Chapter 654: 653. The Ceiling

The Knicks want to save face and suffer, and they refuse to be completely bad. They have no high draft picks all year round, and when they encounter a strong team that is obviously unable to beat them, they refuse to admit defeat when they are 20 points behind after three quarters. This is similar to theirs. Head coach Don Cheney had little to do with it, but James Dolan ran directly to the bench and ordered the game not to be given up, giving Liu Mang a chance to play 41 minutes.

Originally, Coach Kruger planned to go to Stockton to collect data and maintain his state. Unexpectedly, when he was about to change to the water dispenser lineup, he saw the Knicks' five starters continue to play, so he decided to replace Liu Mang. One steady.

For the sake of face, the Knicks refused to give up the game when facing No. 1 in the Eastern Conference, a possible first-round opponent of the playoffs, and then something happened!

Liu Mang is 60+ for the second time this season!

Before that, no player other than Wilt Chamberlain scored at least 60 points twice in a single season!

Moreover, Liu Mang also broke Jordan's personal record of 55 points in a single game at Madison Square Garden. After Liu Mang scored 50 points in the fourth quarter, the fans turned their backs!

Liu Mang's scoring average increased to 31.9 points in one fell swoop, which is only 0.2 points away from McGrady's highest scoring average in a single season in the past 10 years!

As for McGrady, when he fully demonstrated his desire to win the scoring title, the opponents double-teamed him crazily. In the absence of teammates who can attract some defense, McGrady has at least two people in every game. The opponent just refused to let him get high scores. As for his passing, unlike the Eagles Liu Mang who has a chance to pass and turn it into an assist, at least it can disrupt the opponent's defense. McGrady's pass is most of the time.

McGrady's shooting percentage of 42% this year is not bad, but the Magic's team's shooting percentage is 41.7%, which is not as good as McGrady's own defense.

After the match against Liu Mang, McGrady played a few high-profile games, but as the opponent responded to his desire to score high points and didn't want to be in the background, McGrady's scoring average began to weaken. The average points per game in the early 30s will not reach 31 no matter what. It was easy to slide down at the beginning, but now it is too difficult to go back up.

Similarly, Liu Mang's scoring momentum would have weakened. During the initial seven-game winning streak, Liu Mang's scoring momentum stopped. If it wasn't for this game against the Knicks, It is estimated that it will be stuck in the early 31s for a long time.

For a strong team, it is easy for Liu Mang to score high points. Against a weak team, Liu Mang’s chances of scoring high points are not very good. A weak team, especially a bad team, has no rules in playing. Leaking people, as long as Liu Mang and Mai Di are not allowed to score high points on their heads.

Compared with McGrady, Liu Mang's advantage is that when he meets a strong team, the opponent dare not double-team him easily, otherwise the rest of the Eagles will shoot away.

Of course, if you encounter a "kind" team like the Knicks, which is the strength of the team in the lower half of the Eastern Conference playoffs, and insist on pretending to be a strong team, Liu Mang likes to encounter this kind of team the most. The opponent is gone, and in one fell swoop, the average scoring gap with McGrady has been widened to 1.4 points. McGrady's current scoring average is 30.5 points per game.

As more and more games are played, chasing points will become more and more difficult. The Eagles are now 37 wins and 7 losses. If Liu Mang wants to improve by 0.1 points, he has to score 5 points more than his average in a single game. It can only increase by 0.1 points, and the same is true for McGrady.

...

...

"Oh, thank you, Michael, but why do I feel that your tone has a feeling of wanting to come back..."

Liu Mang finished the phone call with Old Jordan, who seemed to be a little unbalanced, and saw that the received text message should be replied, and all the calls that needed to be made were finished, and he could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Too tired, sometimes it is a good thing to know more stars, but at this time, it is not a good thing, there are those who sincerely congratulate, such as those moderates like Pau Gasol, and those who congratulate "without conscience" like Jordan Speed ​​and narrow-mindedness coexist, and Carter, who is obviously envious but has a good EQ, is the type who teases Liu Mang for taking too many shots and spoiling children.

But Liu Mang didn't receive a text message from that guy in Los Angeles, and I'm still a little regretful, so I can't make a special call to show off...

After playing the Knicks, the Eagles returned to Atlanta and are about to enter the final stretch of the schedule before the All-Star weekend.

After the Rockets carried the live broadcasts of the three games with the highest ratings in the first seven days of the first month in China, the next schedule for the Eagles was difficult.

Starting from January 31st, there will be four consecutive home games, and it will be 4 games in 5 days, and then there will be another three consecutive away games. Fortunately, there will be no back-to-back away games in a row, that is, 7 games in 11 days, and it will start on February 11. The All-Star Weekend holiday, from February 11th to 17th, the Eagles have a 7-day rest period for the All-Star Weekend this season. Time is either an activity or a game.

However, before the start of the 11-day 7-game schedule, the Eagles have three days of rest. The Eagles returned to Atlanta at noon today. There will be two training sessions tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and the rest of the time will be rest.

After returning home, Liu Mang turned on his phone and saw a bunch of text messages, and then replied according to his relationship.

As soon as Liu Mang settled the matter of sending a blessing text message, a little loli came up to him.

"Uncle, come and see the hotel we chose!" Dana dragged Liu Mang to Levia and Alexia, who were looking at magazines about hotels in Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles.

Undoubtedly, according to the habits of Levia's local tyrants, it is another detached villa-type hotel.

Looking at the weekly price of 75,000 U.S. dollars, Liu Mang exclaimed, "It's too expensive!"

Seeing Liu Mang's old problem again, Alexia pushed Dinah in front of Liu Mang.

Dinah said that she received the task, and hugged Liu Mang's arm coquettishly: "Uncle... let's live here, okay..."

"..."

There is no way to refuse!

After a painful struggle in his heart, he was defeated, and Liu Mang endured the heartache and nodded.

There is no winter in Los Angeles, it is so hot all year round, the film capital of the world, and in addition to Hollywood, American food festivals, singing contests, and many leisure and sports activities, such as the time of the Los Angeles station of the International Marathon , even in February, there is also a variety of skiing competitions with a hundreds of meters long artificial snow track that appears every winter. Although Los Angeles may not have a snowfall for many years, they can make it themselves...

And with the All-Star Weekend, plus the fact that the house prices in Los Angeles were very expensive in the winter, when added up, the hotel that usually cost $10,000 a week rose directly to $75,000.

Heartache is heartache, seeing Dana, Levia, and Alexia cheering and clapping hands in celebration, Liu Mang felt a different feeling in his heart... Is the young master so stingy?

What is Grandet finally willing to bleed!

...

After returning to Los Angeles on the 28th, he rested for a night. On the morning of the 29th, Liu Mang got up early for training as usual, and made breakfast at seven o'clock, sent Dinah and Alexia to class, and then Came to Phillips Arena.

The weird thing is that the training didn’t start until ten o’clock today. Liu Mang arrived at the gymnasium at 8 o’clock or closer to 9 o’clock during non-high-intensity training. Usually there was no one in the gymnasium. The few teammates who trained hard after 9 o’clock For some veterans like Stockton and Kevin Willis, this kind of non-confrontation training is based on the start time of the training session.

Usually, Liu Mang is one of the first players to come to the arena for training. The atmosphere of the team is contagious to every teammate. Liu Mang and other core players train hard. The overall training of the Eagles is considered as hard. There are only a few, but everyone is very focused in the usual training, but some players just don't like extra training, which is no problem.

Liu Mang saw that all his teammates had arrived, and checked the time, it was only 8:40, what the hell!

But after looking at it, it seems that it's not training, but a group of people gathered together... It's gambling again!

Liu Mang felt that this group of guys really came to the arena to gamble and gamble!

But Liu Mang was a little curious, stepped forward and asked: "Are you crazy? You came to the arena to gamble early in the morning. What are you betting on?"

Liu Mang only looked at Jason Terry as the banker, collecting money and writing his name and amount.

"Ace, you're here. We're betting on whether Ace can pass 4 million votes in this All-Star game. Why don't you come and play?" Jason Terry greeted.

"Forget it, I'm not interested in this." Liu Mang went to change into training clothes to warm up.

Liu Mang just remembered that today is the day when the All-Star starting roster was announced. After returning to Atlanta yesterday, Schwartz called to ask Liu Mang if he would like to participate in the dunk contest and skill challenge competition again. He accepted the invitation to the three-point contest because he wanted to make a three-pointer with Peja Biao, but none of the others accepted.

Let’s not talk about the Skills Challenge, it’s quite boring, the dunk contest... Last time I played a wave of anger, this time it’s probably not so fun.

Because Liu Mang promised to rent a cruise ship for them to play for a day when he won the vote, Ratliff agreed to pay for his teammates to play in Los Angeles for a week. announced.

So they were very excited and came early.

It came so early, and it was a bit boring to wait, so Jason Terry made a small gamble, and the gamble was not too big. He wanted Barnes and Korver who wanted to participate but had no money to play together. Bet $10.

The mentality of the stars is the same as that of ordinary people. They always want to see the answer they want as soon as possible. At around 8:50, everyone came to the team's rest area.

When the All-Star starting lineup was announced, an incredible thing happened!