Winning the first victory after the lineup adjustment is extremely important for Zhao Feiyang.
This game not only gave the fans a little hope, but also gave the Timberwolves' management some ideas.
Although the Timberwolves management doesn't care about being bad, as long as the record can be better without increasing the team's costs, the management is also happy to see it.
After all, once the record is good, attendance will soar, and the team's profits will naturally be greater.
The second one will come soon.
This time the Timberwolves start a road trip and take a flight to the New York Knicks. New York is a big city, and playing here is definitely a pleasure.
Maybe the team won't pay too high a salary, but there are more opportunities and higher exposure here. As long as you perform well, sponsors will flock to you, and the money you can earn from other places will definitely not be less than your salary.
Madison Square Garden Arena.
This is the home court of the Knicks and one of the most popular arenas in the league.
Without him, it's just because the Knicks have money, and a place like New York is very expensive. If it were transferred to China, it would be basically equivalent to China's Shanghai.
However, the Knicks' record in recent seasons has not been good enough. The core of the team, Carmelo Anthony, has superb personal skills, but is not suitable to lead the team as the team boss.
His career experience also proves this.
To a certain extent, he is not a leader who is "too broad-minded", as was reflected in Jeremy Lin's incident.
For Carmelo Anthony, being the boss of the team is very important. Even if the team wants to win, it must win under his leadership.
Otherwise, anyone who steals his limelight will arouse his "hostility."
Even if the record is not good, Carmelo Anthony's personal performance is still great. As one of the best strikers in the league, his scoring ability has always been unquestionable.
The suspense of this game is only in the first half.
In the first half, the Timberwolves led by Zhao Feiyang struggled a bit, especially at the forward position.
The Timberwolves initially tried to use Andrew Wiggins to restrict Carmelo Anthony. However, after less than one quarter, head coach Philip Sanders found that this idea was somewhat unrealistic.
Andrew Wiggins has no shortage of talent, but he lacks fighting spirit.
Facing Carmelo Anthony, who has comprehensive skills, Andrew Wiggins has no plan to defend hard, and basically only restricts his shots in the early stage. Once Carmelo Anthony gets physical, Andrew Wiggins will Will immediately retreat to protect the body.
Therefore, the Timberwolves had to replace Thaddeus Young to guard Carmelo Anthony.
Although the role is relatively limited, it can be used with the inside double-teaming strategy, but Carmelo Anthony's offensive is not as fierce as before.
After solving this firepower point, there will be no big problems in other positions.
The chaos of the Knicks is even worse than that of the Timberwolves before. It is commonplace for the team's defenders to fight for the ball and fight alone.
Because of this, after the second half, Zhao Feiyang took advantage of the Knicks' weaknesses and began to lead the team to open up the score.
Of course, before this process began, he specifically privately requested head coach Philip Sanders to replace Kevin Martin and Maurice Williams.
These two people will always show uncooperative performance on the court, especially during some fast breaks, they will also adopt a "defensive look" attitude, which is simply unacceptable to Zhao Feiyang.
In order to prevent these two from deliberately holding back, Zhao Feiyang also decided to abandon them as part of team building.
After all, it is undoubtedly easier and more convenient to exclude them from the core lineup than to convince them.
Everyone's interests were inconsistent, and Zhao Feiyang really didn't have the time or energy to persuade them, nor did he think he could change their minds.
Without the constraints of others, Zhao Feiyang played his strongest performance since joining the Timberwolves.
He played 17 minutes in the second half and scored 25 points and 7 assists. Including the 13 minutes he played in the first half, he scored a total of 39 points, 11 assists and 7 rebounds.
Such data is higher than Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks' best performer.
It also successfully helped the team open up the situation, and finally won the opponent with a 9-point gap.
In addition to him, Zach LaVine played 23 minutes and scored 14 points and 10 assists. Although Andrew Wiggins was paddling all the time, he also scored 17 points and 7 rebounds.
After the Timberwolves won at home, they successfully won their second away game.
Zhao Feiyang's performance has undoubtedly once again become the focus of the fans in Minneapolis.
At the same time, the Golden State Warriors finally welcomed Stephen Curry back.
After Zhao Feiyang was traded away by the Warriors, their record did not improve at all. The team kept losing and could only occasionally win against one or two bottom opponents.
In this case, Stephen Curry can only come back early and stand up to lead the team to save the defeat before the injury has fully recovered.
Unfortunately, he only played 10 minutes in the first game back. Head coach Steve Kerr was afraid that his injury would get worse and did not let him expend too much energy on the court.
These 10 minutes were obviously not enough for the Warriors.
Therefore, without exception, the Warriors lost the game again.
After this game, the Warriors were ranked lower and lower. The former top spot in the Western Conference no longer exists. After losing so many games, they have fallen to fourth place in the Western Conference.
Although there are still a lot of wins, if they can't counterattack in the second half, it will be basically impossible to rush to the first place in the Western Conference again.
As soon as the team lost, fans in the Bay Area quit. Many Chinese fans were dissatisfied with Zhao Feiyang being traded, and now they are extremely disappointed with the Warriors' performance.
Especially in contrast to the Timberwolves' consecutive wins, it becomes even more apparent that the Warriors can't find anyone who can really take the lead except Stephen Curry.
"God! Look what those idiots have done? Is it really right to trade Zhao to save money? His value is much higher than more than 10 million..."
"A garbage team like the Timberwolves can win consecutively. The lineup was so chaotic before, but now it is gradually showing some hope... If the Warriors keep him, their record will never be what it is now. ..."
"I think it's good that he left. Staying with the Warriors will only waste his youth... If he is really capable, maybe he can eventually lead the Timberwolves to the playoffs, maybe to At that time, they will still become an obstacle to the Warriors..."
