The head coach knew that, in a situation like this, one player had to step up, take the lead in practice, and rally the team.
He pinned his hopes on Wemby. After all, Wemby was the team's star.
But ever since Game 1 ended, Wemby's spirits had never lifted. The coach had talked to him again and again, even bringing in a psychologist to help him get his head back in the game, but Wemby still showed no sign of pulling himself together.
The coach had no choice but to pin his hopes on the team's locker-room leader, Magic Hand Jack.
Magic Hand Jack didn't seem to have as big an impact on the court as Wemby or LaMelo, but in reality, he was the leader in the locker room.
In the past, he had always kept his teammates motivated. The whole team's morale practically revolved around him.
When the team wasn't playing well, he could fire the players up. And when they got too relaxed because they were leading by a lot, he could pour cold water on them and snap them out of it.
So Coach Clifford put his hopes in him.
And Magic Hand Jack did exactly what the coach hoped. He kept rallying and encouraging everyone after Game 2, at practice the next day, and before Game 3.
But the methods that had always worked so well seemed to have failed this time.
If they had simply been down 0–2, they might not have felt so hopeless. But Wang Yi had scored 61 points in Game 1, and in Game 2 the entire Raptors team had pulled together. Wang Yi had barely even needed to shoot before they won. It made them feel that they were nowhere near the Raptors' level.
None of them had ever