Crushing the Eastern Conference Champions
Hearing this, Coleman's face darkened so much it looked like it could wring out water. He glared fiercely at Hysen, a stampede of ten thousand mythical beasts roaring through his mind...
Where the hell did this idiotic anchor come from?
Could he be a bit more professional? A bit more reliable? Less of these stupid antics! And that whatever-his-name-is donkey Jerry, hurry the fuck up and lead it away out of my sight!!!
It just dropped a fart a moment ago, what if that thing takes a shit in a second?!
**!!
……
Such thoughts could only be cursed inside Coleman's head. On the outside, he still had to put on a very magnanimous expression. "If I lose the bet, I gladly accept the punishment. However, it's still far too early to discuss this; Lin has only scored 3 points."
"It's already 4 points."
As Coleman spoke, Lin Feng's additional free throw also swished through the net.
4:0!
Just as the game started, the Knicks took the lead.
The Cavaliers inbounded the ball from the backcourt, and it reached Devin's hands. Lin Feng directly bestowed a "Curse Aura" upon him. Before the match began, Lin Feng had already devised his game strategy: strive to blow the game wide open by halftime. Because Lin Feng's current stamina was limited and completely incomparable to these NBA superstars, a protracted war simply did not suit him.
The blessing of the Curse Aura took effect immediately. The moment Devin secured the ball, his foot slipped, and he nearly fell to the ground, the basketball in his hands slipping out of his grasp.
Lin Feng seized the opportunity to steal the ball, charged straight into the Cavaliers' half, and then pulled up for a sudden jump shot beyond the three-point line.
Swish! It hit again!
7:0!
The Knicks grabbed a seven-point lead.
"He hit it again! Lin Feng has already scored 7 points," Hysen said, looking at Coleman.
Coleman gave Hysen a sideways glance, another ten thousand mythical beasts stampeding through his heart...
My eyes aren't blind, as if I wouldn't know Lin Feng has scored seven points?!
"Devin's performance in these past two possessions was truly awful." Coleman attributed the credit for Lin Feng's scoring entirely to Devin's abnormal slump.
The game continued.
Because Devin was trying to win a petty grudge against Lin Feng, the Cavaliers' next three offensive possessions were all handled entirely by himself. However, he was a man cursed by the Curse Aura, and after three field goal attempts, he "very normally" bricked every single one of them.
Meanwhile, Lin Feng capitalized on two of those three defensive stops, sinking two more three-pointers. In less than three minutes of the opening quarter, Lin Feng had already netted four three-pointers, accumulating 13 points.
As for the Cavaliers, they had yet to score a single point.
The Knicks established a dream start of 13:0.
Unable to crack open the scoring, the Cavaliers were forced to call a timeout.
"Coach Coleman, Lin Feng has already scored 13 points..." Hysen said.
"I know." Coleman glared fiercely at Hysen.
"Then, should we bring Jerry up here now?" Hysen asked again.
Coleman clenched his fists tightly, vowing that he would never again come to UNP Sports as a guest analyst in this lifetime. How could there be such a clueless anchor?! Wasn't this purely intended to make a fool out of him?!
"Let's wait until Lin Feng exceeds 13 points first!" Coleman found a loophole; Lin Feng's current score was exactly tied with the score he had preset.
However.
Just as the timeout ended, Lin Feng once again successfully stole the ball from Devin. This time he didn't shoot a three-pointer, instead putting on a show with a thunderous slam dunk!
15 points!
15:0!
Lin Feng single-handedly blew up the entire Cavaliers team, and this point differential also became the worst start in Cavaliers history.
"Coach Coleman..." After Lin Feng's dunk, Hysen called out to Coleman once more. However, before the latter half of his sentence could leave his mouth, Coleman slammed his hand on the desk and stood straight up!
"Dammit, this damn guest analyst job, I'm not doing it anymore!!" Furious and exasperated, Coleman flicked his sleeve and stormed off.
Left dumbfounded, Hysen blinked: "Oh my god, did I say something wrong?"
……
A small hiccup in the live television broadcast naturally would not affect the progress of the game.
Because of Devin's baffling and continuous string of bizarre turnovers, Cavaliers head coach Brown had no choice but to temporarily bench him.
Sitting on the substitutes' bench, Devin wore a dazed expression, even beginning to doubt the meaning of his existence.
Can I even play basketball anymore?!
The game continued.
Lin Feng no longer used the Curse Aura. Whether it was the Curse Aura or the Lucky Aura, there were usage limits—they could only be used a maximum of three times within a single day, so Lin Feng had to save the remaining two for any unexpected emergencies.
The Cavaliers finally got their first point on the board through Thomas, who drove into the paint under the Knicks' basket and made a layup.
However, Lin Feng didn't give the Cavaliers the slightest breathing room, turning right back around and draining another three-pointer.
The point gap was widened back to 16 points.
In the ensuing play, both sides traded blows. However, the Cavaliers' offensive conversion rate was extremely low, and several starters inexplicably kept throwing up bricks. On the flip side, the Knicks played a complete team game; aside from Lin Feng's three-pointers, all four of the other starters also got on the scoreboard.
The end of the first quarter arrived.
41:16!
The Knicks led by a whopping 25 points, and Lin Feng had precisely hacked off 25 points in the opening quarter alone, shooting 7-for-9 from beyond the arc and adding two slam dunks.
One could say that Lin Feng's strategy to blow the game wide open in the first quarter had basically been achieved.
Faced with such an astronomical first-quarter deficit, the home fans at the Quicken Loans Arena were completely at a loss. Quicken Loans Arena, previously reputed as a demonic home court, had become as quiet as a little kitten; all they could do was let out sighs of resignation.
Some emotionally fragile fans even had tears welling up in their eyes as they watched Lin Feng sink those three-pointers one after another.
Too miserable!!
Cleveland fans had never before witnessed their team being tortured like this on their home court. Among the Big Three, Devin was completely lost, Confort had vanished into thin air, and only Thomas still retained some offensive firepower, yet his first-quarter shooting percentage was a standard blacksmith-level 3-for-11...
"The first quarter has ended. I believe no one could have anticipated such an outcome: 41:16! The Knicks lead by 25 points! Pay attention, it's the Knicks leading! Oh my god, if I hadn't witnessed the process of the game with my own eyes, I would have thought the Cavaliers had sent out an all-bench lineup."
"Yet, that's not the case! They are playing with their full starting lineup!" Hysen shook his head, sighing, "This Knicks team right now is simply too terrifying..."
The game continued.
At the start of the second quarter, both teams sent out their bench units to battle. However, after more than three minutes of play, not only was the point deficit not narrowed, but it was further stretched to 28 points.
At this moment, Cavaliers head coach Brown could no longer sit still, immediately substituting his starters back in, striving to catch the Knicks off guard.
However, Philth reacted with lightning speed. Seeing that the Cavaliers had made substitutions, he promptly rotated his own starters back onto the floor.
Lin Feng, having rested for nearly half a quarter, was like a fully charged smartphone, all his functions completely reactivated.
Three-pointers, slam dunks, drives, layups...
In this quarter, Lin Feng penetrated and fired from the perimeter, racking up another 16 points. By the end of the first half, Lin Feng had already amassed a terrifying 41 points.
Looking over at the Cavaliers, Thomas had contributed 12 points, Confort 8 points, and Devin only had a pitiful 4 points to his name. In other words, the total combined score of the Cavaliers' Big Three barely exceeded half of Lin Feng's individual score.
At the end of the first half, the Knicks already held a massive lead of as many as 35 points.
71 vs 36!
Regardless of whether viewed from the scoreboard or the flow of the game, this match was an absolute thrashing.
Furthermore, it was the eighth-seeded New York Knicks utterly thrashing the top-ranked Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference!!
……