Chapter 159: Alley-Oop Three-Pointer, The Prototype of Kuroko Basketball
Phil Jackson didn't bother with any fancy play calls. He'd been here too many times before. At this stage of the game, there was only one answer.
Give the ball to Kobe.
Out of the timeout, the Lakers trailed by five with 32 seconds left. The question was simple: go for a quick two or gamble on a three?
Kobe made the decision himself.
Catching at a 45-degree angle beyond the arc, he rose over Raja Bell's outstretched hand and fired. No hesitation. No second thought.
"Swish!"
Pure. Straight through.
"Unreal! That's an absolutely ridiculous three!" Barkley shouted in the TNT booth.
Kenny Smith just shook his head and grinned. "But that's Kobe. That's who he is."
With that shot, Kobe notched his 51st point of the night and cut the Suns' lead to two. The entire arena gasped, memories of past Kobe takeovers flashing in every fan's mind. On Christmas night, nobody wanted a repeat performance.
The Suns quickly called timeout.
On the bench, Mike D'Antoni hammered the same point over and over: run the clock. Make them bleed every second. He didn't care if they missed—he just wanted the Lakers fighting the clock, not the Suns.
"No fouls! Stay disciplined!" Kobe barked to his teammates on the other side, practically taking over Phil's huddle. He knew one stop would swing momentum back to L.A.
The horn blared. Both squads returned to the court for what might be the defining possession of the game.
From the sideline, Diaw inbounded to Stoudemire, who immediately swung the ball to Chen Yan.
Kobe was waiting. Forty-four minutes in, his legs felt like concrete, but his willpower pushed him forward. He locked onto Chen, forcing him to protect the ball. Chen refused to gamble—he secured it, then kicked it back out to Raja Bell.
The Suns moved the ball around the perimeter, eating clock. With twelve seconds left on the game clock and eight on the shot clock, Nash set up at the wing. Chen tried to lose Kobe along the baseline, dragging Garnett with him.
But Nash surprised everyone, skipping Chen and threading a bounce pass inside to Diaw.
Wide open. Easy layup.
Except it wasn't.
Diaw faked, slapped the ball down for rhythm—but the half-second delay was fatal. Garnett lunged, and with one massive stride, swatted the shot into chaos.
The ball ricocheted into the paint, bodies crashing everywhere. Stoudemire and Kwame Brown dove headfirst, hitting the floor at the same time. Somehow, Stoudemire got just enough of it to poke it out to Raja Bell.
Three seconds.
Two.
"Pass!" a voice roared.
Chen Yan had slipped behind the defense, and Raja didn't hesitate. He lobbed it high.
Chen rose like he was catching an alley-oop dunk. But instead of flushing it, he twisted his body midair. No time to land. No time to reset. He released it in one smooth motion, fading, airborne, launching a three-pointer from the lob.
The entire arena froze.
"What the hell…? An alley-oop three?!" Barkley's voice cracked.
On the sideline, D'Antoni was already screaming, "Rebound! Rebound!" He knew the odds. This was a one-in-a-hundred shot.
And then—
"Swish!"
The net snapped clean, the ball slicing through like a dagger.
The arena erupted.
D'Antoni's face lit up as he spun around, fist pumping like a madman. "Yes! Yes!"
Barkley lost it. "Oh my God! He actually hit it! An alley-oop three-pointer! Are you kidding me?!"
Kenny Smith was standing now. "Fifty-one points! Chen Yan just scored his 51st point on one of the craziest shots we've ever seen on Christmas Day!"
The crowd was stunned. Fans in the arena screamed, hands on their heads. Social media exploded.
"Alley-oop three?! What did I just watch?!"
"Greatest Christmas game of all time, no question."
"That wasn't a shot, that was a cheat code!"
"Chen Yan just broke basketball. Period."
And in a small apartment in Tokyo, Japan, a manga artist named Fujimaki Tadatoshi nearly flipped his sofa. He had been struggling with ideas for his new basketball series, searching for inspiration. But when he saw Chen Yan's midair three-pointer, his eyes lit up.
"Kuroko's Basketball," he whispered, grabbing his sketchpad. "That's it. That's the move."
This is the Link to my new Fanfic:
https://www.webnovel.com/book/34116122708050405
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