Before the third stage of the regular season, the Jiangsu men's basketball team announced a regrettable news: the team's main center Wu Guanxi will not go with the team to Shenyang due to the rupture of the biceps tendon in his left arm, and will continue rehabilitation training and treatment. Since Jiangsu has missed the playoffs in advance, this also means that Wu Guanxi has been reimbursed for the season.
Originally, the Jiangsu men's basketball team without foreign aid has gone very difficult this season. Without the team's scoring champion Wu Guanxi, head coach Li Nan was more tight in employment. Entering the second season of the CBA coaching, Li Nan is still under pressure.
Wu Guanxi's best season ended with regret
This was the best season of Wu Guanxi's career.
In 18 games for Jiangsu, Wu Guanxi averaged 20.6 points, 8.1 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game, averaging 6.9 free throws per game, scoring, assisting and free throws all career highs. Moreover, this is the first time in Wu Guanxi's career that his average score per game has exceeded 20+. From entering the CBA in the 2013-14 season to the present, Wu Guanxi has never played such a good game now. In 18 games, he scored 20+ in 9 single games and 30+ in 2 games, and his performance on the offensive end was quite good and stable (shooting 63%).
From the data point of view, Wu Guanxi is the absolute top internal level of the CBA this season. Among them, he ranks 4th among the league's native players in scoring, and is one of only 5 local players who average 20+ points per game. Among the local interior players, Wu Guanxi's score is second only to Hu Jinqiu (averaging 21.9 points per game). In terms of rebounding, he ranks 8th in the league. On the cover, Wu Guanxi ranked 3rd (averaging 1.7 times per game), behind Shen Zijie and Gao Shiao.
Despite being stopped by injury, Wu Guanxi still showed a top personal level. Especially in the second stage of the regular season, he can average 21.8 points per game, pushing Hu Jinqiu to become the local scoring champion in the second stage. In the entire second stage, only Wu Guanxi, Hu Jinqiu and Guo Allen got an average of 20+ per game. As the inner line pursued by the Guangdong team in the summer of 2020, as the internal line that has triggered competition between Beijing and Shanghai, Wu Guanxi, who has entered the men's basketball red team training, has also shown more outstanding personal ability this season.
For Jiangsu, Wu Guanxi is also an irreplaceable existence. His points, rebounds and blocks are all team-high. In addition to him, Jiangsu's highest score is only Shi Hongfei, who averages 11.1 points per game. At the same time, Wu Guanxi is one of the few players in Jiangsu whose offensive and defensive efficiency is positive when he is on the field.
Unfortunately, Wu Guanxi was injured in the final stage of the second stage and was eventually diagnosed with a ruptured biceps tendon. For this reason, he had to leave the Changchun Division early for treatment at that time. More than a month of rehabilitation treatment has not completely improved, coupled with the Fact that the Jiangsu men's basketball team has missed the playoffs in advance, which may also be the reason why Wu Guanxi did not go to Shenyang with the team to compete.
Li Nan's coaching prospects are even more difficult
It must be admitted that even if Wu Guanxi is injured and the team goes out, it will not change the fate of the Jiangsu men's basketball team this season. But without the team's top scorer, Jiangsu, which has not brought in foreign aid this season, will only play harder in the third stage of the regular season.
This season, the Jiangsu men's basketball team can only average 84.5 points per game, which is the team with the fewest points in the league, and even less than the new Ningbo team. Moreover, Jiangsu and Ningbo are the only two teams in the CBA to average less than 90 points per game this season. The lack of stars in the local squad and the rare introduction of foreign aid this season (CBA only Jiangsu has no foreign aid), which also leads to a very tense life in Jiangsu.
As mentioned above, after Wu Guanxi, Jiangsu's highest average score per game is Shi Hongfei, who averaged only 11.1 points per game. In addition to Shi Hongfei, Jiangsu's average score per game is only Zhao Lizhou (averaging 11 points per game). Without Wu Guanxi, Li Nan's employment will only be more stretched.
For Jiangsu, which missed the playoffs in advance, the most important task in the third stage is to train troops. But there are two other games that are more important to Jiangsu, that is, two encounters with Tongxi. At present, Tongxi's record is even worse, ranking at the bottom of the league with only 1 win and 27 losses, 3 wins behind Jiangsu. But now, Jiangsu has no Wu Guanxi, and it is the all-Chinese class. Tongxi also has at least one foreign aid, Edwards, and the team's main players Xi Relijiang, Sun Mingyang and Wang Xu are expected to return in the third stage. Can Jiangsu win these two "Jiangsu derbys" in the third stage? It's not easy to say. In the case of being "hostile" to each other for many years, the importance of "Jiangsu Derby" to Jiangsu is self-evident.
This season, Li Nan's coaching performance is still difficult to call ideal. Currently, they are only 18th in the league with 4 wins and 24 losses, or third from the bottom. During the season, Jiangsu's consecutive defeats have been wave after wave, and at one point they have suffered 10 consecutive defeats. Before the start of the season, Li Nan said: "We have practiced well this summer, but we have played very little.". But after the start of the season, the progress of the Jiangsu men's basketball team did not look obvious.
As a young team with an average age of only 22.6 years, the young players of the Jiangsu men's basketball team are rarely eye-catching. Li Nan said before the start of the season: "After the tempering of last season, these young players have a qualitative change from personal ability to on-the-spot performance, and I look forward to these young players making great progress in the new season." But this season, the only Jiangsu players who have performed well are cui Xiaolong (averaging 8.8 points and 2.1 steals per game), Jiang Haoran (averaging 8.5 points per game) and Li Luyao (averaging 6.9 points and 3.3 rebounds per game). Considering that their average playing time is generally around 20 minutes per game, such a performance is indeed desirable. But last season's good performance of Zheng Qilong, Wu Yujia and Huang Rongqi data all declined, in Jiangsu's dismal results, jiangsu has not introduced foreign aid, vigorously cultivate young players, only such a harvest is obviously difficult to satisfy. As a head coach, Li Nan has not calmed the outside world's doubts about him.
epilogue
Before entering the CBA last season, Li Nan encountered a lot of doubts, and the defeat of the 2019 Men's Basketball World Cup made him once on the cusp of the storm. After that, he resigned as the manager of the Chinese men's basketball team and later entered the CBA to study.
But in the two seasons of coaching Jiangsu, Li Nan has not been able to lead the team to make significant progress, and last season, Jiangsu ranked at the bottom of the league. This season, Jiangsu has not been able to break away from the bottom ranks. At the same time, Li Nan's training of new talents also seems to have a mediocre effect. At present, the CBA's regular season competition this season has entered the final stage, and Li Nan's season is still struggling.