Rebirth In KurokoNoBasket

The second quarter started with the ball in Nambara's possession. This time they attacked with moving the ball around constantly; none of the players even tried to get past their guard.

Nambara's shooting guard got the ball right in the corner of the court and moved to shoot the ball into the basket. Kaitani, who was his guard, jumped to contest the shot, but his attempt was unsuccessful, as he couldn't reach in time.

The ball landed in the basket earning Nambara their first point of the quarter.

From the corridor above the court, Ishida shouted at Kaitani.

[A/N - 1: Think about the corridor in Karasuno's gym in Haikyuu.]

Ishida: "Kaitani, get more closer. Decrease the space between you and your mark that is better than contesting the shot."

The coach blew his whistle at Ishida and frowned slightly. Ishida joined his hands and apologized to the coach.

Ishida: "Sorry."

The game continued with the Shun dribbling the ball right to the free-throw line, he assumed a post position with Nambara's power forward on his back.

Shun turned and jump for a hook shot, and Nambara's power forward jumped with him, but mid-jump Shun bought his hand down and passed the ball to Yuki, who was passing by in front of him.

Yuki caught the ball and jumped for an overhead layup, the ball bounced off the backboard and landed in the basket.

The point gap increased slowly as the game continued. Shun was keeping the pace of Tokiwadai's offense slow.

Shun: 'Nambara has been tense from the very beginning, they have been going all out on defense from the vert start. We have been able to score consistently even with our current slow pace.

The more we score, the more will Nambara tighten their defense, exhausting themselves quicker. If I had gone with a fast-paced offense, Nambara would have fallen into a panic.

The coach said that he wanted to thoroughly check the new-lineup, a slow-paced offense requires the players to show more skill, which will be enough for the coach to see what the team needs.'

The coach and the team talked about the game earlier in the day.

-*-*-*-*-

Coach: "Usually, we would be going with a fast-paced game to increase the point gap as soon as possible, but this time I want you guys to play slow so that I can see your skills more thoroughly."

The coach turned towards Shun and said.

Coach: "Kageyama-kun, please refrain from scoring. I want you to play as the playmaker for the whole game, make sure to use your teammates to the fullest."

-*-*-*-*-

Shun once again was dribbling the ball forward.

Nambara's center blocked his path, and Shun stopped in front of him. Shun lowered his posture further down and was dribbling the ball closer to the ground.

Nambara's center thought that Shun was going to drive past him, so he stepped back, spread his arms wide, and lowered his stance as well.

Shun had the ball in his left and hand, and he stepped to his left. Nambara's center leaned to the left in response, but Shun raised his body immediately and threw the ball over his defender's left shoulder, which tilting downwards from Shun's fake.

The ball went like a laserbeam to Aone, who caught the ball and scored with an easy layup.

Ishida was watching the match from above, so he saw what happened.

Ishida: 'He lowered the Nambara's center's posture and made it so that his left hand wouldn't be able to block his pass in time. The center had left Aone alone. Shun must have decided to pass the ball to Aone, the moment the center came to block him.'

Nambara's coach looked at a Shun and smiled bitterly.

Nambara's coach: "Kageyama Shun stands out too much. His reputation for being a top scorer attracts defenders to him, which he then uses to pass the ball to his now free teammates, and with his skills, he makes sure that the pass goes through.

When you have a powerful scorer, their very existence is a brilliant decoy."

-*-*-*-*-

Mibuchi had been training his off the dribble shooting skills since the coach had told him about the two types of shooters.

Mibuchi was having difficulty in changing style. He was used to be in a stable position before the ball came to him, but now, he had very little time to get in a stable position, plus he had to be mindful of the space between him and his defender.

Mibuchi looked at Nambara's shooting guard, who was guarding him. Mibuchi held the ball in his right hand, leaned his body to the left, but then put force on his left knee to push him to the right, both Mibuchi and his defender moved to the right, but Mibuchi stopped immediately.

The fake to the left was put there for show, Mibuchi wanted his defender to think that his fake had failed and that Mibuchi was going to go towards the right, but what the defender didn't know was that Mibuchi wasn't trying to move forward at all, he just wanted to create space between them by sending the defender away.

The defender wasn't able to react to Mibuchi's stop and went forward, leaving a space between them. Mibuchi took the opportunity and shot the ball.

The ball missed the center and bounced off the rim, but Yuki was there for the rebound, he caught the rebound and then jumped again to score the ball himself.

Mibuchi clicked his tongue at the missed short.

Mibuchi: 'Tsk. I need to get into a stable stance more quickly.'

Mibuchi wasn't happy with the shot. He had taken the shot from inside the three-point line and had successfully evaded his defender, so seeing the shot miss was frustrating, to say the least.

Tokiwadai's coach smiled, seeing Mibuchi attempting the shot on his own, he was happy to see the progress, despite seeing Mibuchi missed.

The team was making mistakes, but despite that, they were in the lead. Shun adjusting his assists and plays so that the players would get maximum comfort he could provide when they attempted to score.

Shun decided that the team should use this match as a way to find their weaknesses, so he decided to steal the passes in the second half. Originally, Shun wasn't going to steal the passes as the coach wanted to see players play more, and Shun stealing the passes made defense a lot easier.

The coach was not communicating with the team today as he was the referee, so the team was on their own.

In the huddle, before the second half Shun stated his intentions.

Shun: "I will be stealing the ball from now onwards."

Mibuchi raised an eyebrow and asked.

Mibuchi: "I am fine with it, but wouldn't it be overkill against Nambara."

Shun nodded and explained his reasoning.

Shun: "Our team is going through a change, this match is a perfect opportunity for us to find what we need to work on, so if I steal the passes the volume of our offense will increase, and all of us will be able to get a pretty accurate estimate of what we need to work on."

Aone nodded at the idea, and that was him wholeheartedly agreeing with the idea.

The team came to an agreement to follow the steal strategy.

Mibuchi: "Okay, it is decided, Shun will steal the passes, and I want all of you to score without worrying about missing."

-*-*-*-*-

The second half of the game confused Namabara's team, a lot, they weren't able to process what was going on with Tokiwadai.

They were missing baskets, left and right.

The center of the team was not even trying to score; he was just defending the post and rebounding every single missed ball on both ends of the court like a maniac.

The inside offense had taken a serious dip after Tokiwadai's center pulled out of the offense. Their short small forward and his fellow first-year power forward were missing baskets like they didn't care about the score.

The small forward was tosing up floaters and mid-range shots like crazy and had missed almost all of his floaters, and his shoots were either touched or completely denied most of the time when he tried to create space and shoot.

Tokiwadai's power forward was consistent, but he has consistent in missing his attacks. The power forward was trying to score with different types of layups, which would usually create difficulty for defenders, but because of the poor choices in choosing the type of layups, he was missing completely or getting blocked consistently.

The shooting guard of the team was playing like he was doing a three-point shooting drills. He was missing so many shots that usually would get a player grounded on the bench, and on top of that, he wasn't even trying to decrease his range for better accuracy; he was talking every shot from the three-point line.

On top of all this, the genius first-year still hadn't scored a single point in the game. When he started to steal passes in the second half, Nambara thought that he would finally start scoring, so they braced their defense, but that was far from what happened; each steal was passed to his teammates.

But Nambara wasn't able to take the lead even for a single time, Tokiwadai was getting so many rebounds and turnovers that Nambara couldn't keep up even with all the misses.

The game ended with Tokiwadai winning the game with a score of 59-29.