Slam Dunk: Muguro

Chapter 13 Team Competition

Time passed slowly, and five days went by in a flash.

Apart from eating and sleeping, Murasakibara spent almost all his time in the basketball hall, even practicing dribbling on the way to school.

Mu Mu would show up at the gym on time every day, and his training time would be no less than 8 hours.

As for the training content, most of the time was spent repeatedly practicing crossover steps and quick stop jump shots.

This maximizes efficiency, not only increasing skill levels but also enhancing skill-related attributes.

Although it was monotonous, Murasakibara enjoyed the process.

Although hard work cannot replace talent, what if hard work can bring out talent?
As long as you train hard, you will get rewards. It's just like playing games, it's easy to get addicted.

As a price, he had to eat every two and a half hours, and five meals a day became his daily diet standard.

With high-intensity training and nutritional supplements, his strength is improving at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Name: Mumu Gongyan
Age: 15
Height: 174cm
Armspan: 180cm
Weight: 58kg
physical fitness
Strength: 55, Speed: 66, Physical Fitness: 69, Flexibility: 75, Reaction: MAX, Injury Resistance: MAX, Explosive Power: 59, Bounce: 57
Offensive skills

Ball control: 70, pass: 59, layup: 75, close shot: 63, mid-range shot: 68, three-pointer: 71, free throw: 73, running position 64
defensive skills

Steals: 55, One-on-One Defense: 58, Defensive Rebounds: 51
技能：交叉步LV5（1900/2000）、急停跳投LV5（700/2000）

Condition: Good
Evaluation: The sixth man of a strong team
Note: Attributes below 50 will not be displayed!
In just five days, both of Murasakibara's skills reached the LV5 stage.

Among them, the cross step is only one step away from LV6.

This also took his evaluation a step further, reaching the level of a strong team's sixth man, roughly equivalent to Murasakibara in the plot year.

In addition, Murasakibara's height, arm span and weight have also increased slightly.

During the club activity that afternoon, Coach Anxi finally showed up at the basketball hall again.

He walked slowly, his body was like a combination of a small ball and a big ball, and he shook slightly when he walked.

His face was calm and composed, as if he didn't care about the things around him.

Seeing Coach Anzai, Murasakibara couldn't help but feel a complex emotion.

He is well aware of the importance of the coach to the team. If the Xiangbei team wants to make a breakthrough in this county competition, in addition to the efforts of the players, the coach's guidance and strategy are also crucial.

In SD, Coach Anzai's coaching level is superior to that of Tanaka, Takato, Kitano, and Domoto.

Unfortunately, after coming to Shohoku, Coach Anzai has never fulfilled his responsibilities as a coach.

From Yuho Ikeda, we learned that Coach Anzai is lazy and rarely appears in daily life. Even when he comes, he acts as a mascot. He is not a diligent coach at all.

In addition, he is not keen on coaching players, is indifferent to team building, and takes a laissez-faire attitude towards the players. It is obvious that he just wants to live his life to the fullest and muddle through.

To put it bluntly, it's the same with or without him!
As a coach, taking the salary but not fulfilling your duties is a misleading move for the students.

Even if the Xiangbei players lack talent, this is not an excuse.

The main reason they joined the basketball team is because they are passionate about basketball and eager to improve.

In short, Coach Anzai during this period and Coach Tiangang of the Ryonan team were completely two extremes.

Coach Tiangang is undoubtedly a model of grassroots coaches. He has been coaching in Ryonan for ten years. In order to strengthen the team, he actively recruits and trains talents every year, teaches students in accordance with their aptitude, and even dares to take responsibility for the failure of the game.

Coach Tanoka took great pains to recruit Sendoh from Tokyo and trained Uozumi, who originally had no special skills, into one of the best centers in the country. Even players like Yutaka, Uekusa, and Hikoichi were trained with all their efforts.

When Yuzumi was in his first year of high school, he wanted to give up basketball. Coach Tiangang had a heart-to-heart talk with him on the lawn, and Yuzumi finally persevered and became a top defensive center in the country.

Coach Tiangang was once beaten in public by Fukuda. Despite this, he did not hold a grudge against Fukuda. Instead, he reflected deeply on his mistakes and eventually forgave and reused Fukuda, who became the scoring leader of the Ryonan team.

When the team lost the game, Coach Tian Gang said without hesitation that the responsibility was not on the players and took the responsibility alone.

Although the coaching level of coach Tiangang is not as good as that of coach Anzai, if there is a choice, Mu Mu prefers the former. Unlike coach Tiangang, coach Anzai does not care about the development of the Xiangbei team and even leaves the team's daily training to the captain.

In the original work, after Akagi became the captain, the Shohoku team was completely maintained by the passion of Akagi and Murasaki, otherwise the Shohoku team could have been disbanded early.

Therefore, over the years, the performance of the Xiangbei team has not improved. When the plot year came, there were only two players from the same class as Akagi, Akagi and Murasakibara. Even if Mitsui who returned to the team was included, there were only three people!

The five tigers of Xiangbei seem to have a lot to do with Coach Anzai, but it can also be said that they have nothing to do with him.

It matters because Mitsui and Miyagi both chose to join the Shohoku team because of Coach Anzai’s reputation; it doesn’t matter because he has nothing to do with the team’s construction.

For Sakuragi and Rukawa, Coach Anzai can be said to be a mentor, but for Mitsui, Akagi and Miyagi, it is different. They are like unpolished diamonds that fell into a mud pit and were buried.

Center Akagi is known as Kanagawa's top center. Coach Kazuo Karasawa of Fukazawa Sports University even brought national player Shota Shanshan to recruit him in person, showing that he is very optimistic about Akagi.

The irony is that Akagi's skills were all developed by himself.

Due to the lack of proper guidance, Akagi took many detours, which also caused him to have many defects, such as single offensive means, scoring range limited to the basket, nervousness at critical moments, and easy to lose himself after encountering setbacks.

If Coach Anzai was a qualified coach, he should have discovered and improved these shortcomings of Akagi in these two years.

Unfortunately, Coach Anzai never gave Akagi any effective guidance.

Compared to the earnest teachings of Uozumi and Aritaoka Shigeichi, the more talented Akagi could only explore on his own, and his talent was not fully realized.

Miyagi Ryouta is the third point guard in Kanagawa besides Shinichi Maki and Fujima (not counting the fisherman). As a short guard, he has not developed his shooting ability, which is also criticized.

Mitsui Hisashi, the MVP of Kanagawa Junior High School, the talented player that Coach Tanoka dreams of recruiting.

In order to repay Coach Anzai, Mitsui insisted on joining Shohoku, and even dragged three Takeishi Junior High School players into the team.

However, when Mitsui was injured and confused, there was never a scene in the anime where Coach Anzai visited Mitsui.

This psychological gap of not being taken seriously, coupled with the leg injury caused by his reckless behavior and long-term indifference, eventually led Mitsui astray and missed precious time to improve his skills.

Given the status that Coach Anzai holds in Mitsui's mind, if he had shown even a little concern when Mitsui was injured, this bitter consequence would not have occurred in the end.

Although you can use "respecting students' choices" as an excuse, as a coach you must also assume corresponding responsibilities.

The main reason for this is that Coach Anzai has too high a vision and is only interested in top talents. Neither Akagi, Mitsui nor Miyagi are worthy of his attention.

Until the appearance of Sakuragi and Rukawa, Coach Anzai seemed to have become more diligent, but his attention was always on these two people.

All I can say is that although Akagi, Mitsui and Miyagi are excellent, they are not yet at the level that can attract him.

From this we can conclude that Coach Anxi is a talent-only coach.

This seems to be no problem, but this is high school basketball, not professional basketball. It would be too harsh to use the selection criteria of professional basketball to judge high school basketball.

"coach!"

At the first moment, the players lined up and stood in front of Coach Anxi.

Coach Anxi held a thermos cup in his hand and sat calmly in his special chair.

"Ikeda, arrange a competition between freshmen and seniors later!"

Coach Anzai did not stand up and left everything to Yuho Ikeda.

"Yes, coach!"

Yuho Ikeda has become accustomed to Coach Anzai's "delegation of power" and is quickly thinking about the lineup in his mind.

"Everyone, listen up!" Ikeda Yuho's voice was steady and powerful. "In order to enhance mutual understanding, we will have a competition between freshmen and seniors."

After finishing speaking, he began to arrange the lineups for both sides.

(End of this chapter)