, I have to take care of my health! I’ll just be a good boy and shoot three-pointers, that is the safest!”

The thoughts in each of the Warriors’ players minds were different, but the prevailing idea was that they were reluctant to battle against the Clippers.

There is a saying: the brave when win two sides meet on a narrow road. In the last two minutes of overtime, it was a really “narrow road.” The Warriors, however, could not make themselves “brave.”

Evaporation of will!

It was what happened to the Warriors. One minute, they were on fire and the gap in the score was still tight. The next minute, they failed to score in three times in a row.

This the most critical moment in overtime.

For teams that focused on three-pointers, missing three in a row was not an accident, it was common.

In the last two minutes of overtime, missing three times in a row was lethal!

It was due to these three rallies that the Clippers pulled five points in the lead. Two layups and a “two-and-one” from a foul.

The fourth three-point attempt of the Warriors finally went in but the Clippers did not give the Warriors any chance to take a breather. They drove straight into the paint, drawing yet another foul. Immediately after, they made both free throws, pulling their lead to four.

A gap of four points, it was an awkward number. They needed two rounds to either tie it up or to overtake them.

The Warriors pushed forward quickly after the game resumed. They used ten seconds to score a quick two points. After that, they implemented their fouling tactic.

The time of testing the Clippers’ free throws had arrived.

The fans continued to be noisy and produced all kinds of noises in order to disrupt the Clippers’ free throws.

The Clippers made both their free throws, however, shutting the crowd up.

Like before, the score gap was still four points. The Warriors still needed two attacks to tie the game up, but ten seconds had been wasted.

Now, time did not allow them to quickly gain two points, they had to try for a three-pointer.

Three-pointers in times like these relied not only on ability but on luck as well.

The head coach of the Warriors did not have the Lucky Horseshoe, he did not have the prayer skill or the ability to increase his luck.

The Warriors did not make it one of the most important three-pointers and the Clippers quickly grabbed the rebound and, immediately after that, the Warriors had to foul.

The Clippers were put on the free throw line once again. They scored one out of two. The gap was now five points.

The Warriors called for a timeout. They restarted in the middle of the court. A player grabbed the ball before instantly releasing a three-point shot. This time, the basket counted. The gap was now two points.

The Clippers quickly restarted the game and the Warriors committed another foul. The Clippers were on the free throw line again and made both free throws. The point gap returned to four, but this time there were only 5.5 seconds left.

The Warriors used their last timeout and resumed the game from the middle, trying their best to shoot a three-point shot.

It did not go in and the Clippers grabbed the rebound. The Warriors fouled again, but it no longer had any meaning.

There were only 2.2 seconds left with a four-point gap. There were no timeouts, so they needed to start their attack from the other side of the court. Even if they made the basket, the 2.2 seconds would be used up. Even if they made a three-pointer, the Warriors would still be one point behind.

The Warriors’ chances of winning this game were slim.

…

The buzzer signaling the end of the game sounded. The fans had already started to leave.

The series score was now three-zero. The Clippers had only one game left to win. For the Warriors, they might as well say goodbye to playing in the Champions.h.i.+p.

In the NBA, there has never been a team that was able to overturn a series where they trailed zero-three. If a team trailed zero-three, they may as well just give up.

In the fourth game, two days later, Dai Li only played his starters for over a dozen minutes, warming them up enough to maintain their form before putting on non-rotational players. It was the equivalent of resting his main players and intentionally throwing the fourth game.

The Warriors played against the waterboys of the Clippers and easily obtained a victory, turning the score of the series to one-three.

Although the Warriors had won, the players were not happy at all. They had been trailing zero-three. Their intention had been to give it their all and overturn things in one go to regain some face, but their great punch would land on soft cotton.

This game did not help the Warriors regain their confidence. They beat the waterboy team. They felt like a six-foot muscular man who had beaten up a child. It would have been humiliating if they had lost, but winning brought them no sense of achievement.

All in all, it was a one-sided battle.

The coaching staff of the Warriors felt depressed. Initially, they had wanted to use the victory to boost the morale of the players. They never would have thought that their opponent did not even plan to face them head-on. Instead, they just put in a dummy team and avoided a fight.

Dai Li treated this strategy as if it were the most natural option. When faced with questions, he answered, “Our players are older, they can’t maintain their body in high-intensity physical battles during the playoffs. They needed a rest. You can’t expect a bunch of almost 40-year-old veterans to push like young players, can you!?”

Dai Li’s reasoning left the journalists speechless. For players of such an age, playing was called “professionalism.” Almost everyone who witnessed it would commend it, but if they were to play a few games taking care of their health first, no one could reprimand them for anything.

Respecting your elders and loving the young is a virtue. In the NBA, there was only the respecting of the elders, there was no loving of the young. Young newbies were commonly bullied, but respecting the older veteran players was the politically correct thing to do.

…

It was the fifth game. Both teams had returned to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was a city with a tradition of winning the champions.h.i.+p. This year, however, the team that was going to be in the champions.h.i.+p was not the Lakers but the Clippers. The fans were just as pa.s.sionate. Nearly all of the 20,000 seats in the stadium were filled. There were many Hollywood movie stars who came to witness the moment the Clippers won the Western Conference champions.h.i.+p.

The game had not yet started. Dai Li chatted happily with Dingtian Xiao in the VIP seats.

“I never would have thought that U.S. sports made so much money. I played football in China and lost millions in a single year. U.S. basketball nets me over 20 million dollars in profit in a single game!” Dingtian Xiao exclaimed.

Dingtian Football Club losing over 10 billion annually was standard. For Dingtian Group, 10 billion was simply the cost of the development of a few more buildings. It was considered as small as the cost putting up advertis.e.m.e.nts.

Back when Dingtian Group bought the Clippers, they did not intend to make huge profits. As long as they did not lose too much money they would be fine. Contrary, however, to Dingtian Xiao’s expectations, doing business in the sports industry of the U.S. made a lot of money.

The average price of a ticket for this game had already surpa.s.sed a thousand dollars. It was a new record price for the Western Conference final. Based on the number of seats in the Staples Center, which was 20,000, the revenue from tickets alone would reach 20 million dollars.

One game had already produced the salary of a star player for a year.

Ticket prices in Los Angeles were already high. For the grand final, the ticket price in Los Angeles could exceed 2,500 dollars.

Dai Li smiled and said, “The commercialization of sports in the U.S. is certainly something that other countries cannot compare with.”

“It’s regrettable that this stadium does not belong to us.” Dingtian Xiao let out a long sigh and looked towards the surrounding stands.

Dingtian Xiao was a developer himself and Dingtian Group was ranked in the top 200 of the Global Fortune 500 Companies. The stadium was not his, so it made Dingtian Xiao feel bad.

After a lifetime of developing properties, he had to rent someone else’s stadium. How could he bare it!

Dingtian Xiao then lowered his voice and said, “I plan to build a new stadium and make it ours. If you win the NBA champions.h.i.+p this year, there will definitely be no problem getting a new stadium aprroved by the board.”

There were 30 teams in the NBA and 29 stadiums in total. The Lakers and the Clippers shared the Staples Center.

Among these 29 stadiums, only seven and a half teams really owned their own home stadium. The Palace of Auburn Hillswas owned by Pistons, the Verizon Center by the Wizards, the Air Canada Centre by the Raptors, the Barclays Center by the Nets, the Moda Center by the Trailblazers, the Pepsi Center by the Nuggets, and the Vivint Smart Home Arena by the Jazz. Apart from that, the owner of the Bulls owned 50% shares of the United Center, so the Bulls were considered to own half a stadium.

The rest of the teams rented their stadiums. For example, the Toyota Center, of the Houston team that Chinese fans were more familiar with, belonged to the Houston Sports Bureau.

“It would cost quite a bit to build a stadium, no?” Dai Li asked subconsciously.

“I plan to pay this much.” Dingtian Xiao raised one finger.

Did he mean 100 million dollars? He couldn’t build an NBA basketball stadium in Los Angeles with that little money.

10 billion dollars? Dingtian Group couldn’t furnish that much money and one did not need that much money to build a stadium.

That hand gesture surely meant one billion dollars!

One billion dollars to build a stadium. It was definitely going to be a high-quality stadium.

Current NBA stadiums had been built in the previous century. Earlier stadiums like the Bradley Center and the Palace of Auburn Hills had been built in 1988. The building cost back then had lost its value of being a reliable reference.

After 2010, a total of three stadiums were built and used in the NBA: the Amway Center, which started operations in 2010, cost a total of 480 million dollars; the Brooklyn Barclays Center, which opened in 2012, cost a total of one billion dollars; the Sacramento Golden One Center, which was completed in 2016, cost 558 million dollars.

Apart from that, the new stadium of the Warriors, which was built in California, was also said to have cost one billion in investment.

Barclays Center was located in New York, so the rent was higher, resulting in a total development cost of one billion dollars. The rent in California was also very high, so the cost of the Warriors’ new stadium was also extremely high.

Land in Los Angeles also cost a lot. To build a new stadium in Los Angeles, one had to at least spend seven to eight hundred million dollars. If one were to spend more than one billion dollars, it would be a fantastic stadium.

As for whether one could recoup his or her investment, Dai Li did not really worry much. When it came to being a coach, Dai Li believed himself to be world-cla.s.s. When it came to real estate developments, Dingtian Xiao was world-cla.s.s. Since Dingtian Xiao was willing to spend one billion dollars to build a stadium, it must mean that there were ways to benefit from it.

…

Amidst the audience, many were not fans of the Clippers. They were there purely to witness the birth of a new Western Conference champion. Of course, there were also people there to witness the Warriors getting eliminated.

The Warriors had made it to the champions.h.i.+p four years in a row and had won three of them. This was the first time the Warriors failed to enter the grand final in five years, so it was definitely worth witnessing.

Many fans also realized that it was perhaps the last game for the current Warriors team lineup.

Among the Warriors players, some of them were in the last year of their contract. Some hoped for a new, huge contract. There were also those who lowered their salary in order to win the champions.h.i.+p. There were even people who were heading towards the last year of their contracts If they won the champions.h.i.+p, it would not be a problem for players to lower their salary and renew their contracts. If they did not win, or even make it to the final, then it was highly likely the Warriors lineup would dissolve in the next year.

So, after the Warriors lost this game, it was highly likely their players would each go their separate ways next season.

If the fans had realized, how could professional coaches and players not?

Some of the starters of the Warriors came into this game thinking that their futures were in doubt. Their minds were not on whether they won or lost in the game, they were thinking things like “I must look for a top salary next season” or “I should go to that team next season.”

The minds of the players were already scattered and it became even more difficult for them to win the game.

…

During the game, the Clippers and the Warriors played compet.i.tively. Both sides executed brilliant plays and scored amazing shots. To basketball experts, however, the game did not reach the expected intensity level of a Western Conference final.

Even during the last moment, when the Warriors lost the game, n.o.body could detect the sadness of being eliminated on the face of the Warriors players. They just seemed a little disappointed. Some players even looked as if a huge burden had just been lifted off their shoulders.

Perhaps, for the Warriors players, the champions.h.i.+p was also a kind of pressure. As the saying goes, it is always lonely at the top! Now that they did not make it to the champions.h.i.+p, it seemed like the heavy burden on their shoulders was gone.

The Clippers defeated the Warriors with a final score of four-one. They were now one step away from the winning the champions.h.i.+p.

On the other side of the league, the Eastern Conference final was still underway.

Unlike Dai Li had expected, the final Eastern Conference champions were the Milwaukee Bucks.

The Bucks were a team with a long history. They were the NBA champions in 1971 but, since 2000, the overall strength of the Bucks had been going downhill. It was only in the past two years that they returned to being a strong team in the Eastern Conference.

Even if this were the case before the playoffs began, not many people favored the Bucks. Regardless, under the leaders.h.i.+p of the Bucks’ core player, “Mr. Alphabet,” they overcame all kinds of obstacles and made it into the champions.h.i.+p.

One could say with a fair amount of confidence that no one expected the Clippers to face the Bucks in the champions.h.i.+p.

The second day after the Eastern Conference final, the Clippers flew on a plane that headed towards Milwaukee.

The first two games of the grand final were at the home of the Bucks because the Bucks had done better than the Clippers during the regular season.

This did not mean that the Bucks were stronger than the Clippers. The main reason was that the compet.i.tion in the Western Conference this season was fiercer.

The Western Conference this season had been pure chaos, especially in the first half of the regular season. Around seven or eight teams took turns occupying the first place of the Western Conference. A team that was placed first one day would drop out of the playoff positions the next if they lost just a game. The chaotic situation made it so that the average results of a Western Conference team to be poorer than usual.

The compet.i.tion in the Eastern Conference had not been as fierce. Like in previous years, the first five to six teams going to the playoffs were confirmed very early. The other teams with a win rate of below 50% fought for the remaining spots. The teams that were worse began tanking in the beginning of the season and became teams that handed out wins for free

As such, the top three teams in the Eastern Conference actually had a better result than the Western Conference teams.

…

It was the first game in the Champions.h.i.+p. Unwittingly, the Clippers had a double-digit lead.

The Bucks did not make any mistakes. They executed their tactics well and their field goal percentage was not bad either, but they were just behind when it came to points.

It was a difference in strength!

Their lineup was slightly weaker and they had a little bit less experience. When put on the stage of the Champions.h.i.+p, this sort of difference turned into a difference in points. It was a kind point-gap that they had no way of reducing.

In truth, they had already done quite well, but they still had to lose. The Bucks had no way of dealing with this.

On the bench beside the court, Dai Li looked casual and relaxed while he chatted away casually with the a.s.sistant coach, Ca.s.sel.

“That kid is pretty good!” Dai Li pointed at the core player of the Bucks. The guy, who had a very long name, was called “Mr. Alphabet.” Dai Li could not p.r.o.nounce his name.

Dai Li’s detector showed that this young man, who was only 24 years old, had an S+ talent potential. It was very likely he would be the next conqueror of the league. His season average was 26 points, 13 rebounds, and six a.s.sists, so his stats were unquestionable.

Dai Li said, “Such a talented kid should not stay in Milwaukee, he should head to a bigger city to grow.”

“Are you planning on bringing him over?” Ca.s.sel asked cautiously.

Dai Li did not answer, so Ca.s.sel continued, “He still has two years on his contract, but I’m afraid it will be hard for us to get him to Los Angeles. In his interview, he said that he is willing to stay in Milwaukee his entire career.”

“He said that because he hasn’t experienced enough defeats! He’s still young right now and feels that he has a long road ahead of him. The Champions.h.i.+p doesn’t feel as urgent to him yet. Wait until he has experienced repeated failures and many despairs. When he realizes that he will never ever win the Champions.h.i.+p if he stays in Milwaukee, he will change his mind,” Dai Li said.

“That’s true. Milwaukee is a small market. It’s hard for them to attract big stars to join them. With how things are in the NBA now, if you don’t have enough stars, you won’t become a champion,” Ca.s.sel answered honestly.

Milwaukee was not exactly a small city, it had around two million poeople and it was ranked in the upper rankings among the many cities in the U.S.

In terms of basketball, however, Milwaukee was a tiny market.

The people of the city loved baseball more than basketball. The Milwaukee Brewers were a team that lost more than they won for many years in a row, staying at the bottom of the ranking. In Milwaukee, however, the Brewers was more popular than the Bucks.

Then, Dai Li said, “After the season ends, I am going to resign from my post of head coach.”

“What?” Ca.s.sel swayed his body to the side and looked at Dai Li in disbelief.

“It’s the Olympics next year, so it’s impossible for me to continue focusing on the team.” Dai Li spread his hands and continued, “I plan to make a suggestion to the management team and ask for you to take up the post of the head coach. After all, you’ve been in charge of the tactics of the team for the past two years. Next season, I will only be responsible for physical fitness training.”

“You’re letting me be the head coach!” Ca.s.sel opened his mouth wide. He never would have imagined that he would receive such a piece of surprisingly good news in a place like this.

Every a.s.sistant coach dreamed of becoming a head coach, and Ca.s.sel was no different.

Dai Li was leaving Ca.s.sel a team that had won a champions.h.i.+p.

Ca.s.sel realized that, after many years of suffering as an underling, his day had finally come. He was going to have his chance to s.h.i.+ne.