By the end of the third quarter, the Knicks led the Kings by four points, but not one of the Knicks players felt secure.
Any NBA team facing the Kings would normally feel nervous if they weren't up by at least 30 points at the end of the third quarter.
Then Wang Yi had trailed the Pelicans by 40 points at the end of the third quarter, only to come back and win by 20, helping the Pelicans break several records in the process. Ever since then, every NBA team had shared one common understanding: the more they led the Kings by, the more nervous they became.
The bigger the lead, the more you felt they were about to pull off something huge.
If you led by four or five points, or five or six, and ended up losing to the Kings, that was only to be expected.
If you led by a dozen points or more and still lost to the Kings, you'd just feel a little regret.
And if you led by twenty-something points and ended up losing, you wouldn't even find it strange. After all, they were the Kings.
But if you led by 30 or 40 points and still lost, that wouldn't just be a loss. It would be a record-breaking defeat—and the most humiliating kind.
King Arthur took the initiative and addressed the coach and his teammates.
"We've got 12 minutes left. We can't afford to let our guard down for even a second. You all know this is Wang Yi's true home court. He'll definitely put on an incredible performance in front of his home crowd. As one of the greatest scorers in history, his strongest weapon is scoring, so I think he'll attack the basket a lot in the fourth quarter."
"So I