Link also realized that his shooting touch was a little off today.
This was an extremely rare occurrence throughout his entire career.
What made Link so formidable was not only his individual ability, but also his remarkable consistency.
He would never score over thirty points one day, then suffer a massive shooting slump and brick shot after shot the next.
Link could maintain a steady level of play through all eighty-two games. If the maximum rating for consistency was only 99 for everyone else, then Link's consistency rating would definitely be 200.
People had marveled more than once at Link's ability to stay in form. After all, fluctuations in performance were perfectly normal on a basketball court.
Even Michael Jordan had nights where he went 9-for-35 and bricked twenty-six shots.
Even Stephen Curry, who was freakishly accurate, had already played as many as twenty games in his career with a field-goal percentage below 25%.
Yet such things rarely happened to Link, which instead made him seem abnormal.
As a result, Link's consistency had always been a topic people loved to talk about.
Today, Link had finally been "normal" for once, but he simply could not be happy about it.
Right now, the Houston Rockets and Harden were fired up to take him down. This dip in form had come at the absolute worst possible time!
So staying up late really was bad! Two nights of poor sleep in a row had actually affected his shooting touch this much.
Of course, the Rockets players did not know that yet. They were still all brimming with aggression, looking as though they were ready to fight to the death.
Link shook his head and stopped overthinking it. Maybe once the game began and the pressure kicked in, his shooting touch would naturally return?