List of high-quality authors
Hi is in control of the rebounding ball and is in control of destiny.
Referring to the off-season teams**, many players were able to change to new owners, and while wearing the new team jersey in the new season, fans also made fans look forward to how these players could perform when they met their former clubs.
While the drama against the former club is old-fashioned enough, this type of topic can often bring a lot of extra attention. Below, we have sorted out ten groups of interesting showdowns against former owners:
Holiday vs Milwaukee Bucks
Holiday is the biggest deal of the offseason, and the most direct reason why it can generate enough discussion is because of Lillard. But considering the relationship between Holiday and the Bucks, there's a lot of unspeakable wonder behind it.
Throughout his career, Holiday was a very low-key player, and as a result, he was often underrated, having only been selected as an All-Star twice in his career.
In 2020, Holiday was traded by the team to the Bucks as the Pelicans opted to enter a rebuild. In his first season with the Bucks, he relied on his defensive ability to stand at the core of the team, and together with Brother Alphabet, Da Luo and others, he formed a strong interior and exterior defense of the Bucks.
In the game for the Bucks, Holiday contributed to the defense many times, and the most critical defense must be the fifth game of the Suns Finals, where Holiday completed a steal from Devin Booker at a critical moment, and then completed an aerial relay with Brother Alphabet to score and help the Bucks win the key Tianwang Mountain and finally win the cup.
But the business league is so ruthless that two days before being traded by the team, Holiday made a public statement that he hoped to stay with the Bucks until he retired. Considering he's previously revealed that he could retire after his current contract is completed, perhaps we'll see Holiday on the field in his last two seasons.
Two days after the announcement, the Bucks opted to trade him to the Trail Blazers in exchange for Lillard, and as the biggest rival in the division, the Celtics quickly seized the opportunity and sent multiple players to get Holiday to make up for the team's lack of backcourt defense.
From a personal point of view, although Holiday was low-key enough, he did not react much to being traded, and subsequently issued a simple statement of thanks to his former club. But this way of parting ways is really hurtful, and it should be difficult for Holiday to accept. Former teammates have become the biggest opponents now, and this season's game between the Celtics and the Bucks is also worth paying attention to.
Brogdon vs Boston Celtics
In the above-mentioned Holiday trade, the main chip given by the Celtics was Brogdon, and the breakup between Brogdon and the Celtics should be considered the most ugly trade in this offseason after Harden.
Brogdon, who joined the Celtics last season, played efficiently enough on the bench and was a long-term firepower for the team's second team. Despite being affected by injuries, he still played 67 games last season, the best season since his rookie season. And he also won the Sixth Man of the Season with such a consistent performance.
And the spark for the breakup between him and the team came from an unfinished deal.
The first blockbuster trade of the offseason came from Porzingis, and the final result was that the Celtics got Porzingis, the Grizzlies got Smart, and the Wizards got Tyus Jones, Gallinari and others. But until then, the next target of this trade is not the Grizzlies, but the Clippers.
In the original three-way trade plan involving the Celtics, Wizards, and Clippers, the deal was that the Celtics would get Porzingis, the Clippers would get Brogdon, and the Wizards would get some role players and draft picks from both teams. But the deal, which seemed to be beneficial to all three parties, didn't materialize, and the Clippers failed because the Clippers questioned Brogdon's injury status, which in turn led to an impasse in the relationship between Brogdon and the Celtics.
Judging from the follow-up interview, Brogdon was unhappy with the Celtics' move to put him in a trade chip, after all, he played well enough last season when he was healthy, and it stands to reason that he should not be an option to be given up by the team. As the relationship between the two parties could not be reconciled, Brogdon was eventually sent to the Trail Blazers by the Celtics in the Holiday trade case.
With these circumstances in mind, Brogdon's game against the Celtics in the new season is also a matchup to watch.
Smart vs Boston Celtics
The Celtics have been making a lot of moves in the offseason, and while they are improving the team's strength, they are also trying to update their existing roster, and Smart is the biggest casualty of the team's transition.
After joining the Celtics with the sixth pick in the first round in 2014, Smart spent nine seasons of his career in Boston, but this summer because of Porzingis' three-way trade, Smart had no choice but to say goodbye to his old club.
The new Memphis Grizzlies need him to provide ball-handling and defensive quality, and most importantly, to fill the gap in wing defense after Brooks' departure, so the deal makes relatively reasonable sense from the perspective of only two sides of the trade.
But Smart is the oldest player in the current Celtics roster, and as the soul of the team, being traded by the management is naturally dissatisfied. It's just that Smart and Brogdon are different, he didn't publicly tear up his face with the team, and even judging from the content of the tweets posted by the follow-up social **, Smart is still grateful to the Celtics after leaving the team.
As he himself said, here he Xi learn how to become a professional footballer, and because of his fighting spirit, he has won the respect and support of his fans. He'll always remember his days with the Celtics for the past nine seasons. And for the future, he's also looking forward to moving to Memphis and being a part of the Grizzlies.
The Grizzlies have not performed well in the new season, but as a youth team, they still have the ability to show top-level competitiveness in some games, especially the defensive system built by Smart and Jaren Jackson Jr., and it will be exciting enough to play against the Celtics in the Eastern Conference.
Dillon Brooks vs Memphis Grizzlies
When it comes to the Grizzlies, Dillon Brooks is in a similar situation to Smart, who was drafted by the Rockets with the 45th pick in the second round in 2017 and then sent to the Grizzlies to sign a three-year rookie contract.
Brooks played for the Grizzlies for six seasons from 2017 to last season, making him the oldest player on the team's current roster, a background similar to Smart's.
In those six years, Brooks' progress has been seen by fans, from a second-round pick to the team's starter, and thanks to his defensive characteristics, he is often responsible for marking the opposing offensive arrows.
However, in recent seasons, he has slowly started to lose control, and in the absence of a big brother in the team, excessive defensive actions on the field and aggressive rhetoric off the field continue to have a negative impact on the team. It's that his own shortcomings in shooting were also targeted by opponents in the playoffs, which was the key reason why the team was eliminated by opponents last season.
Perhaps the management is aware of the negative impact of his actions, and although he is still a significant presence on the defensive end, the management still did not choose to extend his contract after the contract ended.
After entering the free market, the Houston Rockets offered Brooks a large contract. And even though he has paid the price for some over-the-top defensive moves, he still hasn't relented and has been fined for some over-the-top actions in the preseason.
And the offensive ability he lost in last season's playoffs seems to have rebounded on the World Cup stage, shooting more than 60% from the perimeter in eight games, especially in the third-place race to help Canada beat the American Dream Team by 39 points.
In an interview for the new season, Brooks said that he is very much looking forward to playing against the Grizzlies. And as fans, we also expect him to perform against his former teammates, and it's hard to imagine him trash-talking in front of Grizzlies players.
Chris Paul vs Phoenix Suns
Last season's Suns were upgraded again in a mid-season trade when they brought in historic scorer Durant in a bid to challenge for a championship, but Paul, the team's main guard, suffered another playoff injury curse and lost 4-2 to the Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals.
It may have been based on the decline in recent seasons that finally led the management to decide to send Paul away in the offseason in exchange for Wizards star guard Bradley Beal, and once again put together a Big Three offensive framework.
And Paul came to the Golden State Warriors in a follow-up trade, standing alongside his former opponent Stephen Curry. Looking back on his three seasons with the Suns, although Paul's offensive form has been declining year by year, his performance in organizing assists has been quite consistent, especially considering the Suns' achievements in advancing to the Finals in 2021, Paul played a crucial role in this.
Looking back at the Suns' playoff journey in 2021, although the process stumbled, Paul's playoff injury curse did not appear, and he only missed two games in the Western Conference Finals during the entire playoffs.
Until facing the Bucks on the stage of the finals, the first two stops took the lead in winning the big score advantage, and it seemed that the Suns' momentum of winning the championship was unstoppable. It's a pity that the state of the follow-up game took a sharp turn, first suffered two consecutive defeats away from home, and the key home Tianwangshan also failed to win, and the Suns finally failed to lift the championship trophy as they wished.
And Paul, as one of the biggest contributors to helping the Suns advance to the Finals, eventually became a reinforcement chip for the team's trade after the decline in form, and teamed up with the Splash Brothers to hit the championship again in the new season, and when facing the Suns with the Big Three lineup, it must be a good enough game.