"Do you want to beat him?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to beat him?"
"Yes!"
"Tell me louder, do you want to beat him?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"Then let's beat him, beat them! Tell him who you are! Tell them who we are!"
In the Warriors' locker room before the game, Green was giving Durant a one-on-one pregame pep talk.
Having gone through the Olympics together, he knew that Tang Tian was now Durant's nightmare. The best way to overcome a nightmare was to face it head-on.
The Christmas Day Game was an opportunity. As long as Durant beat Tang Tian once, everything would fall into place.
The same went for the Warriors.
They had won 73 games last season, only to be swept in the Western Conference Finals and nailed to the pillar of shame. They had come back strong this season, yet fans called them a team carried by referee calls. Even after forming a four-star team, their record was still worse than the Pelicans'.
They needed to prove themselves too—to prove that the Pelicans were merely one of their rivals, not an unbeatable nemesis that dominated them one-sidedly.
Green still had his big mouth. He had now become a one-testicle Warrior, and even his name had long since been written backward, but none of that diminished his fighting spirit.
After his one-on-one pep talk with Durant and his speech to the entire team, the Warriors emerged from the locker room with confidence written all over their faces.
They wanted to win!
They wanted to win this highly anticipated Christmas Day Game!
By the time the Warriors came out of the locker room, the Pelicans had already been warming up on the court for a while.
The Warriors took this game seriously, and so did the Pelicans.
The difference