Chapter 81

He knew that it would be difficult for him to get much playing time tomorrow, but he felt uneasy about taking a championship for nothing without doing anything.

"If I just follow you guys to take a championship without doing anything, what face will I have to tell others that I came out of the Teiko basketball club after entering high school?"

"Uh..." Tiandao and Murasakibara put away their playful faces; they felt the seriousness of this senior.

"Being able to meet you guys in the last year of junior high is our luck, and of course, our misfortune."

Murasakibara scratched his head and said carefully, "Um, Senior Yuta, I didn't..."

"I know you didn't say that on purpose." Yuta Yamanaka waved his hand, "As your senior, I'm not that narrow-minded."

"Tiandao, Murasakibara, you possess talents far beyond ours. So, no matter what difficulties you encounter in the future, never give up easily."

"Otherwise, I will feel that my hard work is like a joke..."

The topic was too heavy.

After packing up their things, they walked on the way back.

Murasakibara asked inexplicably, "Tian-zai."

"What?"

"Basketball, it seems quite interesting."

"Winning is of course interesting."

Otherwise, why work hard?

Really just like Kuroko, as long as you play happily?

If so, you might as well go play with yourself, why play ball?

Basketball has never been one person's dribbling.

This doesn't mean that playing ball must be united and team-oriented.

Rather, any team has a group of loyal fans behind it.

You look at Clevelanders.

Their market is not big, the city is not advanced, and in front of Los Angeles and New York, they are like stinky beggars; before their boss made his fortune, he just knew how to write letters to David Stern to complain every day.

People describe Cleveland, always using words like "Ke-village," mocking these country bumpkins for being whimsical, with no championship for 50 years.

And the Cleveland Cavaliers, because of this reason, lacked attraction to stars and hadn't won any sports championship for half a century.

1989, one of Jordan's representative works.

That was a game in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs; previously, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Chicago Bulls had tied the series 2:2.

Because the format at that time was BO5, a race-to-three format, this game became a life-and-death battle.

With 7 seconds left before the end of the game, the Clevelanders were leading the Bulls by one point at 98:97.

Everyone knows what happened later; Boss Jordan faced Craig Ehlo's defense, used his speed to tear through the opponent's defense, broke through to the mid-range, and hit an ultra-high-difficulty mid-range shot against Larry Nance, overtaking the score in one fell swoop.

This overtaking was also the only time the Bulls took the lead in the whole game.

This shot was evaluated by the media as "The Shot!"

It was also this shot that shattered the hearts of the Clevelanders and destroyed their dreams.

You can't imagine how heartbroken the Clevelanders were at that time.

But people know that after this night, the Clevelanders cheered up again, standing with the team through thick and thin for fifty years.

Finally, after waiting for half a century, the young people had become old men, and they waited for their chosen one, ending this long championship drought.

On that summer night in 2016, countless Clevelanders cried with excitement.

As the old man faced the camera after the game and said that deafening "Cleveland, this is for you!" to the whole world.

Those old men who had waited for half a century seemed to have returned to their youth for a moment; decades of waiting were not in vain!

So bullshit like "playing ball is just about being happy" is truly selfish.

Every team, even if it's not an NBA team, just a CBA one, has thousands of fans standing behind it, with countless fellow villagers expecting you to return in triumph.

Most of these fans have accompanied you through the darkest years, never leaving or abandoning you.

Since you put on that jersey, you have to fight for them.

Fans spend money on tickets, and the money for merchandise doesn't come from the wind!

If you want to play happy basketball, go find that silly guy Howard!

Today's Teiko is united.

They want to fight for themselves, fight for the basketball club, fight for glory, and even more for those fans who have followed them all the way to Kyoto since the group stage.

On the day of the finals.

Fans from both sides made deafening shouts across the Chu-Han boundary, attempting to suppress the other side's voice completely, letting their own team's players only hear their own voices.

Kozo Shirogane made adjustments to the personnel today.

In order to make full use of this morale, he threw Tiandao and the others all to the bench.

Let Yuta Yamanaka and the original first-string players play the first quarter against the opponent.

"We Teiko don't just have a group of first-years!"

A simple sentence was enough to make this group of players like Yuta Yamanaka hot-blooded.

Therefore, after the game started, you could see how they fought against the opponent regardless of everything.

Without reservation, fighting for every ball.

This kind of shock was something Tiandao and the others couldn't bring, like a war.

Every time they scored, the benches of both sides would be in chaos, scrambling to jump up and wave towels to cheer for their teammates.

Kozo Shirogane was observing the expressions of the several first-years at all times, and after finding that they were not distracted like usual and were watching very seriously, he nodded with satisfaction.

"This is the last lesson your seniors give you."

In terms of technology, Yuta Yamanaka and the others had nothing to teach Tiandao and the others, because the latter had long since surpassed the former.

But spirit and will can be inherited.

He hoped that these children who had been sailing smoothly would understand that the court is a place where you need to fight with all your might to win.

"Yosa!"

"Good shot!"

"Defend them!"

The court was filled with such shouts; these lines, which Tiandao usually thought were extremely cliché, seemed particularly powerful today.

"Damn, this little old man really has a way; even I, at my age, am getting hot-blooded."

Before Tiandao went on court in the second quarter, his action of throwing away his jacket was particularly powerful.

The few first-years were all eager to swallow the opponent.

Today's Teiko played particularly united; in the finals where they needed to perform the most, they played the best state of the entire national tournament.

Even Murasakibara, that lazy dog, roared to the sky after a slam dunk.

Seeing this, Kozo Shirogane knew his goal was achieved, and he didn't need to worry about Teiko for the next two years.

The enemies soon lost themselves in Teiko's tidal offensive.

Teiko scored a perverted 38 points in the second quarter and limited the opponent to only 10, creating a heaven-defying 28-point difference in a single quarter.

By the second half, Kozo Shirogane had no intention of calling it a day.

It was the last game anyway, no need to hide anything.

As a result, the biggest tragedy in the history of the national tournament finals occurred.

When the game time ran out, the referee couldn't wait to blow the whistle to end the game.

Because at this moment, the numbers on the scoreboard had become a staggering 142:53!

A full 89-point difference, just 11 points away from breaking 100...