Chapter 489 A Great Deal 3

"Yes, today the entire Los Angeles Lakers team seems to be playing well, but in defense, they are making some mistakes that make the Denver Nuggets team still stand a chance of winning that game."

"The highlight of the game so far seems to be rookie Jake Smith again, he was the best player on the Lakers team so far he is playing very well as a PG on the team."

In the third quarter of the game, coach Harris started replacing some players for a few minutes so they wouldn't get tired, but Jake was always on the court because he himself asked not to be replaced.

For some reason the team coach Denver Nuggets also made some substitutions for a few minutes, he even replaced Raef LaFrentz who was making an excellent game and Nick Van Exel too.

When Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant were replaced, Jake had a few minutes when he decided to attack alone taking advantage of the weakness of the Denver Nuggets' defense, in a few minutes Jake scored 9 points by hitting 3 shots from 3 points from 4 attempts.

This showed one of the reasons Jake was chosen as the first pick of the 1998 draft, Jake also achieved a steal in those minutes and increased the Los Angeles Lakers' lead by 5 points, so the Denver Nuggets fans realized they wouldn't see the team of them winning that game.

In another attacking move by the Los Angeles Lakers team, Jake came at a fast pace for the attack, Kobe Bryant was still off the court and Jake passed the ball to Tyronn Lue from the right, Lue received the ball and the Denver Nuggets team's defense pressed and Lue had to pass the ball to Fox.

Rick Fox had made a good defensive game and helped the team with some points, Stith pressed in the defense and so Fox passed the ball back to Jake, Jake saw that Shaquille O'Neal was asking for the ball and passed it to him.

McDyess pressed O'Neal in defense, but O'Neal did a Power move and passed McDyess and dunk using all his strength and held the hoop making the hoop swing, it was a good move by O'Neal who was annoyed with McDyess's good defense in the game.

The third quarter ended with the Los Angeles Lakers team being close to winning the game with a big points advantage, Jake played for 12 minutes and had 13 points, 3 assists, 3 rebounds, and 3 steals.

"What a great third quarter of Jake Smith we could see, he scored 13 points in those 12 minutes and still got 3 assists, this is the fourth game of the season and Jake Smith has played every minute so far and this has been helping the Los Angeles Lakers team a lot."

"It's true, Jake Smith won several marathons and shows that he really has great stamina at the beginning of the season, his first game as PG shows that he has to stay in this position and help the Lakers team to continue winning."

"With the big advantage in points that the Los Angeles Lakers team has in this game, we can say that they have already won this game, they are more than 22 points and the Denver Nuggets team has only 12 minutes to make that difference."

Just as the commentators said in the last quarter of the game the two teams had already accepted the result and were not putting so much pressure on the attack and defense, so the last quarter ended and the Los Angeles Lakers team won the fourth game this season and the Denver team Nuggets lost the fourth game.

The Los Angeles Lakers team won with 118 points against 91 points of the Denver Nuggets team, Jake played for 12 minutes in the four-quarter and had 7 points, 3 assists, 2 rebounds, and 2 steals, Jake made another triple-double, but this time with points, assists and steals.

"And the game ends with yet another victory for the Los Angeles Lakers team in a game that they won from start to finish, a great game from all the players on the Lakers team and the Denver Nuggets team had no chance of winning."

"Jake Smith was once again the star of the game making his third triple-double followed by him and this time making 10 steals and not 10 rebounds, he got 9 rebounds and with one more rebound he would make a historic quadruple-double."

"Yes, if Jake Smith continues to play like that he could be this season's MVP in his debut season, and the Los Angeles Lakers team's attack remains unstoppable, Kobe Bryant had 23 points and Shaquille O'Neal had 31 points."

"With a strong attack like this, the Los Angeles Lakers team is coming as a favorite to win the NBA title this season, we will follow in the next games if Jake Smith continues with these incredible performances."

After another victory, the media started to say that the Los Angeles Lakers had a strong team to win the NBA title, Jake was the most talked about player of the moment because with 3 games in a row doing triple-double and with an average of more 7 steals per game Jake showed himself to be a different player than he was normally seen in the NBA.

Jake was already mentioned together with the big stars of the NBA and the hopes of the fans in him increased a lot after those initial games, only Jake was realistic and knew that things would not always be like that, this triple-double sequence came because his teammates his team were playing very well.

But when his teammates underperformed, the Lakers team would lose and he wouldn't be able to stand out in those games, but it was undeniable for everyone that Jake would be the best rookie of the season if he continued to play well.

The companies that chose to trust Jake and David Falk were very happy with Jake's performance in the first games of the season, they thought it was good that they had not yet made a television commercial with Jake would take advantage of it after the season was over to enjoy the best Jake's moment in the NBA.

David Falk was also happy and he could not even expect Jake to perform as well as he did in his first NBA games, what nobody knew was that since the 1998 draft Jake was training every day with very skilled opponents in training his imagination and the real NBA opponents were usually not as good as the SS rank players in all the skills he faced.

Without Jake knowing Adidas was accelerating the production of the sneakers that were created to be the brand that Jake represented, Adidas planned to wait a few months before thinking about selling that sneaker, but with Jake's great performance in his debut year, they didn't think they needed to wait any longer.

Of course, it would still be a few months before it was possible to start selling these sneakers worldwide, so Adidas representatives decided not to tell Jake and David that, so Jake was just focused on the next game.

For the next game, the Los Angeles Lakers team had to travel again, this time to Minneapolis, Minnesota for the third game as a visiting visitor, the opponent of their fifth game of the season was the Minnesota Timberwolves team.

The Minnesota Timberwolves team was not such a tough opponent, but they had young star Kevin Garnett of whom Jake was also a fan, Kevin Garnett became one of the greatest players of all time and was an excellent defensive player.

Jake remembered that the Los Angeles Lakers team lost that game and one of the reasons for that was that Shaquille O'Neal had not played in that game and this time again coach Harris said O'Neal would not play that game.

Even though he was on the team, Jake didn't know the reason for this decision by Coach Harris, Shaquille O'Neal was not hurt and even though he was tired he could play for at least 20 minutes in that game.

So not even Jake could guarantee that he could change the outcome of that game, it was a certainty that the Los Angeles Lakers team currently depended on Shaquille O'Neal for good results, after all, he was the main player on the team and a reference in the attack.

Kobe Bryant was certainly a genius and would be an idol in the future, but currently, O'Neal was the most important player for the Los Angeles Lakers, Jake was playing well, but without good teammates, he could not guarantee any victory.

The day of the game came and the players were a little tired with so many trips in a row, so the team did not do any training and the players could not prepare well for the game in which Shaquille O'Neal would not be playing.

The players of the Los Angeles Lakers team went to the Target Center which was full of Minnesota Timberwolves fans, Jake was not anxious about it because he would try to make the best of him in this game and if the Los Angeles Lakers team lost he would have more peace of mind knowing that in his past life the Lakers team had also lost that game.

Players put on their uniforms and did warm-up exercises in the locker room and went to the court to start the game, Jake's teammates were also concerned about not having Shaquille O'Neal in that game, but with Jake and Kobe Bryant, they knew that could win.

"Welcome that you came to watch one more game this NBA season, in that game we will have the Los Angeles Lakers team that comes from 4 victories in 4 games this season against the Minnesota Timberwolves team that had 2 victories in 3 games this season."

"The Minnesota Timberwolves team, which is playing at home here at the Target Center, has a lot of problems this season after giving Kevin Garnett a $ 126 million contract for 6 years."

"It is undeniable that Kevin Garnett is an excellent player and a young man who can be the star of the Minnesota Timberwolves team for many years, but with this contract, the team no longer has the money to pay for other good players."

"Yes, the question is not whether Kevin Garnett is worth a contract of that amount, but that the Minnesota Timberwolves team is unable to pay."