With the Warriors signing Wang Feng, everything seems to be explained.
Why did the Warriors choose to trade the team's core players?
The reason is simple: to free up salary space.
In 1995, the league's new broadcast contract came into effect, and the salary cap saw a big increase. However, even so, it only increased from the previous 15.96 million to 23 million.
The Warriors want to provide free agent Wang Feng with a contract with an annual salary of 8.6 million, but the salary cap simply does not allow it. Wang Feng cannot sign the Bird Rights, so they can only free up salary space as much as possible.
Tim Hardaway's annual salary in the 1995-96 season was US$3.73 million, and Donyel Marshall's annual salary was US$2.73 million. Their combined salary was as high as US$6.46 million.
If they don't trade them, the Warriors will have no way of signing Wang Feng.
But having said that, everyone still doesn't understand, if you sign a forward, why would you trade the team's core point guard?
If Tim Hardaway is traded away, who will the Warriors use as point guard next season?
At this time, no one thought that Wang Feng was ready to serve as point guard.
Although Magic Johnson has only retired not long ago, the league is still not particularly accustomed to point guards who are over 2 meters tall.
No matter what the outside world says, with Wang Feng officially signing a contract with the Warriors, he will play in the NBA for the Warriors for at least the next two years.
Wang Feng joining the Warriors also officially announced the Knicks' failure to retain the championship-winning lineup.
The house leaked and it rained all night. Two days later, Knicks head coach Pat Riley officially resigned as the team's head coach and joined the Miami Heat as both the team's general manager and head coach.
Only then did people realize that Pat Riley was probably behind the Heat's previous trades.
The Heat, who acquired Tim Hardaway and Alonzo Mourning at the same time, have jumped into the ranks of the league's top teams.
Immediately after the news of Riley's departure, Ewing also started to make a fuss.
Ewing, who won the championship and FMVP for the team, insisted on a big contract. After some bargaining between his agent and the team, the two parties signed a contract extension of more than 21.72 million US dollars, of which the first
The annual salary was as high as US$18.72 million, and in the second year it was only US$3 million.
This contract is exactly the same as in the original history. It seems that the Knicks are still obsessed with Jordan and hope to have the opportunity to join the competition for Jordan's ownership after Jordan's contract expires next year.
Ewing's annual salary of 18.72 million US dollars instantly surpassed Wang Feng's 8.6 million, becoming the league's first annual salary and the first contract in NBA history with a salary exceeding 10 million.
The league has officially entered the era of tens of millions of annual salaries.
Wang Feng's title of No. 1 in annual salary in the league was snatched away by Ewing not long after he enjoyed it, and then he couldn't even keep the No. 2 title.
Although the Rockets lost the championship in the finals, in order to keep the glider Drexler, they still provided him with a three-year contract extension of US$21 million, of which the first-year salary was as high as US$9.81 million.
, 5.5 million per year for the subsequent two years.
As a result, Wang Feng's annual salary of 8.6 million can only rank third in the league, behind Ewing and Drexler.
Although it is not the first year's annual salary, in this era of 1995, the annual salary of 8.6 million was high enough.
Behind Wang Feng are a number of league superstars, including David Robinson, Chris Webber, Shaquille O'Neal and others.
As for Jordan, I don’t even know where he ranks. Although he is the god of basketball, Jordan’s current annual salary is only US$3.85 million.
Of course, next year Jordan will get a super high-priced contract of 30 million, and the annual salary has no substantial meaning to him.
During the bustling free market period, Wang Feng felt that he didn't have much to do.
The Chinese restaurant in New York's Chinatown has been renovated and will be open for trial operation soon. Wang Xu is recruiting and interviewing store employees, and Wang Feng, a layman, can't help much.
The same goes for the Warriors. Although Wang Feng can leave for San Francisco now, the team is already on vacation at this time. He can only meet Garnett and other rookies who are reporting to the team, just to watch.
Just lively.
A few days ago, Directors Zhang and Director Su also left to return to China. They very kindly invited Wang Feng to return to China and assured him that Wang Feng would receive a warm welcome in China. Many TV media wanted to give him a special interview.
, also includes multiple CCTV channels.
However, Wang Feng still declined.
To be honest, he doesn't really care how much his popularity has increased in China. He didn't go back to the 1990s for such trivial matters. He became a Chinese citizen just out of pure feelings for his family and country, and he didn't want to take advantage of China.
The idea of gaining more benefits as a national player.
So he was not prepared to return to China.
It is worth mentioning that someone from the Basketball Association has contacted Wang Feng and started discussions about Wang Feng joining the national team.
Wang Feng gave his own conditions.
There is no problem joining the Chinese Men's Basketball Team, but he has a condition, that is, he will only participate in the Olympics, World Championships and other competitions, and due to the NBA's competition system, he needs to arrange the time to report to the national team for training based on his actual situation.
If it were in the past, Wang Feng would usually accept everyone who came. No matter what the competition was, no matter how small the Asian league, the system would provide rewards. Although they were small, mosquito meat was still considered meat.
But today is different from the past. Wang Feng will face the strongest opponent in history, the Bulls dynasty led by Jordan Pippen.
He needs more time and energy to prepare to face this powerful enemy, and smaller events would be a waste of his time.
But the Atlanta Olympics, which will be held next year, are definitely worth participating in.
The 1996 Chinese men's basketball team can be said to be the most talented in the history of men's basketball, even better than the 2008 Chinese men's basketball team. After all, the 2008 Chinese men's basketball team was actually supported by Dayao alone.
, whether it is Dayao, Arab League or others, they all play around Dayao on the court.
But the 1996 men's basketball team was different. They had more offensive points with the ball and more characteristics. It was precisely because of this that they were able to lead the team to the quarterfinals of the Olympic Games for the first time.
If we look purely at strength, if the 2008 Chinese Men's Basketball Team and the 1996 Chinese Men's Basketball Team face off directly, the 2008 Chinese Men's Basketball Team has a high probability of winning. Dayao Yao at his peak was truly unstoppable at the basket.
But Wang Feng personally still prefers the 1996 Huaguo men's basketball team. If he can play alongside them, it will be a good memory.
…
With nothing to do, Wang Feng finally reported to the San Francisco Warriors early.
The main reason for reporting in advance is to get used to the Warriors environment first.
Speaking of which, Wang Feng started his career with the Warriors and spent one and a half years with the Warriors, so he is not too unfamiliar with this place.
It's just that there is a full 20 years between San Francisco in 2015 and San Francisco in 1995. After 20 years of changes, except for some iconic surface buildings, there is basically no similarity between the two.
Even the Oracle Arena, the home of the Warriors, has been renovated many times during this period. In his impression, in just one year, the Oracle Arena will undergo another renovation and remodeling, and then the Warriors will open the San Jose Arena.
The stadium served as a temporary home court for the entire season of 1996-97.
During this period, the Oracle Arena was not called the Oakland Arena.
Of course, these are all insignificant, trivial things.
After Wang Feng arrived in San Francisco, he was immediately warmly welcomed by the Warriors and met with the team's recently replaced new owner Chris Cohan, general manager Bob and a number of senior management personnel.
The Warriors have given the greatest respect and attention to the star that the team signed with the third highest salary in the league.
During the conversation, Bob even asked Wang Feng for his opinion on the new head coach candidate.
After Don Nelson resigned, the Warriors were temporarily replaced by assistant coaches. The Warriors have also been considering candidates for the team's new head coach.
Wang Feng did not directly express this, but said he would respect the team's judgment.
Of course he knew that the Warriors would eventually hire Rick Adelman to coach the Warriors.
Wang Feng also knew that Adelman's tactical style was more in line with his playing style, so he did not give any substantive suggestions and acted as if he had no desires, no demands, no competition, no competition.
In fact, Adelman's two years coaching the Warriors can be regarded as two years of Waterloo. The worst regular season record of his career was during his time with the Warriors, only 36.6%.
But you can't entirely blame Adelman.
The Warriors' lineup during this period itself was very strange.
Tim Hardaway, Sprewell, Joe Smith, although these main players have good offensive and scoring abilities, none of them are good at defense. In other words, they all prefer offense to scoring, and they especially like to play alone.
.
How can the Warriors have an outstanding record with such a bunch of players?
Don Nelson should actually take the blame for this.
Nelson's tactical awareness was very advanced. In the 1990s, he already had the awareness of letting the team play fast-paced run-and-gun tactics. The Warriors' players with good scoring ability were all personally selected by Nelson, who also served as the vice president.
But Nelson only focused on offense and completely ignored defense. The offense was even crazier than the Suns' running and gunning. In this era when three-pointers are not valued by the league and powerful centers emerge in large numbers, this concept obviously does not work.
Does not have the ingredients for success.
The problems faced by the Warriors have basically been half solved by Wang Feng. With his arrival, Hardaway left the team and Joe Smith was replaced by Garnett.
Even though Garnett is only a high school student, with limited playing time during his rookie season, he averaged 1.1 steals and 1.6 blocks per game, as well as 10 points and 6 rebounds. Wang Feng has every reason to believe that with focused training,
, Garnett can become the Warriors' defensive leader inside.
With Garnett inside and Wang Feng outside, although the Warriors' defense cannot reach the league's top level, at least it is not the Warriors team that leaks air everywhere and can easily score anyone who comes.
Not long after, the Warriors publicly announced their new head coach candidate, former Portland Trail Blazers head coach Rick Adelman.
At this time, Adelman, who had coached the Trail Blazers for six seasons, was already a well-known coach in the league. He had a record of 291 wins and 154 losses with the Trail Blazers, with a winning rate of 65%.
But because he was unable to help the Trail Blazers achieve success in the playoffs, Adelman eventually parted ways with the Trail Blazers and took a year off to settle down.
As the head coach of the Warriors this time, Adelman seems confident.
"Fortunately, I coached the best forward in the West, Clyde (Drexler), when I was with the Trail Blazers, and now I am about to coach a forward who is as capable as Clyde, and may even be better.
I will maximize Wang Feng's ability on the court and help the Warriors return to the playoffs."
Returning to the playoffs, no words make Golden State people happier than Adelman's promise.
Last season, the Warriors humiliatedly ranked third from the bottom in the Western Conference. Although they got the No. 1 pick as a blessing in disguise, they obviously still want their team to be a strong team in the league rather than a strong contender for the lottery pick.
Therefore, as soon as Adelman took office, he was immediately warmly welcomed by the Warriors fans.
At this time, Adelman never dreamed that the core of the team, whom he had never met before, would quietly dig a big hole for himself.
Wang Feng, who arrived in San Francisco early, was conducting daily training at the Warriors' training facility where he was familiar with and accustomed to the Warriors. On the other hand, he also participated in some interviews with local San Francisco media with the support of the Warriors.
This is a very necessary thing. Golden State fans need to understand what kind of player the team's core players will be in the next two years. Wang Feng also needs to further build his reputation here. After all, many Warriors fans actually don't know what kind of player they will be.
Wang Feng is still in the wait-and-see stage.
Wang Feng is indeed very good, but is he really worth the team giving up Tim Hardaway and replacing Joe Smith, the No. 1 pick with good offensive ability, for Garnett?
During the interview, the reporter asked many questions, including why Wang Feng chose the Warriors, what responsibilities he will assume in the team, etc.
Wang Feng, who has been in the league for many years, answered these questions fluently and looked like a star.
Then, the interviewer asked a very topical question.
"Just a few days ago, the team's new head coach Rick Adelman said that he would help the Warriors return to the playoffs in the new season. What do you think of this? Are you confident that he can do it?"
"Of course, the Warriors are a very good team, and Rick has a winning percentage of 65% in his coaching career and has led the Blazers to the Finals. If we get together and can't even make the playoffs, then
That's failure." Wang Feng replied decisively.
"So if the Warriors really enter the playoffs in the new season, what is your goal in the playoffs? Lead the team to the conference semifinals?" the reporter immediately asked.
Then he saw Wang Feng looking at her like she was crazy.