Champion, please stay!

Chapter 171, Page 169: I Step onto the Court for the Championship

In previous years, after the Rookie of the Month was announced each month, many media outlets would compare LeBron James' rookie season average of 20+5+5 with those award-winning rookies, which offended quite a few people.

Players who win Rookie of the Month are all key players that their teams are developing. Most of them become stars, starters, or key rotation players for their respective teams. One or two players may not have many fans, but over four or five years, they have attracted a lot of hatred towards LeBron James.

Yi Shui opened the Cavaliers fan forum and saw a bunch of posts about 'Jackson is a historic star' flooding the screen.

He clicked on several posts and saw netizens from all over the United States arguing with netizens whose IP addresses were mainly from Ohio.

The administrators are constantly deleting posts. Sometimes when Yi Shui clicks to the next page of comments, the post disappears, and some posts directly show as violating the rules when opened...

However, Yi Shui is quite grateful to the media that hyped up the 'gold content of 20+5+5' in previous years.

Although the media suddenly stopped reporting on his assists after he stabilized at over 5 per game in February this season, people have long been impressed by this statistic over the years.

Moreover, while those media outlets have stopped exaggerating this data, those that are on good terms with him are still continuing to do so.

Tonight, the column article 'A Roundup of Players Averaging 20+5+5' is still very popular!

There are only 6 players this season who average 20+5+5, which is indeed a rare statistic.

Kobe averaged 27 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 5 assists per game;

Paul averaged 23 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 11 assists per game;

Stephen Jackson averaged 20.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 6 assists per game;

Wade averaged 30.6 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 6 assists per game;

James averaged 28.2 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 7.6 assists per game;

Yi Shui averaged 28 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 5.6 assists per game.

As a newcomer, Yi Shui ranked third in terms of traffic on this topic... The popularity of Wu Sheng and King is too high, they can't afford to offend them.

Yi Shui didn't fall asleep until 3:30 a.m., but he was woken up by a phone call before 8 a.m. He got up to make a call about work arrangements, took a shower, and ate something.

While waiting for the car to pick him up, he browsed the news for a while.

He saw that he was still the focus of discussion among the media and fans.

In the United States, news and topics related to Kobe and James generate more buzz.

Kobe is at the peak of his career and the top favorite for the championship.

With his team achieving 64 wins and having previously led them to the NBA Finals, James has truly secured his place on the table this season.

On the league side, after the Lakers and Cavaliers both secured the top seed in their respective divisions, they increased their efforts and invested more resources in promoting the '23 vs 24' game, which has now generated a surge in online traffic.

The situation is different in China. Despite James' team investing a lot of resources in promoting in the Chinese market and gaining a group of fans who are inexplicably loyal, his current popularity only ranks sixth.

McGrady, who was out for the season, and Iverson, who had his contract with the Pistons terminated early and was now unemployed, both had more fans than James.

The top three most popular topics are Yi Shui, Yao Ming, and Kobe Bryant.

Yi Shui noticed that he had more news articles and fan comments than Yao Ming and Kobe Bryant!
...

At 9 a.m., the NBA officially announced the final Players of the Week and Players of the Month awards.

Yi Shui saw his name and immediately clicked on the newly displayed link.

LeBron James and Chris Paul won the Player of the Month award.

詹姆斯4月份9胜2负、场均29+8+8，全票当选，东部连其他候选人都没有。

保罗4月份10场比赛场均25.1分5.5板10.1助攻3抢断，率队拿到7胜3负，以一己之力把球队抬进了西部季后赛。

Rookie of the Month, Yi Shui won his sixth consecutive Eastern Conference title, while Rose completed his fourth consecutive Western Conference title.

Mike Brown and Phil Jackson won Coach of the Month awards again.

These are all pretty much the same. Yi Shui scrolled down the page to see the weekly best.

This week's Player of the Week award is a "long week," covering 8 days from last Monday the 13th to yesterday the 20th.

In the Western Conference, he won all four games in the final week, and in the last two days, he faced Kobe Bryant, who scored 58 and 40 points respectively, and won the Player of the Week award.

Eastern... Yi River!
3胜1负，4场比赛场均30分8板4.5助攻1.5抢断2.25盖帽！

This is quite a surprise. Last night, Yi Shui saw the best prediction for the week, which was that the 23rd and 24th would win the prize.

詹姆斯最后一周也是3胜1负，场均31分7.5板8.5助攻1.5抢断1.5盖帽。

King's stats are better than his, and his overall hit rate is also higher.

Perhaps it's because he directly defeated King?

When Yi Shui saw the news that he had won his fourth Player of the Week award, breaking David Robinson's record of three Player of the Week awards for rookies, he suddenly became a little arrogant!

He opened the relevant page on the official website and took a look... Boom...

With four Player of the Week awards, he is tied for third this season with Kobe, Howard, and Wade.

Paul has won 6 Player of the Week awards and 2 Player of the Month awards!
Yi Shui thought to himself, "No wonder he shared the Player of the Week award twice with Paul and the Player of the Month award once. Paul is amazing this season! But he's also in a really bad situation..."

打了78场，场均23分5.5板11助攻2.8抢断，投篮命中率50.3%，三分命中率36%，罚球命中率87%。

Aside from assists, his stats were better than last season in every aspect, and his actual performance was also remarkable... But despite playing like this, due to injuries to his defensive core, his record was far worse than last season, barely making it into the playoffs, and the MVP calls faded away as the season progressed.

But that's not the worst of it. The seventh seed in the West made the playoffs, while the second seed was the Denver Nuggets with Chauncey Billups...

But Paul doesn't have the most Player of the Week awards; that title belongs to LeBron James, with seven.

Yi Shui counted: he has 4, Wade 4, Howard 4, and James 7. With 23 weeks this season, they've almost swept the Eastern Conference Player of the Week awards. As for Player of the Month, he has 2, James 3, and Wade 1 – they've truly monopolized it.

In the West, Kobe has 2, Paul has 2, and Gasol has 1, meaning the two teams have almost covered all the spots. Only Deron Williams managed to snatch one spot from Paul when their team's record improved in February.

Along with the announcement of the awards, the playoff schedule was also released.

On the 23rd, four series will begin: Cavaliers vs. 76ers, Knicks vs. Hawks, Nuggets vs. Hornets, and Spurs vs. Mavericks.

On the 24th, four series will begin in succession: Lakers vs. Jazz, Rockets vs. Trail Blazers, Celtics vs. Pacers, and Magic vs. Heat.

Yi Shui took a closer look at the bracket and discovered that the Jazz were facing the Lakers in the first round... The two point guards from the 05 draft class are now in the same boat this year.

Both teams suffered injuries to key teammates in the paint and experienced a decline in their record, dropping to seventh and eighth place respectively, where they encountered their most formidable opponents.

The veteran Bynum played incredibly hard against the Jazz. Leaving aside his farewell game where he scored 24 points with just mid-range jumpers and his total of 40 points, it was truly terrifying. In last year's second round of the playoffs, many people actually favored the Jazz to win because the Jazz reached the Western Conference Finals in 07, and the Lakers had been repeatedly dominated by the Jazz in the playoffs 10 years prior. And importantly, Bynum was out for the season…

Indeed, the Lakers did not have an easy time. They tied the Jazz 2-2 in the first four games, but in the last two games, Kobe Bryant shut down Kirilenko, Ronnie Brewer and other tough perimeter defenders in the mid-range. The Lakers won the next two games 4-2 and advanced. Although the score difference in those two games was not big, the feeling during the games was that the Jazz had no hope and could only watch Kobe make the shots.

News reports from various media outlets, including award predictions, player performance comparisons, team performance comparisons, playoff matchup analyses, and more, have appeared one after another.

Yi Shui glanced through the MVP prediction list and found that almost everyone ranked him fourth.
LeBron James is always first; Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard's rankings have changed in second and third place; Dwyane Wade, the newly crowned scoring champion, appears most often in fifth place; Chauncey Billups appears more frequently in sixth; Chris Paul is almost always ranked sixth or seventh...

Other players on the top ten lists from various media outlets include Yao Ming, Duncan, Garnett, Roy, etc.

The comparisons between star players and teams mostly focus on Kobe and LeBron, and the Lakers and Cavaliers.

After browsing the news for a while, Yi Shui changed into formal attire and left home; the car that was supposed to pick him up arrived.

His first day off was packed with work.

In the morning, I first went to support two brands I endorse.

At noon, I was invited to Yankee Stadium to take photos with the Yankees players and give interviews. At 1 p.m., I threw the first pitch in the game between the Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays.

This was an exchange activity promoted by Dolan, which was essentially a case of mutual hype.

In Yi Shui's memory, "he" had indeed played baseball. His skill level was probably inferior to Boss Qiao's, but he could still throw the first pitch without any problem. It didn't matter how well he hit it. Anyway, he practiced in front of the mirror for a while and chose the coolest pitching posture.

At 3 PM, Yi Shui attended Nike's press conference, where the 'Emperor 1' went on sale!
That evening, Yi Shui received a message from a senior executive at Hook, saying that the initial sales were far more popular than expected, with sales starting at 4 p.m. in many places and inventory not even lasting past 6 p.m.

While it hadn't even gone on sale in China late at night, in the US, it was selling like hotcakes, mainly in parts of New York, Connecticut, California, and Cleveland.

Yi Shui was initially surprised that the Cleveland people had betrayed their king and were going to pledge allegiance to the emperor.

Then, he saw an online event called "Burn Emperor's jerseys and shoes, curse Emperor to be eliminated in the first round".

He didn't quite understand the American people's actions, but he respected them, after all, they had spent money to buy his shoes and jerseys... He created a secondary account and commented on each of those posts and news reports with "rebound".

...

After a day of rest, the Knicks held a training session on the 22nd to prepare for their first-round game against the Hawks the following day.

After morning practice, Dolan arrived at the training facility and distributed the bonuses provided by the NBA.

The Knicks advanced to the playoffs as the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference and received over $38 from the NBA's prize pool for the season.

Following a vote by management and coaching staff, it was unanimously decided to exclude Jerome James and Eddie Curry, leaving 13 players and 7 coaches and consultants to split the bonus equally.

Each person received nearly $20,000 in cash.

Dolan also issued another batch of supermarket vouchers, with coaches and players each receiving $50,000 and trainers each receiving $10,000.

After four years, they've finally made it to the playoffs. Their playoff tickets have always been the most expensive in the league. Although they have to give 45% to the league, the remaining ticket revenue is equivalent to four or five regular season games. In the regular season, the cheapest ticket in their stands was $19. Tomorrow, in the same area for the first playoff game, the ticket price will be $81, almost four times the price. Other seats are also roughly four times the price of regular season tickets.

The sales price of the first row directly opposite the technical table is particularly impressive, rising from an average of 1700 per game in the 41 regular season games to 15,000 per game.

The key point is that the arena belongs to him. Apart from the league's revenue share and the arena's operating costs, it's all net income. He can just throw away this little bit of money.

The league has rules in this regard: if you send a small gift at this time, the league won't interfere, but if you send too many, they will definitely investigate.

Yi Shui was somewhat disappointed. Clark was really not interested in money. Walsh wanted to sign Clark after the NCAA season ended, and had Clark do part-time work first, but Clark said he hadn't traveled for many years and had gone to travel the world. He would only come after his contract with UConn expired on June 1st... tens of thousands of dollars in cash bonuses!

The first thing the players did after receiving their rewards was to put the cash and shopping vouchers into their respective safes in the team's private lounge.

Before putting the coupons in, Yi Shui checked the supermarkets where the coupons were valid... and asked David Lee next to her, "Is it your store again?"

David Lee laughed and said, "Of course, we've always given James a very generous discount."

Yi Shui complained, "It feels like all of our team's daily necessities are provided by your company... But if it's your supermarket, what are you going to do with these shopping vouchers?"

David Lee: "I also have to spend money when I go shopping. If you want, I'll have the manager of your local supermarket deliver it to you at the team's discount price."

"Let me finish using them first. I haven't even finished using the ones I received last time..." Yi Shui didn't agree and chatted for a while.

During the lunch break, Yi Shui accepted an exclusive interview with Daye, currently the largest sports portal website in China.

The previous questions were all quite routine: basketball experience, feelings about the NBA, feelings about living in the United States, talking about teammates, talking about Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian... Suddenly, the reporter threw out a question that sounded obviously tricky.

"Emperor, what's your goal for this year's playoffs? The championship?"

Regarding the gimmick of being a 'championship contender,' after Dolan repeatedly made sweeping statements about the Rockets in front of domestic media, most domestic fans already knew the true situation of the Rockets. Of course, there were still some fans who were too brainwashed by Alexander's press releases and insisted that the Rockets were championship contenders, but the mainstream media no longer reported it that way, and their credibility was almost gone.

As McGrady himself said in an interview, "My situation is incomparable to Kobe's or Allen's. I've never come close to winning a championship since I entered the NBA."

Given the current public opinion, with the playoffs approaching, it seems that any answer to this question from the reporter would be wrong.

But Yi Shui did not hesitate. After organizing his thoughts, he replied, "Of course, my goal is the championship. The moment I step onto the court, all I see is winning, and I will strive for that result."

I don't care what others think of us. Even if everyone thinks we have no chance of winning the championship, I remain steadfast in my goal: the championship. I won't waver because of any opinions.

(End of this chapter)