Volume 5: Unrivaled
Chapter 771: That Was a Real Misjudgment
Although Green scored in double figures, his efficiency was abysmal—4-for-13 from the field, 1-for-5 from three, and 2-for-3 from the line. He squandered countless perfect wide-open looks. "We can't win a single game?" Of course, some people defended Green. The Trail Blazers had just finished a Game 7, so perhaps Green was merely out of form. Maybe he would recover in the next game? Green scored 12 points but needed 15 shots to do it, wasting many wide-open opportunities. This time, Trail Blazers fans could not even be bothered to curse Green. They just wanted to hear what he had to say after the game. But Green did not accept any interviews. After their initial surprise, Trail Blazers fans' anger surged, and they launched into another round of abuse to vent their frustration. With the referees' help, though, the Trail Blazers had an enormous home-court advantage and managed to hang on until the fourth quarter, only to be finished off by three straight killer threes from Curry. Stotts could not teach Green to shoot threes overnight, nor could he stop using him. Otherwise, before the Trail Blazers' offense improved, their defense would collapse first. The next day, Trail Blazers beat reporters revealed that Green had been putting in extra three-point shooting practice. Jokic was too slow to defend the Warriors' pick-and-rolls, while the two guards were too short to defend them either. The Curry-Antetokounmpo combination was simply unsolvable. A superstar guard plus a superstar big man was the ultimate test for any defense, and no team in the league could stop such a pairing. Those who had questioned Zhang Yu for trading Green away, and even sending him to the Trail Blazers to strengthen an enemy, finally understood that Zhang