<h4>Chapter 574: Los Angeles’ Overtime Team</h4>
<strong>Trantor: </strong>Nyoi-Bo Studio <strong>Editor: </strong>Nyoi-Bo Studio
At the NBA headquarters in New York, President Adams opened the NBA news column on a website and nced at the headlines.
In the most visible spot on the website, there was a headline that read: “Ten Overtimes in Three Games, the Los Angeles Clippers Create a New NBA Record.”
“The Clippers were able to make the headlines. Then again, there has been quite a lot of news about the Clipperstely,” Adams said to himself.
The NBA had games every day. Except for the teams that received the most attention, it was really difficult for most games to make a headline. The current Clippers didn’t have top stars and the team was one of the worst. It was not easy for them to make the news.
It’s very rare to reach overtime in three consecutive games. ying ten overtimes in three games is even more incredible. I didn’t expect that this change in leadership for the Clippers would make them so tenacious. They have really surprised me. Adams couldn’t help but check the recent schedule for the Clippers.
“In the past three games, they’ve won twice. The next opponent for the Clippers is the Ondo Magic. The Magic have been deliberately tanking so as to get the number one draft pick. It seems that the Clippers can win again,” Adams said to himself.
...
Ondo. The Clippers were the away team challenging the Ondo Magic at the Amway Center.
In the yer’s locker room, Cassel looked at the yers. He could tell that the yers’ conditions werepletely different from previous games.
Previously, the Clippers had a very bad record. They had lost too many games. The yers had started to be disinterested. They did not care if they won or lost. It was as if they were going to work every day. Punching out after working for 48 hours. Even if the team lost, no one was frustrated. They would still go to nightclubs and hook up with girls.
After thest three games, having yed in ten overtimes, the Clippers’ yers took on a different attitude. They gained a new kind of resilience. Cassel could feel that the desire for victory was returning to the yers.
In the three away games, their opponents were all teams at the yoff-level. Getting two wins and one loss could indeed cultivate confidence and let the Clippers’ yers feel that they couldpete with strong teams. This provoked their desire to win.
After all, yers in the NBA were all leaders amongst the people in their age groups. Even the worst substitutes were very good basketball yers. Many of them had been winning games since they were young. They were all people with a strong desire to win. It was just that, previously, the Clippers were doing terribly. Even if they were people who had the desire to win, it was slowly wiped away after losing constantly.
The current victories allowed the Clippers’ yers to regain their confidence. Victories that were achieved after ying in overtimes seemed even more hard-fought. The continuous overtimes made the Clippers more resilient. This was the biggest gain for the Clippers.
As a weak team, resilience was an important attribute and it was difficult to cultivate. For professional yers, losing was eptable but giving up was not.
The current Clippers had gradually developed resilience through these past few games because of the overtimes.
Cassel remembered the anger and unwillingness on the yers’ face swhen they yed four overtimes and lost to the Indiana Pacers. Cassel felt the depths of the yers iparable longing for victory. This waspletely unlike a usual team that was ranked at the bottom.
I really didn’t expect that, in just three games, the team could have undergone such a big change. Cassel though this and looked at Dai Li, who was a little further away. He realized that all these changes happened after Dai Li came.
Does Coach Li really not understand basketball? Cassel felt that the Dai Li in front of him was getting harder and harder to figure out.
...
The Clippers’ opponent was the Ondo Magic.
The Magic were ranked secondst in the Eastern Conference. They were half a game away from being rankedst.
A team in such a position would naturally want to tank so that they could get the best draft pick. There was still a team under them in the rankings. The Magic was very desperate to lose, so as to “catch up” to the bottom as soon as possible.
The Clippers also had a terrible record. Although the Clippers’ own draft picks had already been traded, the Magic didn’t want to have a team that had a record as bad as theirs topete with. Therefore, the Magic were eager to lose to the Clippers.
The Clippers definitely wanted to win. The yers’ desire to win had been aroused and the opponent was even weaker than the Clippers. The Clippers were naturally going to go all out this game.
One wanted to lose, the other wanted to win. The result was obvious.
The anger and unwillingness the Clippers felt when they lost to the Pacers after ying four overtimes were vented out in the game. They started with a fierce attack at the beginning of the game. The Magic were happy to lose to the Clippers. They put up some symbolic resistance for a while, and then they basically surrendered.
Dai Li did not use “Evenly Matched” for this game, because Dai Li knew that the Magic woulde inst in the Eastern Conference if they lost this game. They were “begging to lose.” They wouldn’t put up a fight against the Clippers.
Without effects of “Evenly Matched,” the game did not go into overtime. The Clippers sessfully defeated the Magic, and they ended their four away games journey.
Four away games, three of which had been against yoff-level teams, ended with a record of three wins and one loss. People who were unaware would think that this was the record of a yoff-level team.
The Clippers returned to Los Angeles. Their next opponents were the Lakers, who were based in the same city.
In both Los Angeles and the entire NBA, the Lakers had far more influence than the Clippers. The Clippers and the Lakers shared a home-court, the Staples Center. Therefore, the Clippers’ home-court would be flooded with arge number of Lakers fans. The Lakers fans outnumbered the Clippers fans. Very often at the Staples Center, cheers were overwhelmingly for the Lakers when the Clippers were ying at their home-court.
So, for the Clippers, ying against the Lakers was akin to ying as an away team.
The Lakers’ record this year was not good enough to enter the yoffs, but the Lakers were not deliberately tanking. One reason was that they had gained three excellent draft picks consecutively. The team was already full of talented yers. The second reason was that it was a giant team, so the fans had expectations for the Lakers.
In fact, the Lakers had the top yers in the NBA. They had no reason to tank to rebuild the team deliberately. The attraction of Los Angeles and the maic attraction of giant teams always attracted superstars. Although the performance of the Lakers was not very outstanding this season, the Lakers was able to form a grouping of three or four superstars.
When facing the Lakers, Dai Li once again used “Evenly Matched.” It resulted in overtime again.
...
The head coach of the Lakers felt helpless. This was the first time he had yed a match with three overtimes since bing an NBA head coach.
The young yers on the Lakers, although very talented, did not have much experience in such situations. Facing a third overtime, they began to fall apart.
On the other hand, the Clippers were not in a hurry. After all, in the past four games there had been three games with overtimes. For the Clippers’ yers, ying overtime was normal.
“This game has reached its third overtime. In thest game where the Clippers defeated the Magic, there had been no overtime. I thought the Clippers had broken the overtime spell, but now it seems that they haven’t,” the livementator said yfully.
Anothermentator said, “Since the Clippers changed ownership, their games often go into overtimes. It seems that when Imentate on Clippers’ games in the future, I should apply for overtime in advance.”
...
The Clippers eventually defeated the Lakers in the third overtime. They achieved four wins and one loss in thest five games. In the new NBA rankings this week, the Clippers had risen eight ces.
Following this, the Clippers faced a period of great difficulty.
They yed on their home-court against the Houston Rockets, the team ranked number one in the Western Conference. The Clippers lost after one overtime. They then yed an away game against the defending champions, the Golden State Warriors. The Clippers lost after one overtime again. Immediately after, they yed against the Grizzlies at their home-court. The Grizzlies were deliberately tanking. Dai Li did not use “Evenly Matched” and, eventually, the Clippers won. They then yed against the Thunder at their home-court. The Thunder didn’t give the Clippers a chance to go to overtime. The Thunder’s superstars defeated the Clippers in thest second with a three-pointer.
One win and three losses in four games. This was the record of a weak team.
The momentum of the Clippers had improved. The Rockets, the Warriors and the Thunder were all teams thatpeted for the championship, especially the first two. They were ranked in the top two in the NBA power ranking list. In the current situation, with the Western Conference being strong and the Eastern Conference being weak, whoever dominated the Western Conference would basically win the championship. As for the weaker teams, being able to reach overtime whilepeting against championship teams gave them a morale boost.
In the next game, the Clippers once again faced the zers. This time it was at the Clippers’ home-court. The game once again reached three overtimes.
The Trail-zers seemed to be suffering from some trauma when they yed against the Clippers. It resulted in them making two crucial mistakes during the third overtime, which made them lose the game.
The Clippers then went on to y two away games against the Milwaukee Bucks and the New York Knicks. Both games reached overtimes. They won one and lost the other.
After Dai Li became the head coach of the Clippers, the Clippers had yed 12 games. Nine of those games went into overtime. This wonderful situation caught everyone’s attention. The gamingpany started to offer a special bet to let people bet on how many overtimes the Clippers would reach in their future games.
The fans also joked online that the Los Angeles Clippers should simply be renamed to the “Los Angeles’ Overtime Team.”