NBA: The God of Basketball Begins with Precise Scoring

Chapter 87 Assist Points Added, Becoming the Team's Second Core! (This chapter is an extra chapter to celebrate the release of the book) [Please Subscribe]

G2 arrived even faster than Li Xingchen had imagined.

One day of rest is actually not enough for the high-intensity playoffs.

Li Xingchen genuinely admires those star players who, amidst their hectic schedules, still have the energy to go to nightclubs and play with women.

Anyway, he doesn't have the energy for it.

Staples Center, the game venue.

Both teams fielded the same starting lineups as in the previous match.

Although Clippers center Morris was DNP in a crucial moment in the last game due to poor performance, that was an isolated incident.

As a player with unpredictable tendencies, who knows if he might suddenly explode in this game?

Therefore, the Clippers' starting lineup remains Reggie Jackson, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, Nicolas Batum, and Marcus Morris.

The Warriors, on the other hand, fielded their usual twin-tower lineup: Curry, Li Xingchen, Wiggins, Green, and Looney.

Before the match started, Li Xingchen was quite conflicted about which stat to allocate points to for his active skill today.

In the past few games, the system's assistance to Li Xingchen has consistently been reflected in his scoring and block statistics.

If his scoring or block statistics at crucial moments do not meet the standards, the system will give him a prompt, enabling him to deliver outstanding performances on both offense and defense at critical moments.

Because he had tasted the benefits, he often preferred the scoring option when choosing system rewards.

However, now that we have the opportunity to "actively add points," why not try other possibilities as well?

If a more effective use of each "score control element" is unlocked, then there will be another weapon to choose from in future matches.

Therefore, after some deliberation, Li Xingchen chose to allocate skill points for this match to the skill "guaranteed to get four assists".

He always felt that if he played the full game normally, he could get three or four assists.

Therefore, he felt that assists, as a "point-controlling element," seemed somewhat useless.

But after reviewing his stats yesterday, he realized that, given his skill level, he had almost never actually recorded four assists in a single game.

In each game, his stats were either two or three assists.

So he also wanted to try it out and see if activating this "point control element" related to assists would produce any unexpected magical effects.

The reason for choosing this match as the starting point is quite simple.

According to the normal strategy of teams playing in the playoffs, if they are the underdogs who play two consecutive away games, they basically only need to win one of them to achieve their goal.

We should strive to win both of the next two home games to achieve a 3-1 lead.

While a 3-1 score doesn't guarantee a win, it certainly puts a high probability of winning the series.

In other words, while the Warriors players will certainly give their all to win today's game, a loss would be acceptable.

Correspondingly, everyone's desire to win may not be as strong as in the first game. After all, having already won a game, everyone will be more relaxed and less tense than before.

Therefore, such a competition is perfect for conducting experiments.

Even head coach Kerr, when facing the Jazz in the first round, didn't he also experiment with his lineup in the second game, a game he "could lose"?

Therefore, Li Xingchen wanted to take advantage of the second game to try out the "assist-based scoring element" that he had never used before, and see what was so wonderful about it.

Logically speaking, all "score control" techniques seem to be conceptual.

As long as the corresponding data has not been reached, the system will definitely provide prompts to help him make those seemingly impossible shots, or tell him how to make steals and blocks at crucial moments.

But how do you achieve an assist?

Does that mean that if you don't meet the assist target, whoever you pass to in the final moments will definitely make the shot?

That sounds like something even more terrifying than scoring.

After all, the system can't exactly go and give a hint to the person who catches the ball and shoots!

So how exactly this assist-based "point control element" will be implemented remains to be seen, and Li Xingchen can only wait and see.

At the start of the match, both sides employed tactics largely unchanged from the previous game.

The Warriors' offense still involved having Curry and Li Xingchen handle the ball first, with Looney moving up to set a screen, allowing the guards to target center Morris.

The success rate is quite good.

However, Morris today is quite different from the last one.

When the Clippers were on offense, the Warriors continued to use the same defensive matchup that had worked in the second half of the previous game.

This means having Curry guard Batum, Green guard Leonard, Wiggins guard George, and Li Xingchen guard Reggie Jackson, achieving a comprehensive upgrade in defense from positions one to three.

This makes it difficult for the Clippers' two key forwards to get good shot opportunities.

Rooney was positioned under the basket to protect the rim, ready to help defend against any attempt to drive to the basket.

This defensive formation is perfect in over 90% of positions; the only problem is that it leaves Morris open for outside shots.

Morris's inability to make shots in the previous game led to the Clippers' offense almost completely collapsing for a period of time.

But today, on the very first offensive possession, Morris sank that damn wide-open three-pointer.

Cole's expression changed slightly.

This is not good news for the Warriors.

However, he hasn't made any adjustments yet, since Morris is also being targeted by the Warriors on the offensive end and is losing points, so for the time being, this aspect of him is not fatal.

It's better to let a role player like him score a few more goals than to let Kawhi Leonard or George get into form, right?

In the initial stages, both sides performed relatively normally, with neither particularly amazing bursts of brilliance nor too many absurd mistakes.

For the Clippers, either Morris makes an open three-pointer, or Batum moves up to set a screen for Leonard or George. This way, even if the Warriors insist on not switching, they will still have some space to shoot during the delay.

Although not every shot was perfect, both Kawhi Leonard and Paul George managed to score.

For the Warriors, the main scoring is currently coming from Curry, followed by Li Xingchen.

The ball will only be given to Wiggins when neither of them has a chance to play, allowing him to post up directly in the elbow area.

Of course, Green and Rooney occasionally got open and scored on easy layups, but these were just sporadic occurrences.

Unbeknownst to many, Li Xingchen's status on the team seems to have gradually risen to the position of the team's second core player.

On the offensive end, having developed his ball-handling offense, he has essentially become the second offensive option after Curry.

On the defensive end, he is definitely among the top three defensive players on the team.

Overall, his status on the team seems to have subtly surpassed Wiggins', both in terms of tactical arrangements and the trust his teammates place in him.

From a benchwarmer to a regular substitute with consistent playing time, then to a starter, and now to the team's second core player —

Li Xingchen seems to have completed this transformation in less than ten matches.

Fortunately, Curry is a team leader who doesn't care about these titles at all. If it were some other star in this position, they might have already started to worry about whether Li Xingchen would pose a threat to their team status.

The starting lineup session passed smoothly.

Seven minutes into the game, the score was 21-20, with the Warriors trailing by one point but not falling too far behind.

The seven minutes of calm led the fans to believe that the game would continue uneventfully.

But no one expected that the real change would happen during the substitutes' break!

Today's update is 8,000 words, and there will be an extra 6,000 words tomorrow.