February 2, 2024, Chinese New Year's Eve, this night will be destined to go down in the history of the Beijing Control team. At the National Sports Center, Beijing Enterprises defeated Liaoning 114-106, winning eight in a row and ending a 23-game losing streak against Liaoning.
After defeating Tongxi in the last game, Beijing Enterprises won the longest 7-game winning streak in team history. The next opponent standing in front of Beikong is Liaoning, the only one they have not beaten in the CBA so far.
Since the 2014-15 season, the predecessor of Beijing Holdings, Chongqing Aolong, in ten seasons, Beijing Enterprises has lost to Liaoning 23 times in a row. Before this game, Beikong and Liaoning had met three times this season and suffered three kills. At the beginning of this year, Liaoning suffered a small trough, losing three of the four games, and the only victory was in Beikong.
In this game, Felder hung up the exemption card for the second consecutive game, and Zhang Fan was not included in the game list because of cold and diarrhea. Zou Yuchen was plagued by a leg injury, and although he was eager to fight, Min Lulei put him on the roster but did not let him play.
The top three scorers in the game of Beijing Control were unable to play, and although Liaoning striker Zhang Zhenlin was also absent due to injury, few people would have illusions about the remnants of North Control. However, the North Control made the impossible possible and played a game that went down in team history. After defeating Liaoning, it took nine years for BEWG to finally conquer all the opponents of the CBA.
In addition to the longest eight-game winning streak in team history and ending the 23-game losing streak against Liaoning, Beijing Control also set another team history record.
Winning the game with Liaoning, Beijing Enterprises has won 14 games at home this season, which is the most home wins in the team's history. The previous best season at home was 2017-18, with 13 wins and 6 losses in 19 home games. The only 19-20 season that entered the playoffs, due to the epidemic, North Control only played 13 home games, and then moved to a neutral division.
After experiencing three championships and various big scenes, Min Lulei's emotions after the game are still a little difficult to calm down. In an interview after the game, Min Lulei even choked up with excitement. He said he didn't know how the kids managed to win the game.
In this game, Min Lulei gave foreign aid Riller unlimited firing rights, and he scored 47 points in 34 minutes, shooting 7-of-10 from the outside, in addition to 5 rebounds and 7 assists. Lile was like a wild horse on the loose, and his kaleidoscopic attack left Liaoning helpless.
In order to free up Riller, Min Lulei abandoned the forward line for most of the game and adopted a lineup of three point guards plus two interior lines. At Riller's side, there is a guarantee of support from Liu Xiaoyu and Liao Sanning.
Liao, who just celebrated his 23rd birthday four days ago and made his 100th career appearance against Tongxi, scored a team-high 24 points, which was also his season's highest single-game scoring and fourth-highest single-game scoring of his career.
Liu Xiaoyu played more than 40 minutes for the second consecutive game, and the last time he played more than 40 minutes twice in a single season was when he first joined Shougang in the 17-18 season. In the last five seasons, he has only made five appearances of more than 40 minutes. The last time he played more than 40 minutes in two consecutive games was in Shanghai in 2016-17.
Last summer, BEWG rebuilt again, and the biggest move was to invite Min Lulei out of the mountain. After moving from Chongqing to Beijing, Beijing Enterprises has only made the playoffs once in eight seasons. Among all the teams in the CBA, only the newly formed Ningbo and Tongxi, which entered the CBA in the same year as Beijing Holdings, have not entered the playoffs.
It is not an exaggeration to say that BEWG is a local tyrant team, and in the past five seasons, BEWG has always been one of the teams with the most investment in the league. Under the high investment, Beijing Enterprises only relied on three foreign aides to taste the playoffs once. In terms of input-output ratio, North Control may be the worst team in the league, or even one of them. High input, low output, BEWG has become a joke.
In the nine seasons since coming to Beijing, Beijing Enterprises has signed a total of 101 players and registered 99 players in the league. The North Control has to rebuild every two or three years, only two foreign players have been renewed, only a handful of players have played for the team for more than three seasons, and only eight players have played more than 100 games in the league.
After missing the playoffs for three consecutive seasons, North Control had to terminate the contract with Marbury, the team's most appealing team, and once again entered a rebuilding period.
After winning the champion through operation, Beijing Enterprises won the champion for the third time in the history of the team, and Chen Guohao, who had just led Guangzhou University of Technology to win the CUBA championship, joined. Beijing Enterprises has signed two powerful players from Tianjin, Jin Xin and Meng Zikai, as well as Taiwanese point guard Lin Yanting. The three foreign players Felder, Riller and Thompson are also above the league's average for the same position.
After some operations, the thickness of the BEWG lineup has increased sharply, and it can be described as a strong army. But it is not that spending money to buy people will definitely be able to produce results, and the North Control people in the past few seasons have not bought less, but the effect is not much. Shanghai, which has invested more than BEWG, is far from meeting the club's expectations. If you can win the championship by spending money to buy people, Xinjiang will not have won only one championship in more than 20 years.
For a mercenary, the most difficult problem to solve is cohesion. Inspiring the fighting spirit of players has always been what Min Lulei is good at. The first playoffs in CBA history Black Eight Miracle was that Min Lulei led Shougang to bring down Xinjiang. Min Lulei has led Shougang to fight countless classic cases of defeating the strong with the weak, even if the strength on paper is not good, Shougang is rarely defeated. Min Lulei's sentence "We have never lost confidence" has become an eternal golden sentence in the history of Beijing basketball.
The lack of cohesion was the biggest problem before BEWG, and Marbury never solved it. In the past few seasons, Beijing Control basically can't fight a tough battle, and it has become the norm to collapse at every turn when they fall behind.
If you can't keep up with the training, you just can't play, and in front of Min Lulei's absolute authority, there is no emotion at all. Zou Yuchen, who has been muddy in the past few seasons, lost a lot of weight last summer, and has played phenomenal performances many times this season and returned to the top. In the 18th season of his career, Liu Xiaoyu is getting older and more demonic, and only Liu Wei has more seasons in CBA history before him.
In addition to rigorous training, Min Lulei is good at doing psychological work. In terms of understanding domestic players, Commissar Ma is not as good as Commissar Min. After experiencing a highlight at the beginning of the season, Chen Guohao quickly hit the rookie wall. After Min Lulei cooled Chen Guohao for a period of time, the champion ushered in an outbreak.
Due to the ups and downs of his state, Jin Xin was also pressed by Min Lulei at the end of the bench, and finally held back his state after a few games. During the eight-game winning streak, in the two games with Ningbo and Guangsha, Jin Xin hit 10 three-pointers.
The last game with Tongxi was Liao Sanning's 100-game milestone, and on his birthday the next day, because of two mistakes, Min Lulei only let him play for 7 minutes. In this game, Liao Sanning ushered in an outbreak, scoring the highest score of the season, and was not afraid at all in the face of Zhao Jiwei and Fogg's defense.
Perhaps, Min Lulei's employment is still a little conservative and stubborn. In three of his four consecutive games, Felder played the full second half before being on the injury list. In the past five games, Zhang Fan played the second half four times, and even played the full 48 minutes with Tongxi in the last game. Before the game with Liaoning, Zhang Fan finally couldn't bear it. But who can say that Beikong's eight consecutive victories were not exchanged for Min Lulei's stubbornness?
Beijing Enterprises had a chance to end the total defeat against Liaoning earlier. On December 1 last year, Beijing Enterprises played Liaoning at home, and led by 12 points in less than 5 minutes in the final quarter, and finally suffered a reversal and unfortunately lost. The 5-point difference is also the smallest difference between the Beijing Enterprises team and Liaoning in the game.
The window paper was still almost broken, and after the game, Min Lulei said that the players of Beijing Control were a little afraid to win. Two months have passed, and Liaoning has finally become the sacrifice of Beikong's eight consecutive victories, and the history of invincibility has finally come to an end.
The temperament of BEWG has gradually completed its transformation under the control of Min Lulei. During the eight-game winning streak, BEWG won the top eight teams in Shanghai, Guangsha and Liaoning.
"We have never lost confidence" is a famous phrase from Beijing fans that Min Lulei said after the 2015 finals home match against Liaoning. After leading the team to defeat Liaoning and rewrite history, perhaps Min Lulei had another unspoken sentence brewing in her heart: "We have never been afraid of any opponent."