No.1 in basketball scoring

Now what really pains him is the progress Zhang San has made on the other side.

He feels he still has an edge in personal ability, but compared to last season, that advantage has shrunk significantly.

He has reached the peak of his improvement space, which makes him feel upset, especially seeing his competitor taking huge strides every year, it hurts even more!

…

In the first quarter, they achieved a double-digit lead. The Bobcats steadily suppressed the Miami Heat in the subsequent time. Wade did not give up and continued to search for comeback opportunities, but there was no substantial progress, not even once closing the gap to a point where a turnaround seemed possible.

At 7:58 PM, the final whistle sounded.

114 to 101, the Bobcats easily defeated the Miami Heat.

Wade puffed up his cheeks as he looked at the game result displayed on the big screen, letting out an unknown number of muffled grunts, and then went to hug and greet Zhang Yang, Felton, Okafor, Millsap, and others, before dejectedly leaving the court.

Another night of realization: The opponent is so strong, their own best teammates might just be bench strength for the other side, losing was normal...

Besides, he had 23 shots and made 11, including 1 out of 4 three-pointers, along with 7 out of 10 free throws, scoring 30 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists, 1 steal, and 3 blocks, not worse than Zhang San on the other side who scored 36 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals, and 1 block from 27 shots, making 14.

During the season opener, he had an emotional outburst post-game, lost the second encounter, his expression was still not good, but better than during the opener; now in the last mid-season game, he had learned to self-regulate long ago, getting angry after every loss would literally explode his liver.

Now, he can only trust what the prophet said, to display his abilities and attract stars to join in the next two years...

The next morning, Zhang Yang woke up early, boarded the car sent by the sponsor, and headed to the event venue for endorsement activities. At this time, except for Okafor, Magloire, and Hill, the other teammates were still on top of the nightclub ladies.

43 wins and 9 losses, a 10-game winning streak... with such a hot half-term performance, last night the big boss took the teammates to the nightclub, paid the bill, and let the whole team enjoy the enthusiasm of the South Coast ladies.

But Zhang San and Little Duncan just went through the motions and left first, which prompted some teasing from the big boss.

In Miami, a popular tourist city, the sponsors stuffed Zhang Yang with no less than 5 press releases on this day.

After a busy day, he arrived at Boss Qiao's holiday villa in Miami, took a bath to relieve fatigue.

The hotel where the team had stayed was already checked out, and most of the teammates had left Miami and entered holiday mode. Currently, in this holiday villa, there were only him, Felton, Okafor, and Hill.

This year's All-Star Weekend, the Bobcats only have three All-Star game players, no one else.

Sophomore Afflalo and rookie Ibaka both weren't selected for the rookie game.

There's no way around it, the '08 class is too fierce, with as many as 12 players averaging double-digit scores so far this season, more exaggerated than the 80s and 90s when mostly juniors and seniors were drafted; especially in the lottery section, 10 out of 14 rookies average double-digit scoring... Ibaka had no chance.

The '07 class looked not great last season, but collectively soared as sophomores, leaving no roles for defensive-type guards like Afflalo.

Besides the lively-loving Hill who planned to go to the event in person, others wanted to rest well during the All-Star break; they might not go to watch the games, as they played quite hard this season, and wanted to rest as much as possible if they could.

Like Mike Miller, who even refused the three-point contest invitation.

Zhang Yang came out of the bath, found the three in the... game room playing mahjong together.

Zhang Yang said in a surprised tone: "I didn't expect you guys to actually like this, playing whenever you are free."

During the first day of the year, Felton somehow found out about the 'New Year's visit' thing, brought a bunch of gifts to his house early in the morning with members of the Big Brother Group, and his parents certainly had to host warmly, his mom saw there was boredom around, and taught a few teammates how to play mahjong.

In the initial days, learning mahjong became a trend in their team, but most people just did it for novelty, and lost interest after that wave passed.

To Zhang Yang's surprise, Hill and Okafor, who initially weren't interested, got hooked after everyone else stopped playing.

Okafor replied: "Mahjong is a discipline, it contains clever mathematical knowledge and psychological negotiation methods, which can help me exercise my brainpower and psychological logic."

Hill added: "It's also a sociology course, a good game to hone strategic thinking."

Felton: "Yeah, yeah, yeah..."

Being the best mahjong player on the team, Zhang San: So, am I the only vulgar person? When I play mahjong, all I think about is gambling... oh? Wait! The big boss seems to be pretty much the same.

Thinking of this, Zhang Yang wasn't disheartened anymore, joined in and played a few rounds... after losing a few hundred bucks, decisively stopped and was even more disheartened, it seemed like he hadn't won much at cards since joining the NBA.

He returned to his room, and browsed the news for a while.

The day after the half-time finish, numerous hot topics emerged, the media hyped them up, and fans participated in the discussions with great enthusiasm.

With a 43-win, 9-loss first-half record, they were naturally the current hot topics.

The three most talked-about terms Zhang Yang saw related to them—him, Coach, new system.

His personal performance had been praised since the season's start, while Carlisle and the new system went from a slow start to a high rise.

After the first month of the competition, the record was average, mainly supported by the lineup, not even maintaining the offense which was top four in the league last season, Carlisle was severely criticized, and the new system wasn't looked upon optimistically.