Chapter 1308 Heat Want to Trade Drummond

Tomorrow, the Suns will start a four-game road trip. The first one is a back-to-back game against the Pistons. They will rush to Detroit tonight. The distance is long and close to Canada, which will be very tiring.

So after getting on the plane, Li Ba asked his teammates to rest and sleep.

At four o'clock, Li Ba woke up and looked at his teammates. Most of them were sleeping, only Jimmy Butler was listening to music with his eyes wide open.

"Boss, I can't sleep!"

Feeling Li Ba's sight, Butler looked up and was startled, and hurriedly explained.

He was too excited. In the just-concluded game, he actually played for 25 minutes and scored 9 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals and 1 block. Although this data is still very poor, it is his best performance.

"It seems that you don't want to play today." Li Ba said unhappily.

Jimmy Butler quickly pulled off his headphones, closed his eyes and began to sleep.

He still couldn't sleep. He was in a daze and didn't know what time it was. Suddenly, he heard Drummond next to him calling him, and then he woke up. The plane had already landed at the airport. Looking out the window, he could already see the faint sunlight.

At 6:30 in the morning, the Suns arrived in Detroit. They settled in the hotel at almost 8 o'clock and continued to rest.

The Pistons are no longer as strong as they were in the Pistons' five-tiger era. They have not made the playoffs for three consecutive seasons. Even if the Suns were back-to-back, they relied on their strong strength to defeat the Pistons and won three consecutive victories at the beginning.

On November 3, the Suns arrived in Orlando and will challenge the Magic on the 4th.

The Magic traded Howard last season and started the reconstruction with great courage. Now they are weak.

In fact, in the future, the reconstruction of the Magic is far away. It will not be until the 2018-19 season that they will make it to the playoffs again, but at that time they will only be in the first round of the Eastern Conference. In fact, the reconstruction failed and they have become a bottom-ranked team. This also shows the difficulty of reconstruction.

Just like the Celtics, who played for two seasons by picking up the Cavaliers' lineup, they are now in trouble and have to start rebuilding.

The Spurs have also gone through several seasons, with a lot of No. 1 and No. 2 picks, but they still failed to rebuild and had to recall old players such as Duncan and Parker.

The only advantage is that the Spurs still have Popovich, who is very capable of training newcomers, and there is more hope for reconstruction.

Like the Suns, with Li Ba as the core, rebuilding as soon as they say, that is rare.

It is said that when the Suns and Magic play a game, the media will hype this game, but no, except for Orlando Media, almost all other media are talking about the Suns' next game.

On the evening of the 4th, the Suns defeated the Magic and won four consecutive victories at the start, and then rushed to Miami overnight to start the second back-to-back of this round of away trips, and will challenge the defending champion Heat on the 5th.

The Heat got Deron Williams, and their strength is better than the championship season. This game is also a time to test the true strength of the Suns.

In the media's view, in the first four games of the Suns, only the Mavericks had some strength, but they were not a first-class team. The other three teams were weak teams, which were not enough to show the real strength of the Suns. Only a championship-level team like the Heat could do that.

On the morning of the 5th, the Suns rested in the hotel in Miami, had free time in the afternoon, and gathered at the hotel at 4 o'clock.

James, Wade, Gasol and others came to the hotel to pick up Li Ba and invited him to have lunch at the Xianbei Restaurant.

Ray Allen was also among them. Like Haslem, he left the Suns and returned to the Heat.

"Mark, didn't the Heat trade you?" Li Ba joked after sitting down.

Speaking of this, Gasol touched his head and laughed, saying, "No, they promised me a big contract last season."

But James next to him looked serious. He thought of the Suns' inside line this season. Marc Gasol obviously couldn't keep up with the speed of the hammer, and the Suns' outside line had restored the fast break ability, so the overall speed of the Heat was slower than that of the Suns.

He was thinking about this problem, and so was Pat Riley, the general manager of the Heat. He thought of Gasol again. He had his eyes on Drummond, the Suns' 2012 rookie, and wanted to trade him.

Drummond has excellent physical fitness and bursting physical energy. He runs back and forth faster than guards like Westbrook and Irving. If his skills were not too rough, his ranking would definitely be in the top three.

The template given to this rookie by the media is the Hammer, but Pat Riley believes that the template for this rookie should be O'Neal.

As long as Drummond can practice low-post skills and close-to-basket shooting, he will be another big shark, a big shark that can compete with the Hammer, and this future big shark is only 19 years old now, while the Hammer is already 30 years old.

However, he was a little scratching his head. It was very difficult to trade Gasol back to the Suns, because the Suns did not lack Gasol at all, and Gasol's big contract was also an obstacle.

At 8 o'clock in the evening, before the game started, both sides announced the starting lineup.

Suns: Li Ba, Nene, Caron Butler, George Hill, Harden.

Heat: Marc Gasol, Haslem, James, Wade, Deron Williams.

In the TNT live broadcast, Barkley said: "Haslem did not choose to renew his contract with the Suns after his contract ended last season. This season, he returned to the Heat and partnered with Gasol in the interior. His ability value has declined seriously since last season, averaging only 6+7 per game. Although his rebounding ability is still good, his playing time is only 25 minutes."

Kenny Smith said: "The Heat should continue to strengthen. The 32-year-old Haslem cannot take on the starting position of the fourth position. He is old."

At the beginning of the game, Li Ba and Gasol had a jump ball and won the opponent. The Suns attacked.

Li Ba quickly passed Gasol, who couldn't pull him. Haslem blocked him and was knocked away by him, and then rushed into the top of the arc.

"Boss!"

Harden saw a good opportunity, shouted, pushed with both hands, and threw the ball to Li Ba.

However, the ball was too fast, Li Ba didn't catch up, and the ball hit the backboard directly, and then was picked up by James who retreated.

Harden wanted to do a Ba-style dunk, but ended up getting a turnover. He was dumbfounded and hurried back to defense.

"This idiot!"

Li Ba cursed in his heart while returning to defense.

"Harden and the Hammer still don't cooperate enough, so turnovers are inevitable." Zhang Heli laughed.

Heat attack.

The two inside players were all active in the paint area, because Gasol and Haslem were not very good at spreading out, and they had to protect the rebounds, so the Heat's tactics could not spread out.

In this way, James and Wade's breakthroughs could not be played, and they could only shoot from the outside, which reduced their power by more than half.

This is also the helplessness of this type of breakthrough players. As long as Li Ba is inside, they are just an ordinary outside shooting star.