"Jack, thank you for the fishing gear you sent me, I love it."
On May 17, the day after sweeping the Knight team to advance to the Eastern Conference finals, Zhang Yang returned to Charlotte with his team.
Just as he opened his computer and logged into his email, he saw an email from the Silver Horned King.
Zhang Yang looked at the several photos attached to the email: one of them was a group photo taken right after receiving the fishing gear, one showed them posing on the fishing boat, another displayed a basket with several fish, and the last one captured the moment they had just caught a big fish, smiling just like a mischievous child turned demon under the seat of the Lord Lao Zi.
Zhang Yang stared at the photo of the fish basket for quite a while and felt depressed.
The Mavericks were eliminated on the 5th, ending their season early, and naturally, they had to start preparing early for the new season. After the draft lottery ended on the 10th, the league allowed teams to contact draftees on the 11th, and the Mavericks began their draft work early.
This year, the Mavericks didn’t have a first-round pick, having traded it away during the deal involving Anthony Walker. Later on, when they traded Anthony Walker for Terry, they managed to get a second-round pick for this year. The Hawks were ranked fourth from last, so the Mavericks ended up with the 34th and 60th picks.
The NBA no longer accepts high school students for the draft, and first-round picks are basically locked among that small group of players; it’s hard for there to be any surprises anymore. Agents who snag the popular new talents could secure a first-round pick without having to worry about another McGrady or Zhang Yang—players predicted to go lower but who had a surprise lottery pick.
After an experience last year, agents had a clearer direction this year. Initially, they aimed to snatch the popular draft entries, and if they got them, they were all set; if not, there was nothing to be done. The next stage was to take a group of less popular draftees to teams with second-round picks for tryouts.
With two second-round picks, the Mavericks became a hot commodity in the eyes of agents.
After the Mavericks sent out invitations for tryouts, Tellem arrived in Dallas on the 13th with several senior white draftees. Once Zhang Yang heard of Tellem’s schedule, he asked him to buy a set of fishing gear for Nowitzki.
The original intention was to tease the Silver Horned King about being black-eighted... but now Zhang San’s mentality was in shambles.
They say anger begets evil, and it was growing by his gall. He replied to Nowitzki’s email, "Dirk, is there a chance I sent you the fishing rod to mock you for being knocked out in the first round and now having only fishing to pass the time?"
Nowitzki seemed genuinely bored and quickly replied with an email.
"Hahaha, of course, I know you had that in mind. I heard you didn’t catch any fish last year, so I purposely sent you pictures to share the joy of catching fish."
Zhang Yang responded with an ellipsis.
German humor... quite interesting, huh.
Soon, Zhang Yang received another email.
"All my other friends are being very careful with their words around me at this time, afraid of upsetting me. They think I’m too fragile. I know they mean well, but it actually makes me feel worse. You joking with me in the usual way, I really appreciate that.
Congratulations on making it to the Eastern Conference finals. I hope you can beat your next round opponent smoothly, and then take down Duncan and Nash!"
Looking at that last sentence, Zhang Yang made a smacking sound with his mouth and replied, "Thank you for having such high expectations of me, I’ll work hard."
After ending the casual chat with his online friend, Zhang Yang thought for a moment and sent an email to Tellem: "Book me a class during the off-season, I want to learn fishing techniques!"
After closing his email, Zhang Yang visited various web portals to see what was new.
The hottest news about their Bobcats and Knight team series—Mascot Rascal Cat Fluruss, the Knight team’s poor lineup, the New Bad Boys Legion set to become the dominators of the East.
Zhang Yang did not find a single article criticizing James. When mentioning James, it was all about his hard work... But the version 1.0 of James did indeed play hard, and even when he gave up in G4, there were excuses to be made—the entire Knight team had given up, so him not giving up made no difference.
Rondo and Millsap got a lot of attention in this series, especially Rondo; in G4, he achieved 20+5+5. If it weren’t for the shooters’ poor performance in the final quarter, 20+10 would have been possible.
That evening, Zhang Yang returned to his parents’ home, had dinner, and then watched a live game broadcast with his younger brother.
The first was Game 4 between the Pistons and the Chicago Bulls.
The Pistons were leading the series 2-1, having won the first two home games and the Bulls winning one back on their court. The average score was 89-86, a standard Eastern Conference playoff series score.
This evening’s game was just the same; it kicked off at 6:30 p.m. and immediately entered a grueling defensive face-off.
Ben Wallace, facing his former team, delivered a powerful offensive, aggressively blocking close-up, squeezing into the paint for blocks, and getting steals and blocks left and right.
The Pistons’ perimeter defense also made life miserable for Hinrich, Ben Gordon, and Luol Deng, with the three brothers shooting less than 40% in the first three games.
The two teams were in a tight match, with less than 1 minute to go, the Bulls were leading the Pistons by one point, 77-76, and looked like they were going to keep their second home court, but Billups, with Hinrich in his face, managed a contested three-pointer to make the score 79-77 and take the lead.
Hinrich responded with firmness during crunch time, he drove to the basket for a 2+1, retaking the lead 80-79.
But Billups, with only 6 seconds left, stepped back for another three-pointer over Hinrich, and it was the buzzer-beater!
With a score of 82-80, the Pistons snatched the victory from the Bulls, taking the series lead at 3-1.
Yang Jing and Zhang Chen came to the living room to watch the live broadcast with their two sons during the final quarter.
After the game ended, Yang Jing said, "Yangyang, Billups is so accurate with the clutch shots! Can you play better than him?"