Chapter 51: Going against a powerhouse: part 2

Jason laughed at his defender "You must be blind if you're calling our Center a little friend. Your school must be so nice letting a disabled person play for their team. Do you get to cut to the front of the lines at Disneyland too?"

Jason chuckled to himself as he brought the ball up court ignoring his defender 'If he wants to try trash-talking me he's a couple decades too early. He's gonna need more practice before he can get under my skin.'

Jason waited until everyone was in position to call a play. He passed the ball to Matt who then called for Kyle to come out to the left-wing.

After Kyle was out on the perimeter Matt passed the ball to him before dashing to the right wing-as Jason used his body to set a screen for him.

After making contact with Matt's defender Jason then ran passed Kyle for the handoff. Jason noticed something.

Lakeside's players were all sticking to his teammates even at the cost of giving him a little bit of space.

Just to confirm his theory Jason chose to reset and run another play instead of improvising off of the first one.

The coach for Lakeside middle school had a smile on his face as he watched Jefferson reset for the third time this possession.

His assistant looked at him "I know that it was part of our plan but I still don't understand it coach.

According to our scouting report and all the videos we've watched Jason Yang is their primary weapon on offense. So why are we focusing our defense on his teammates?"

The head coach chuckled "You're still wet behind the ears son. You're right that Jason Yang is their primary offensive weapon.

Most people would think that you would need to focus your defense on him in order to neutralize him.

But the reason Jason Yang is so effective for Jefferson is that he creates scoring opportunities for his teammates as well as for himself.

So by preventing him from assisting his teammates we are already taking away half of his greatest abilities.

Basketball is a team sport. No matter how good one individual player is he can't beat a team that runs like a well oiled-machine.

We might not have any star players like Jason Yang but our boys play hard and they play smart. They know what they need to do and when to do it.

Just look at the 2015 finals. LeBron James was one of the greatest to ever step on the hardwood and he was still at his peak.

He put up some monstrous numbers during that series but he ultimately lost to the baby Warriors before they became the unstoppable dynastic team that they would end up becoming.

Do you know why? It's because his second-best player on the team was Matthew fucking Dellavedova. His two other star players Kyrie and K-Love had gotten injured.

After that he had to rely on a scrappy defensive Point Guard who wasn't good for much else to be his second in command."

As they were talking their attention was pulled back to the court as the crowd began making noise.

Jason put his defender on skates as he drove right, came to a stop with a behind the back dribble, got his defender leaning with the hesi to the left, before finally dropping him to the floor with a quick crossover to the right.

The home section of the bleachers were going crazy as Jason nailed the mid-range shot after dancing on his defender.

Lakeside's coach chuckled "He may be able to force a few buckets with his offensive toolbox. But let's see how far that takes him.

All he's going to accomplish is tiring himself out before the end of the first half. Forget the physical strain of having to do all of those moves just to score one basket.

The kid will probably crumble under the mental pressure. The weight of knowing that you need to score or your team will lose isn't something that just anybody can handle."

The game continued as Lakeside focused on forcing Jason to score as they took the rest of his teammates out of the equation.

Even though they couldn't do much to help on offense that only seemed to motivate them to work even harder on the defensive side of the ball.

Maybe it was the effect of Jason's new skill badge, maybe it was the effect of them being frustrated at not being able to help on offense, or maybe both.

But the whole team was focused and full of energy as they played defense. Even Matt came out and showed some defensive intensity.

He was turning his hips and shuffling his feet as he kept his hands up and stayed on his man as he tried to iso.

When he poked the ball loose and managed to gain possession of it by diving to the floor he was thumping his chest and yelling as Jason pulled him up and helped him to his feet.

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The quarter ended and the score was 15-7. All but one basket was scored by Jason as he played more minutes than he normally would.

Matt was the only one outside of Jason that scored any in the first quarter as he hit a contested three-pointer after running off of a screen from Udonis.

During the break Trell threw his sports bottle to the floor "Fuck! Why the hell are they playing me so tight in the corner!?

I can barely shoot free throws let alone threes. And with these dudes huggin my nuts so damn tight I can't even cut to the basket."

Jason picked up the sports bottle and handed it back to Trell "Don't sweat it man. You gotta keep your cool.

You getting heated like this is just what they want man. You gonna let them play you like that? The Trell I know wouldn't let such weak competition get to his head."

Trell rolled his eyes "Whatever man. Ain't nobody gettin in my head aight? I just needed to vent. And I don't need to hear no corny ass motivational talk from you."

Despite what Trell had said he seemed to have calmed down by a significant amount after Jason's little talk.

The team walked back out to the court for the second quarter. Once again the opposing team's defense was focused on not allowing Jason's teammates to score.

Points were hard to come by for both teams this quarter. Kyle managed to get a monster block as he grabbed the ball out of the air with both hands after one of Lakeside's Guards tried to shoot a floater over him.

Since Trell couldn't score at all his energy was focused solely on defending. After Matt turned the ball over with a bad pass to Kyle Lakeside pushed the ball down the court for the fast break.

As their player was running to the basket he took a quick peek to check if there were any defenders close by.

He saw that the closest defender was Trell and even he was over a few feet behind. So he continued running and went for the layup.

What he didn't take into account was that Trell would explode forward covering that distance in the blink of an eye.

Trell went up and stopped the basket with a spectacular chase-down block. He spiked the ball against the backboard before coming back down.

The rest of the game followed a similar pattern. Jefferson's points were almost exclusively scored by Jason while the rest of the team played their hearts out on defense.

It also helped that Jason was spending his DNA points and activating his skill badge at the most critical moments. Jason found out that it took roughly one quarter for him to fill the bar up.

The first time he activated his skill badge he had a flood of information pass through his brain instantly as the system explained the effects of his activated badge.

[Activated badge: Defensive Anchor (Bronze). Effects: For eight seconds increase all of your teammates' defensive skills by a letter grade.]

The great sequence where Matt clamped down his defensive assignment as he managed to get the steal? Jason had activated his badge for that moment.

When Kyle snatched the ball out of the air for the insane block? Jason had also given a small helping hand by activating his badge.

Trell's crazy chase-down block during Lakeside's fastbreak? That one had nothing to do with Jason. That was just Trell's superhuman athleticism at full display,

With the score on the board being 45-27 and the time winding down Lakeside's assistant coach looked at the head coach silently.

The head coach blushed for a second before clearing his throat "I seemed to have made a small miscalculation.

I designed our defensive scheme thinking that Jason Yang was a scoring playmaker like LeBron James or Chris Paul.

But it turns out that he was actually a lethal scorer like Kobe Byrant or Kevin Durant instead. He did a good job hiding his true colors.

I think that the fact that we were able to unveil this secret should count as enough of a victory, Next time we play we will be able to come up with a more effective plan."

Jason ended the game with his highest-scoring performance yet as he recorded 36 pts, 2 ast, 3 reb, 3 stl, 1 blk.

Jason' parents and Kyle's mom came by to congratulate the team on another great win this season.

After a few minutes of talking and congratulating the team Kyle's mom invited everyone over to her house to watch and celebrate Jason's debut episode of Through the Hoops.

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