Both players had one thing in common.
They were both almost obsessively competitive.
They wanted to win at everything.
No matter how difficult the game got, their competitive drive never wavered.
Driven by that desire to win, they never gave up until the very last second.
That was true of both of them, especially in the Playoffs.
Compared to them, Wang Yi was every bit as competitive.
But unlike them, Wang Yi had something beyond his competitive drive: confidence.
Sometimes, in extremely difficult games that looked unwinnable to anyone watching, Jordan and Kobe still fought fiercely to win, but they had never said, "We're definitely going to win this game."
Wang Yi, on the other hand, had that kind of confidence.
No matter how difficult the game was, if Wang Yi said they were going to win, they would.
Phil Jackson couldn't quite understand why Wang Yi was so confident.
That kind of confidence flew in the face of common sense.
The team was short-handed, and their starting center, Aiton, was already getting old. He could no longer handle thirty minutes of high-intensity play.
Under those circumstances, the Lakers' weaknesses would only become more obvious in the Playoffs.
Their games would be even tougher.
Still, considering the Lakers had Wang Yi, Phil Jackson would say that under Wang Yi's leadership, the team would accomplish a great deal in the Playoffs.
But he wouldn't dare guarantee they would win the championship.
Now Wang Yi had said something like that. Clearly, he was aiming for the championship.
With Core Player Wang Yi already forty years old, was he really going to lead a team cobbled together from Role Players to a championship?
Where did that confidence come from?
Who had given it to him?
Phil Jackson wasn't Wang Yi, so of course