TL: 200PS
Chapter 253: The Zone
Chen Yan sprinted back on defense and shouted to his teammates, "Defense! Defense!"
He had just buried four straight threes, but his expression stayed calm.
There was no time to celebrate. The Suns were still behind.
At the other end, Anthony rose up with a frustrated jumper.
Bang.
He bricked it.
The smooth touch Carmelo Anthony had in the first three quarters had suddenly vanished late in the fourth. His shot told the story of his nerves.
After watching Chen Yan hit one three after another, the Nuggets players, Anthony included, were starting to panic.
They were desperate to answer. They rushed shots, tried to speed up their offense on every possession.
The more they hurried, the more they missed. The more they missed, the more anxious they became.
They were stuck in a bad spiral.
On TNT, Kenny Smith said, "The Nuggets still do not get it. Their offense is completely stuck right now."
"The Suns are coming right back at them," Barkley added. "Nash kicks it to Chen, one step behind the line. This is his shot in transition. Let us see what he does with this one."
Every fan watching knew what they wanted to see. A fifth three in a row.
On the Nuggets sideline, George Karl yelled, "Double team! Triple team! Do not give him a three!"
Kenyon Martin closed in. Kleiza closed in. Iverson closed in. All three rushed toward Chen.
For most of the night, Chen had been only one for four from deep before this run. The Nuggets had almost forgotten he could shoot. His outburst late in the fourth had brought their memory back in a hurry.
Chen did not force it from the top. He paused, then burst toward the corner, using his momentum to shake free.
All three defenders tried to swarm him, but they ended up clogging each other's space instead.
Just outside the corner line, Chen rose into a smooth pull up.
All three Nuggets jumped, arms flailing. For the cameras it looked dramatic. In reality, only Kenyon Martin was close enough to bother him. The other two were completely out of position.
Chen never even saw Kenyon anymore. He locked on the rim and let it fly.
While the ball was still in the air, Kenny shouted, "That is number five in a row, right?"
In the crowd, Nuggets fans could not even watch. Many covered their eyes.
At this point, every time Chen lifted the ball, they all felt the same thing.
This is going in.
Swish.
The net barely moved.
Ninety four to ninety six.
The moment it dropped, pain washed over every Nuggets face in the arena.
"Fifth three in a row," Kenny yelled. "Chen Yan just dragged the whole game back by himself."
Barkley's voice jumped on top of his. "This is the Chen Yan show now. Everybody else is just watching."
Bars, dorm rooms, living rooms, every place with a TV or a laptop blew up at once.
"What kind of shot is that, and it went in?"
"I would not even try that in a video game."
"This is insane."
"He just exploded. His touch is on fire."
"It feels like he cannot miss."
"The Nuggets defense looks soft. They better put some real pressure on him."
"Three guys are not enough? You want all five on him?"
Chen Yan had been angry with himself most of the night. His first three and a half quarters were nowhere near what he wanted. Not for the fans, not for his own standards.
Now everything he held in was pouring out.
And the way he vented was simple. Threes. One after another.
"Chen has completely lost his mind," Barkley laughed. "He is in a different place right now."
"Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about the zone," Kenny said.
The idea of the zone came from sports psychologist George Mumford. When a player enters that state, everything flows. For a short stretch, it feels like they can do anything on offense.
Julius Erving once said that when he was in that space, it felt like his blood was boiling. He did not feel pressure or fatigue, even when his lungs burned. He just kept attacking.
Jordan once said that in the zone, the crowd suddenly went quiet for him, the game slowed down, and he could see the floor clearly, controlling everything with his own will.
No one knew for sure if Chen had truly reached that level. But in those minutes, everybody knew one thing.
Nobody could stop him.
On the floor, the Nuggets did not even rush to inbound. They just stared at each other.
They all thought the same thing. That drifting three was ridiculous.
The problem was simple. The more crazy a shot looks, the more it crushes you when it drops.
Everyone in blue knew Chen wanted a three. Everyone sprinted at him. They still could not stop him.
That was the most hopeless feeling.
Kenyon Martin felt it worse than anyone.
All the confidence he had built through three quarters disappeared in seconds.
If he could go back in time, he would never have tried to trash talk Chen earlier.
If you ignored the score and looked only at his face, you would think the Nuggets were already down by twenty.
Chen's storm of threes had completely blown up Denver's rhythm.
On the next play, Kenyon made a mistake no coach can stand.
He threw a lazy pass straight across the floor and hit Chen Yan right in the chest.
Chen caught it, shifted gears, and hit full speed in an instant.
Because of his foul trouble earlier, he had sat longer than usual tonight. Now, deep in the fourth, when most players were gassed, he was still fresh.
That advantage showed the moment he took off.
With the lane open, Chen attacked the rim.
He exploded off one leg and hammered a one handed dunk over the paint.
The arena shook.
Even before the ball smashed through the net, George Karl had already turned his back to the floor.
The dunk landed, the whistle blew, and Karl signaled for a timeout.
96 - 96.
Just like that, the game was tied.
In this crazy stretch, Chen hit six straight shots, five of them from deep, for a total of seventeen points.
"That is wild," Kenny said, laughing and shaking his head at the monitor. "This is one of the craziest runs I have ever seen in a playoff game."
"The Suns were on the edge," Barkley said. "Chen pulled them right back. You know he can do this, but it still shocks you when you actually see it."
The scoreboard said tie game, but the feel in the building was not tied at all. The energy was all on the Suns side. Even the announcers had slid all the way to Phoenix.
As the horn sounded for the timeout, all the emotion Chen had been holding in finally burst out.
He did not walk to the bench right away. Instead, he put his fingers to his lips like an official's whistle, then snapped his arm in the air, giving a clear technical foul gesture.
"Bang!" he yelled, like he was calling it himself.
Fans watching at home broke out laughing.
"So that is why he went off. The ref hit him with a tech earlier."
"Seventeen straight and one technical foul turned him into a monster."
"He is crazy. I love it."
"I really thought he was going to have a quiet game. He already has thirty two."
"The moment he got mad at the ref, I knew it was over. He is just raining threes now."
"Looks like he is punishing the ref, but the Nuggets are the ones paying for it."
At the TNT desk, Kenny and Charles broke down the moment.
"Chen is clearly answering that technical," Kenny said with a grin.
"I keep saying he has that Jordan and Kobe kind of thing in him," Barkley said. "Once he gets angry out there, he goes off."
Kenny chuckled. "This time it was not a player who set him off. It was the ref."
Barkley spread his hands and laughed. "Yeah, and I bet every Nugget on that bench wants to fight that ref right now. Why poke the one guy you cannot afford to wake up?"
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