October 3.

With the expectations of many Thunder players, this day finally officially arrived.

Today, the Thunder will face the challenge of the Memphis Grizzlies at home in the first preseason game of the new season.

Although this is just an ordinary preseason game, neither winning nor losing will have much impact on the new season.

But even so, this very young Thunder team still felt a little excited.

Hao is no exaggeration to say that in this Thunder team, except for Earl Watson, Wilkins and other players who have been playing in the league for many years.

Most of the remaining players are rookies who have not played in the league for several seasons. Even Kevin Durant, who has been poured into the team's future core, is currently just a second-year rookie.

Finally, Yang Fan, who is the team's head coach, is also the team that coached the NBA for the first year.

Therefore, the Thunder have been looking forward to the arrival of this preseason game for a long time.

Because no matter what the future development direction of these players will be, this season, everyone, including head coach Yang Fan, has only one goal.

That is, when the outside world is generally not optimistic about it, try to enter the playoffs and prove the value of your existence.

After all, in the combat power forecast list before the start of the new season, the Thunder ranked only second to last in the West and fourth to last in the league.

It can be said that this ranking is completely an insult to the Thunder, apart from not having any optimistic attitude towards Yang Fan coaching the team.

It is even more a downside to potential newcomers like Thunder.

Even in last year's rookie season, Kevin Durant averaged 20.3 points, 4.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game.

But before the new season begins, no one thinks Durant can lead the Thunder out of the predicament.

It is precisely because of this that during the offseason, the young players from all over the team worked hard to train.

Especially Durant, who is the star of the family, although Durant played very crazy in the first half of the offseason, Durant also invested a lot of energy in his personal training after returning from the offseason.

And at the same time, Durant was able to stand on the same front with Yang Fan without any objection because in a sense, they can be regarded as the same type of people.

It can be considered as having a higher heart, but it has not been recognized by outside fans for a long time.

So once the Thunder can set sail in the new season, Yang Fan will definitely not be the only one who can truly soar into the sky, at least the name of Kevin Durant must be added.

Before the game started, the entire Ford Center Arena was indeed as head coach Yang Fan expected. Looking around, it was basically in an empty state, and there were not many spectators coming to watch before the game.

Even though Yang Fan had already prepared for this situation, he still felt a little helpless when Yang Fan personally witnessed that the team was not expected by people.

Fortunately, although the attendance rate of the entire Ford Center Arena was only a few people at this time, all of these fans were wearing uniform cheering T-shirts.

And shouted and cheered loudly in the middle of the stadium.

After all, when the Thunder decided to leave Seattle this summer and relocate the team to Olympiad City, it definitely made Olympiad fans feel very excited.

Because this means that since the beginning of this season, Oscar has also owned its own NBA team.

So if we talk about the cohesion of a team's fans, the Thunder will not perform worse than any team.

But unfortunately, before the season started, the Thunder were labeled as the bottom of the league.

So even for the team at their doorstep, fans don’t want to waste money on preseason.

As we all know, the preseason is just a warm-up method before the start of the NBA regular season. In such occasions, no team will really fight with their opponents.

So under normal circumstances, the attendance rate of the NBA preseason is already very bleak.

I'm afraid that in addition to those super teams in the league, the preseason attendance rate can reach more than 40% is already considered very good.

Before the game, both players warmed up shooting in their respective halfs. Even though this was just an irrelevant game, for the two brothers, the Grizzlies and the Thunder, if they could win, no one would want to lose.

While the players were warming up shooting on the court, Grizzlies' head coach Mark Jaffaroni was holding a tactical board to discuss with the assistant coach.

In the last season of coaching the Grizzlies, Jaffaroni finally led the team to a record of 22 wins and 60 losses. Therefore, once the Grizzlies cannot make any breakthroughs in the new season, then Jaffaroni's dismissal will definitely become inevitable.

In this case, Jaffaroni, who is basically afraid of losing, has invested 120% of his energy on the court.

If the reason why Yang Fan hopes to win this preseason is that this is his first official game after entering the NBA.

So for Jaffaroni, the reason why he hopes to win this preseason is that he does not want the word "loss" to be heard from the team boss again.

Otherwise, once Jaffaroni is faced with the end of firing in the new season, there will be no team in the league willing to give him a chance to prove himself again.

So it's such an irrelevant preseason game, but for these two head coaches, they all hope that the team can do their best to win a good start in the new season.

Simply put, the team has been rotten for too long. As coaches, Yang Fan and Jaffaroni do not want to accept failure, and the other does not dare to face failure.

So in this game where it is basically recognized as a rogue, the teams on both sides will inevitably take it seriously, and there is basically no possibility of letting go.

On the other hand, when Grizzlies head coach Jaffaroni was discussing tactics with the assistant coach, Yang Fan seemed much more relaxed and comfortable.

Although Yang Fan at this moment cannot say that he should eat or drink, and should not put anything to his heart, at least he can't see any pressure on his face.

Before the game, not only did not nervously discuss the tactical discussions with the assistant coach for this game, but instead talked and laughed with Dimash off the court. Those who didn't know thought these two were the audience.

Of course, compared with Yang Fan's personal optimistic attitude, assistant coach Snyder could not relax at all at this moment.

Because for Snyder, the return to the NBA is too important to him, so he doesn't want to see the team facing failure.

If he cannot help the Thunder get out of the predicament, then this indirectly means that his NBA career journey will once again become a mirror and water moon.

However, although Snyder wanted to discuss the details of the game with head coach Yang Fan.

But whenever Snyder turned around and found that Yang Fan and shooting coach Dimash were talking and laughing, he didn't know how to express and "interrupt".

No matter what, Yang Fan is the head coach of this team. Snyder could not walk over and shout loudly at Yang Fan:

"Play, play, play! You just know how to play, the game is about to begin, so you can't be more serious?!"

Snyder would not doubt at all that if he really did this, then Yang Fan, who has always been kind, would definitely throw death-ray eyes at him.

"Queen, come."

Just as Snyder was anxious on the sidelines and was thinking about how to communicate with Yang Fan, he suddenly heard Yang Fan shouting his name.

As for Yang Fan's shout this time, Snyder sounded like a sound, because Yang Fan finally planned to discuss tactics with him!!

"Coach Yang, what do you want to ask me about some of the advantages and disadvantages of the Grizzlies, I took the time to sort out them out last night and made them into a report."

"So should we explain to the players before the game?!"

He quickly walked to Yang Fan's side. Before Yang Fan could say something, Snyder directly handed over a piece of materials to Yang Fan, and then he said a lot like a machine gun in his mouth.

Looking at the report Snyder handed to him at this time, Yang Fan, who was originally talking and laughing with shooting coach Dimash, suddenly fell into silence at this moment.

After Yang Fan lowered his head and stared at the material report in his hand for a moment, the whole person raised his head with a strange expression, and then asked Snyder weakly in a very uncertain tone:

"No, I just want to ask, have you brought the few oranges we didn't finish eating this morning?"

“…………”
Chapter completed!