The Pelicans' entire coaching staff was completely baffled by Wang Yi's decision to send out an all-bench lineup.
Four of the coaches didn't recognize any of these players at all.
One assistant coach specialized in studying the opposing team's bench players, in case they tried any unexpected tricks.
Yet even he could barely name two of the five. He didn't recognize the other three at all.
After all, those three had hardly ever seen the court.
What coach would waste limited time and energy studying players from the opposing team who never got playing time?
You'd have to be crazy.
When this group of unfamiliar new faces took the court for the Kings, not only was everyone on the Pelicans completely baffled, but the spectators in the arena and viewers watching on their screens were all just as confused.
Their reactions were exactly the same as those of the Pelicans' players and coaches.
In the Chinese livestream, Xu Jingyu saw the chat flooded with question marks and was just as baffled. He hurriedly looked up the players' information on his tablet.
As a commentator, he'd of course done his homework before the game and could call these players by name, but he didn't really know much about them.
He studied their profiles and tried to recall what he knew about them, only to find that he could barely remember their names. Beyond that, his mind was a blank.
He only remembered one guy who'd pulled off two Old Six moves on the court and been given the nickname Old Six by Wang Yi.
He knew nothing about the rest.
All he could do was say, "What does the Kings' choice of lineup mean? As the saying goes, war is deception. If I put out a lineup that even I don't