"Ace, it's the first time you've entered the playoffs with such a low ranking and no home field advantage throughout the whole process. For the first time you've entered the playoffs as the eighth seed, will there be any changes to the goal you announced at the beginning of the season?"

"This is a great experience. We went so smoothly last year, and we thought it would be just as smooth this year. Life should have ups and downs like this, allowing us to gain lessons and experience. Moreover, although we are only eighth, we entered the season

After the playoffs, there is hope for the championship, and we will still be the best team."

"Today, we are going to prepare for the black eight? Shouldn't we keep a low profile? It wouldn't be good if our opponents heard about it!"

"It doesn't matter, they don't understand Chinese."

"Ha ha……"

…

Because the Hawks declined all interviews in the previous three days, except for the season summary meeting that Liu Mang did not attend, he was interviewed. After that, he did not accept any interviews during the three preparation days in Detroit. On the day of the series with the Pistons, the Hawks

The team finally opened up for interviews.

Liu Mang accepted exclusive interviews with friendly channel ESPN and domestic Chaoting Channel, as well as a pre-game press conference.

Liu Mang and the Eagles maintained full confidence throughout the whole process and were fully confident in advancing to the second round.

Although the Pistons are better this year than last season, the Hawks are also better. The three young hawks have made significant progress, and they have also added two powerful rookies in Prince and Boozer. The Hawks have no reason to be unconfident.

.

This made the Pistons players very unhappy, especially when they saw that Emmanuel and Leon Smith, who were not even put on the active list by the Hawks, were surrounded by a bunch of reporters, and even the Pistons team

The most popular star Ben Wallace was only interviewed by T.N.T. and a few local reporters in Detroit. The Pistons players were even more unhappy!

The difference in treatment is so obvious!

The last thing Liu Mang accepted was an exclusive interview with Zhang Weiping, who had to follow the Eagles throughout the playoffs and serve as the on-site commentator for most games. After all, it was an exclusive interview with his country's imperial TV station, so it was a little longer.

Today, the Palace of Auburn Hills, home of the Pistons, finally provided the Hawks with a rest area, training ground, energy drinks and other things, and even provided game consoles, computers and a small card that was left in the locker room by an unknown staff member.

The first things are what the visiting team must provide at home, and the latter are additional benefits, just to make the Eagles relax, especially the small card. When Coach Kruger complained angrily, the operations department of the Palace of Auburn Hills said

Yesterday when I was cleaning, the surveillance camera was broken and I couldn’t find out who had intentionally blocked the card. Besides, Detroit is not allowed to engage in prostitution. This is not illegal...

It is an industrial city with the highest proportion of black people in the United States. Young men are full of energy. In order to reduce the crime rate, this is understandable.

When Coach Kruger saw the Pistons' operations manager who looked like he was not afraid of boiling water, he could only go back to the locker room and emphasize to the players again that they were prohibited from participating in any nightclub activities during the playoffs.

At 11 o'clock in the morning, after accepting all interviews, the Hawks once again declined the media's request for training interviews. The afternoon was the Hawks' final preparation time. The playoff opener between the Hawks and the Pistons was placed in the penultimate game of the day.

The game starts at 7 pm Eastern Time, and the last game is the Lakers in the west of the United States against the Timberwolves at home.

After having a nutritious meal at noon, we conducted two sets of 10-minute 5V5 confrontation training at 1:30 in the afternoon, with a 20-minute rest period in between. The overall training took about 50 minutes. At 2:20, the coaching staff ended the training and continued.

No one is allowed to do any training before the pre-match warm-up at 5 o'clock.

You can rest for more than two hours. You can watch the upcoming playoffs between the Nets and Celtics, play games, gamble, and even sleep for more than two hours. Air conditioning, quilts, and massage beds are all available, but

Can't practice or watch Pistons videos.

Everything that can be prepared in the past few days has been prepared. During the last two hours of rest, the Eagles coaching staff chose to let the players take a good rest to relieve their tense nerves.

What can you accomplish in two hours? It’s almost like a waste of energy.

Two hours of studying the video will not be better than the already established tactics studied by the entire coaching staff and all the players. When the time comes, just play according to the preparation. Don't come up with anything unexpected in the last two hours.

, it’s okay if you succeed, but you’ll feel aggrieved if you fail.

The Hawks are not worse than the Pistons in terms of strength, but they have a clear strength advantage, and there is no need for those vain things.

…

Liu Mang was also ready to take a rest. He had indeed practiced enough in the past three days, not less than these two hours.

After receiving the task released by the system yesterday, Liu Mang was not under a lot of pressure. The original Magic team was leading the Pistons 3-1, and the Hawks can definitely do better.

The key is that the Pistons players are crazy!

"I have already begun to think about the next round of opponents: When facing the Detroit Pistons in the first round of the 2002-2003 playoffs, the host needs to lead the team to the first three wins to win the series match point, and then win the third game

In the post-match interview, he publicly stated that he was already considering his next round opponent.

Mission completion requirements: After issuing the declaration, the host must lead the team to successfully eliminate the Pistons and advance to the second round of the playoffs.

Mission completion reward: Detroiter's Fury. Failure penalty: None.

Note: When the host leads the team to win the series and makes a declaration, the Detroit Pistons will trigger the fury of Detroiters."

"The Fury of Detroiters: The temperament of the Steel City is tenacity. When they have lost three games in the series, their iron-blooded character will not give up because of the huge disadvantage. The team's defensive cohesion has been greatly improved, and their physical strength has been greatly improved.

Improvement, fighting spirit is greatly improved, and the effect lasts for all remaining games in the current series. Note: This special card has no side effects."

When Liu Mang saw the full description of this task, he understood why Tracy McGrady was overturned when leading 3-1. The Pistons' defensive foundation was too strong, even though Coach Carlisle was not that good at coaching such a purely defensive team.

, the defensive system is not as good as when Mike Woodson was their defensive assistant in the future, but if they play life defense and only have Tracy McGrady's magic, it will obviously be difficult to deal with the rampaging Pistons.

However, there was not much pressure on Liu Mang, and the Magic were overturned with a 3-1 lead. This was mainly because after the Pistons returned to the home court in Game 5, they took advantage of the momentum of the home court and defended the Magic to only 67 points, while the Pistons scored 88.

The Magic tied the score to 2-3 with a bloodbath of 67 and regained their confidence. In the sixth game after that, the Magic had no chance of winning, and once led by nearly ten points at halftime, but the Pistons had already gained momentum in the second half.

Relying on defense, they reversed the Magic and tied the score.

They were about to eliminate their opponent from 3-1 and were tied at 3-3. Now it was the Magic's turn to lose their fighting spirit. After the third quarter of Game 7, the Magic trailed the Pistons by nearly 30 points, even though Drew Gooden was ahead in the final quarter.

After being defended to zero points by Ben Wallace in the third quarter, he scored 20 points in the last quarter, leading the Magic to a score of 33 to 20 in the quarter. This was only because the Pistons put on a pure substitute, and the Magic ended up with 15 points.

The score difference was disastrous, and the Pistons suffered a huge reversal.

The Magic were overturned 3-1 because the Magic were not very strong in the first place and relied on McGrady to defeat the Pistons in three games. McGrady himself was proud again and said those words that stimulated the Pistons players.

.

Originally, Liu Mang didn't want to get into trouble, and there was no penalty for this task, but that special card made Liu Mang very excited!

If we reach the finals and face the Spurs who have the invincible Duncan this season, this card will be quite useful!

Therefore, the task must be done! Therefore, the key to the Magic's comeback by the Pistons is carefully analyzed. The key point lies in the fifth game. After the Pistons returned to their home court, they bloodbathed the Magic and regained their confidence.

The key is this, Liu Mang wants to avoid the Pistons' violent defense when they return home to take advantage of their home court advantage.

Therefore, Liu Mang's goal, or ambition, is not just to eliminate the Pistons and complete the Black Eight, but...sweep the Pistons and complete the Black Eight!

Since the key turning point for the Pistons is Game 5, then why not let Game 5 happen?

The Magic can lead the Pistons 3-1, so why can't the Hawks score 3-0 in the first three games? The Hawks are much better than the Magic!

After taking a 3-0 lead, he took advantage of the home advantage to suppress the furious Detroiters and eliminate them directly!

After analyzing the strategy for the first round, Liu Mang made up his mind and was still confident. He planned to take a nap for an hour and then get up to watch the second half between the Nets and Celtics to see if the Celtics could create any surprises.

This athlete is a good sleeper and sleeps when he wants. Liu Mang fell asleep quickly.

At this time, the system came with another task, not too big or too small: "Ding... In response to the host's strong desire, the system issues a task: The Strongest Black Eight in History."

"The Strongest Dark Horse in History: Eliminate the Pistons with an absolute crushing score of 4-0, and achieve the title of the Strongest Dark Horse in History. Mission reward: A random star card from the NBA's historical Black Eight team, the lowest is a first-class star card.

"

…

…

After a good sleep, I woke up and saw that this mosquito-meat-like mission reward was almost worthless.

The Black Eight team is the originally weakest team in the playoffs, a team that plays very average in the regular season, and there are almost no Black Eight teams like the Eagles who were first in the division last season and will only be eighth next season.

team, so there are basically no particularly powerful stars, except for the Knicks' Madman and Alan Houston, the Nuggets' Mutombo, the Warriors' Baron Davis, the Grizzlies' Black and Eight Double Bears, the 76ers'

Iguodala.

These are all first-class stars at best. Except for Mutombo, the years when others were bad have basically nothing to do with top stars.

But having such a mission is better than nothing!

Liu Mang set an alarm clock for one hour. After waking up, he went to the bathroom to wash his face, and then went to the rest area with a TV. While watching Kidd abuse the Celtics twins, he also looked at his own system panel.

Ability value 78, three-pointer 84, mid-range shot 83, layup 85, speed 92, jumping 92, and strength 79.

There are also some superstar points, two mid-level superstar point draws, and 322 skill upgrade cards.

There are four level 1 skills: pressing press, high post skills, pull-up layup master, and turn-over jump shot master.

High post and pull-up layups are temporarily unavailable. Liu Mang is ready to upgrade his pressing style and turn-over jump shot!

It takes 295 skill upgrade cards to upgrade a skill from level 1 to level 5, which means a total of 590 skill upgrade cards are needed to fully upgrade two skills. 322 skill upgrade cards are not enough to upgrade two skills to full level, but Liu

Mang also has a special skill upgrade card that can directly upgrade skills from level 4 to level 5, which means only 350 skill upgrade cards are enough.

Liu Mang saw that there were only 22 physical potions left, which was just in time to fill up the warehouse reserves.

With 20,000 superstar points left, Liu Mang used 8,300 superstar points to draw a junior superstar value draw, and drew 46 physical potions, 44 skill upgrade cards, 30 primary injury potions, and 5 hairstyle appreciation ability cards.

.

Liu Mang used the small black screen of his mobile phone to take a picture of his hairstyle. He wondered what kind of hairstyle he wanted for his hair! But he still used it. Who doesn’t want to improve his aesthetic ability?

There are 69 physical fitness potions, 51 primary injury potions, 1 intermediate injury potion and 1 rebound card. These should be enough for this year's playoffs, leaving some superstar value in case of injury.

Just have it as a spare.
To be continued...