He lifted the quilt, moved his legs to the right, tried to sit himself up, and then he tried to put his feet together on the ground. The pain in his heart made him realize that it was not yet time.
Patience is a virtue, but not everyone has endless patience. If you had quadriceps surgery on your right leg in early 2019 and the doctor told you it was a success, but then every morning you feel like "someone is stabbing me in the knee with a knife", and sooner or later you will lose that virtue. The doctor told him that this was postoperative tendonitis, very normal, and it would be fine after a while.
But Victor Oladipo couldn't wait, and waiting was crazy. He came back with that pain, played the playoffs in the park, refused to renew his contract, performed badly, was traded, was traded again, and finally, on April 8 last year, after completing a two-handed dunk that had previously been easy for him in a game against the Lakers, he fell down with his right knee covered. The Heat's team doctor told him after the examination that the surgery three years ago hadn't completely solved the problem, and the injury had even worsened since he had been training and playing with injuries. So he had to go back to the same quadriceps surgery as the last time. To this day, he still remembers sitting alone in a dark room before undergoing surgery, feeling abandoned by the world. At that moment, he even considered retiring: "If I say I didn't think about it, I'm lying." But I told myself that if I just gave up, I would hate myself in the future. I pulled myself back from depression, pessimism, and breakdown, and without hesitation, opted for surgery and chose to continue. ”
This time he learned to be obedient and remained quiet until March this year. When he was allowed to step onto the pitch again, he was pleasantly surprised to find a long-lost feeling: "I almost forgot the feeling of not feeling pain when leaning over. Now I feel it, and that's what I'm supposed to have, healthy basketball. ”
But the world of basketball has turned upside down. In more than 3 years of injury trouble, he changed attending physicians, agents and teams twice. With no one in the free agency market, he signed a 1-year, $2.4 million contract with the Heat last summer, and injuries evaporated tens of millions of his fortunes and stripped him of his pride and pride as a star player little by little. When he returned from injury, Spoo cautiously used him to play a few games, and the Heat immediately suffered a wave of four straight losses, including big losses to the Warriors and Nets. Public opinion believes that the addition of Oladipo broke the chemistry of the team, so he returned to the end of the bench. When the regular season ended, his game was fixed at 8.
Generally speaking, coaches don't suddenly add a player to the playoff rotation who hasn't played much in the regular season all year — especially if you're top in the East with that group of players. But in Game 4 of the series against the Atlanta Hawks, Spoolstra decided to make an exception for Oladipo, on the one hand, Oladipo's improvement in the team's tactical understanding and recovery of physical condition in training impressed Spoo, on the other hand, the Heat really had no one: Lowry was absent due to a hamstring injury, Spoo did not want to expose Duncan Robinson and Tyler Hiro more to Trae Young, and Oladipo became his helpless choice.
Heat soul Udonis Haslem once said, "For those who are always ready, they never have to prepare." "Obviously, Oladipo is one of those people. In the Heat's first playoff game, he played 23 minutes, and the team won 28 points in those 23 minutes. Despite the poor feel of the three-pointer, he contributed eight rebounds and four assists, and also played well on the defensive end. In the next game, even Butler was absent, and Oladipo started with the first 4 shots, scoring 23 points, 3 assists and 3 steals to help the Heat win the series 4-1. When he really ran, jumped, defended hard, and was not afraid of confrontation, those fans who had watched his peak games could not help but be moved - his athleticism was indeed much less than before, but after so many changes and tribulations, he was really healthy to return.
After the game, when the reporters gathered around him in hindsight, Oladipo also had some incoherent words: "I can't explain why I was able to survive, why I stood up again after so many things, yes, I don't know." But the truth is that I'm on the pitch now, and every second on the pitch means a lot to me, I want to play hard, bro. ”
In the series against Philadelphia, Oladipo is still helping the team in his own way. Yesterday he went all out into Philadelphia's mid-line, making the team's second-most 10 free throws and scoring 15 points. Spoelstra was full of emotions after the game: "If it had been a few years ago, we wouldn't have had a chance to bring in a player like him. We thought when we got him, he needs time to adjust to the team and maybe it will help us if he can get back to health. He's been absent for a long time this season, but he survived, and now he's healthy and willing to accept any role the team has given him, and he can still shine in roles that are completely different from his peak. You look at his defense against Harden, you look at his ability to execute tactics, we never thought he could play so well. ”
After the game, Oladipo held a small birthday party to thank the fans for their love and support. When the reporter asked him about his birthday two days ago, he replied with a smile: "I have no idea how old I am." They told me I was 30 years old, but I didn't feel like I felt like I was 25. ”
He still can't forget the year he was 25 years old. In the early summer of 2018, the Indiana Pacers, led by Oladipo, fought James's Cleveland Cavaliers seven times in the first round and lost. At the end of the season, on the final day before his vacation, Pacers general manager Kevin Pu richard took Oladipo to his office to talk about the team's plans for next season. After talking for half a day, a beautiful and unfamiliar music came out of the stereo in the office. Predre told Oladipo that the song, called "Girl You Know It's True," came from a group that won the Grammy Award for Best Newcomer, the Miliwally Choir, a group that was short-lived and was quickly boycotted by the fake singing storm. At that time, Pritchard asked in passing: "Will you be our Millivoli Choir?" ”
Oladipo rolled his eyes: "Hmm, I'll be Michael Jackson!" ”
We can fully understand the optimism of 25-year-old Oladipo at the time. At that time, it seemed that his career was fully on track, he was already an All-Star, and he would be selected many times in the future. He didn't lead the team to win the series, but he still had a chance. He will become the king of Indo-City, he will become a strong party in the East, and his hard work every summer, in addition to the title of "Bitter Mamba", superb skills and a good public opinion environment, has also brought him enough confidence: the world seems so friendly, as long as you work hard enough, it will give you enough rewards. And hard work happens to be what Oladipo is best at.
Today, he is 30 years old. Time had left enough scars on him to take away the bounce, speed and explosive power he had once hailed as the "Black Panther." Next season, the 30-year-old veteran with huge injury risks is likely to have to wait for a basic salary contract, but he still does not want to give up.
When you cut off the face of good and ugly, when you pass five levels and slash six generals, when you flood the Seven Armies and shake Huaxia, you can easily look like a big hero who stands tall in the sky. Yet the capriciousness of fate is so tricky that you never know which of the successes and accidents will come first. When the heavens and the earth work together, the heroes are not free. Oladipo at the time would never have imagined that he would encounter so much and so much change in the next 5 years. But after experiencing setbacks, lows and struggles, he still held his head high when he walked Maicheng. In a recent interview, he described his mood this way: "I haven't played in a whole season. I just want to play, play the game I love. Whether it's the first 8 minutes or the last 8 minutes of the game, I'm going to give it my all. ”
"I still want to prove to the world that I'm still an elite player and I know the process won't be easy, but I'm not going to run away from it either. I am willing to give everything I have for this. ”