Almighty Coach

At the NBA headquarters in New York, President Adams opened the NBA news column on a website and glanced 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 Clippers lately,” 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. Playing 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 Orlando 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.

…

Orlando. The Clippers were the away team challenging the Orlando Magic at the Amway Center.

In the player’s locker room, Cassel looked at the players. He could tell that the players’ conditions were completely different from previous games.

Previously, the Clippers had a very bad record. They had lost too many games. The players had started to become 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 the last three games, having played in ten overtimes, the Clippers’ players took on a different attitude. They gained a new kind of resilience. Cassel could feel that the desire for victory was returning to the players.

In the three away games, their opponents were all teams at the playoff-level. Getting two wins and one loss could indeed cultivate confidence and let the Clippers’ players feel that they could compete with strong teams. This provoked their desire to win.

After all, players in the NBA were all leaders amongst the people in their age groups. Even the worst substitutes were very good basketball players. 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’ players to regain their confidence. Victories that were achieved after playing 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 players, losing was acceptable 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 players’ face swhen they played four overtimes and lost to the Indiana Pacers. Cassel felt the depths of the players incomparable longing for victory. This was completely 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 Orlando Magic.

The Magic were ranked second last in the Eastern Conference. They were half a game away from being ranked last.

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 to compete with. Therefore, the Magic were eager to lose to the Clippers.

The Clippers definitely wanted to win. The players’ 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 playing 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 would come in last 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 successfully defeated the Magic, and they ended their four away games journey.

Four away games, three of which had been against playoff-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 playoff-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 a large 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 playing at their home-court.

So, for the Clippers, playing against the Lakers was akin to playing as an away team.

The Lakers’ record this year was not good enough to enter the playoffs, 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 players. 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 players in the NBA. They had no reason to tank to rebuild the team deliberately. The attraction of Los Angeles and the magnetic 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 played a match with three overtimes since becoming an NBA head coach.

The young players 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’ players, playing overtime was normal.

“This game has reached its third overtime. In the last 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 live commentator said playfully.

Another commentator said, “Since the Clippers changed ownership, their games often go into overtimes. It seems that when I commentate 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 the last five games. In the new NBA rankings this week, the Clippers had risen eight places.

Following this, the Clippers faced a period of great difficulty.

They played 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 played an away game against the defending champions, the Golden State Warriors. The Clippers lost after one overtime again. Immediately after, they played 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 played 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 the last 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 that competed 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 while competing against championship teams gave them a morale boost.

In the next game, the Clippers once again faced the Blazers. This time it was at the Clippers’ home-court. The game once again reached three overtimes.

The Trail-Blazers seemed to be suffering from some trauma when they played 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 play 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 played 12 games. Nine of those games went into overtime. This wonderful situation caught everyone’s attention. The gaming company 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.”