No.1 in basketball scoring

And now, Carlisle is being highly praised, and their new system is seen as the 'benchmark of future basketball'.

Zhang Yang saw the Los Angeles Times review them like this—Jordan, Carlisle, and Jack are very patient. They spent a year and a half slowly polishing and establishing a new system, which is finally blooming now. Their performance in the game against the Lakers left a deep impression on us. They played basketball very differently from other teams. If Allen Iverson is the answer among basketball players, then the Bobcats may be the new answer for team basketball, with Jack also being the new answer.

Zhang Yang's favorite part is the last sentence...

However, there is a team whose topic heat rivals theirs—the Spurs!

Like their Bobcats, the Spurs have finished the first half of the season with a 10-game winning streak, achieving a record of 38 wins and 14 losses. In the last game, they tied the Lakers' record and triumphed over the Lakers by having a direct matchup record of 2 wins and 1 loss, claiming the top spot in the Western Conference for the first half!

On the 1st, after Duncan and Ginobili together won last month's Western Conference Player of the Month award, the Spurs started to enter the public eye. People were surprised to discover that since mid-December, the Spurs had begun to soar. Just looking at the second half of December, the Spurs' record was already the best in the Western Conference. In January, they even overshadowed the Bobcats, showing the best performance in the league.

In the 6 games following Duncan and Ginobili's receipt of the Player of the Month award, the Spurs would get on the trending list after each game. The entire season only had 9 nationally scheduled broadcasted games, and by the first half of February, an additional 3 games had been broadcasted.

And within such a short period of less than half a month, the Spurs gained quite a number of 'team fans' across the United States and even the world!

This made the media exclaim in disbelief, knowing that the Spurs has been powerful for more than a decade since acquiring Duncan. Duncan was the only one popular, while the Spurs were always like a street rat everyone wanted to hit.

Zhang Yang was not surprised by this. Playing offense always easily attracts fans. Before the last season, even if the Bobcats had won the championship in the 06-07 season, they didn't have many team fans. But last season, playing offensive basketball led to a surge in team fans.

However, he also had some feelings in this regard—the sudden change in the way information is disseminated is astonishing. From traditional media to internet media, there was almost no transition period.

Several local third and fourth-tier newspapers he subscribed to in the Carolina region went out of business suddenly, the owners of those newspapers might not even know why, having done nothing wrong, but one day everyone stopped subscribing to their newspapers.

Those that survived were either large in scale or quickly transformed and actively embraced internet media.

The rapid rise of the Spurs is closely related to changes in information dissemination methods. Over the past two years, the explosive increase in household internet bandwidth leading to faster information dissemination allowed people to see their performances.

A few years ago, the rise of the Spurs would have been much slower. If those traditional media were targeting them, they might very well be like the 05-06 season's Pistons, playing beautiful games with a league-leading record, but people still wouldn't see them, thinking their games were still ugly as before.

Zhang Yang browsed the Spurs' news for a while and had new feelings—the differences between public media and traditional authoritative media. When traditional media praises a team, they have to say something 'by the basic rules', but 'public media' is different, they wildly exaggerate, if not directly fabricating stories...

Shifting his attention from his home team's and Spurs' news reports, Zhang Yang checked other information.

First half standings, Western Conference, Spurs 38 wins and 14 losses first, Lakers 38 wins and 14 losses second, Nuggets 34 wins and 18 losses third, Grizzlies 33 wins and 19 losses fourth, Trail Blazers 33 wins and 19 losses fifth, Mavericks 32 wins and 20 losses sixth, Jazz Team 30 wins and 22 losses seventh, Hornets 30 wins and 22 losses eighth, Rockets 30 wins and 22 losses ninth, Phoenix Suns 29 wins and 23 losses tenth.

Eastern Conference, Bobcats 43 wins and 9 losses first, Cavaliers 40 wins and 12 losses second, Magic Team 38 wins and 14 losses third, Celtics 28 wins and 24 losses fourth (division leader), Chicago Bulls 32 wins and 20 losses fifth, Hawks team 31 wins and 21 losses sixth, Miami Heat 27 wins and 25 losses seventh, Pacers 26 wins and 26 losses eighth, Brooklyn Nets 25 wins and 27 losses ninth...

This time Zhang Yang saw a standings ranking different from usual, normally it's purely looking at win-loss records, but this time what he saw was a true 'ranking list', with division rules included, and the playoff matchups are based on this.

He seemed to see Pierce, Bibby, Joe Johnson and others desperately fighting for the fifth place in the latter half of the season; over Yao Ming's side playing against the Magic Team, Cavaliers, and Celtics doesn't make much difference, but the Hawks team is different.

From his personal perspective, based on his own experience playing against those teams, he feels the Hawks team has a chance of winning against the Cavaliers, but it's difficult to win against the Magic Team. No matter who they play against, it's definitely not as easy as playing against the Celtics.

Midseason stats ranking, he ranks first with an average of 31.67 points per game, beating Wade who averages 31.3 points, they are the only two this season whose average points exceed 30.

Assists ranking, Paul temporarily ranks first with an average of 11.1 assists per game, Deron averages 10.9 for second, third is Rondo with an average of 9.4 assists, and fourth is Nash with an average of 9.2 assists, the gap is large. Essentially, it's a competition between Paul and Deron.

Rebounds ranking, Howard leads significantly with an average of 14 rebounds per game, Bynum is second with an average of 12 rebounds, third is David Lee with an average of 11.7 rebounds... In this ranking, a Bobcats player made the list, Okafor ranks eighth with an average of 10.7 rebounds.

Blocks ranking, Howard ranks first with an average of 3 blocks per game, leading by a large margin.

Steals ranking, Zhang Yang made the list, ranking second with an average of 2.5 steals per game, first is brother Shelling with 2.8 steals average.

In terms of predictions for the three major individual awards at midseason, Zhang Yang felt quite pleased.

Rookie ranking, Mayo first; Defensive ranking, Howard first;

MVP ranking first... Zhang San: Not talented, it is indeed me!