When Wayne came back in the game, we had already pulled up the lead by 10 points, so they had a lot of catching up to do. But he was well-rested and seemed ready to get back in the game. 

As soon as he came in, the whole game changed once again as he disrupted our pa.s.ses and made some of the craziest pa.s.ses of his own. At one point, I could have sworn that he threw the ball so fast that it was almost catching fire. I shook my head and looked at the ball once again, but it seemed to have returned to normal as their Center caught it and dunk the ball, citing our lead even more.

I quickly examined the center's hands, and I can see that it was extremely red, those pa.s.ses were not regular, he had gotten hurt from those pa.s.ses that Wayne keeps throwing at him, and it seems like they haven't come up with a solution to counter those effects. If he keeps receiving pa.s.ses like that from Wayne, he's going to be injured for life and won't be able to hold another basketball again.

I plan to talk to him about that after the game, perhaps the center could use some heat resistant gloves or something to at least protect his hands from going bad. If Wayne's pa.s.ses were fast enough to injure his teammates, I wondered how much practice they went through and how much hurt and pain his teammates are going through now just to get a win for their team.

Even though they weren't much of a team in the previous years, they weren't worse than my team for sure, with Wayne in the center of their game now, they wanted to make a run for the cup. But that's not going to happen as the world is too big and he doesn't know his limits yet. 

Using this opportunity, I quickly give instructions to Blackpool and Garett to go hard in the paint. I brought down the ball, crossed over Wayne with a little one two-step as I waited for Blackpool to get open which he did from his defender who was a few feet away from him, but it was enough to get the shot in as I pa.s.sed it over to him and he took the shot pus.h.i.+ng the lead-up by 2 points.

Wayne didn't get discouraged as he spotted someone trying to cherry-pick, so he threw the ball quickly towards him, but Limiyou did not disappoint me as he intercepted the pa.s.s and handed it over to me, giving me an open shot. 

Due to the distraction he caused, Wayne forgot to check me, as I took the shot from the 3-point line, Wayne couldn't believe that he had messed up that play and pa.s.sed the ball right to the enemy's hands. He rarely does that, so when he does, he beats himself up because he thinks of himself as the playmaking guru, but he was in the middle of a game and couldn't afford to take this loss. 

Wayne inbounded the ball and looked at some different places as his players started to scramble around while he was bringing the ball down. His Center had set up a pick to block Blackpool, making Garett try to help him out, but they got tangled up, leaving the Power Forward open to receive the ball and dunk it as he jammed it with a powerful tomahawk. This got the crowd hyped up, and Wayne's teammates pumped up as they went back into their defensive postures.

They needed to get a steal here to stop my momentum, but I wasn't just going to allow that. I brought down the ball; when I got to the half-court line, Wayne stepped up to me trying to guard, so I pa.s.sed it over to Sheila, giving her a sign to go on the attack. All our interactions didn't go unnoticeable by Wayne. However, he couldn't do anything about it, as Sheila charged into the post, speeding past her defender, but while she was going up for the layup, the center had knocked her down, causing a flagrant foul to be called. 

Wayne was cursing out his center for fouling so hard and giving us a chance at two free points. Sheila went up to the free-throw line and made both of her free throws as she winked at me and gave me the thumbs up. 

I laughed as I saw the frustration in Wayne's face, the face of someone giving away free points during the game-deciding few minutes. We are probably going to make the next basket on the possession coming up, whenever I was checking Wayne his Goldeneye ability was ineffective, but so was mine. It was purely a skilled base compet.i.tion between us.

Still, I had other tricks up my sleeve, so I wasn't too worried about him getting ahead of me, but anyway, the play went on, after Sheila got her flagrant foul, she received the ball once again. I told her to attack again, this time the Center tried to stay away from her. But, she charged at him and pretended like she was about to shoot it, causing the center to jump up, but then Sheila bounced the ball underneath the center's jumping legs, pa.s.sing it to Garett who received the ball and Jammed it in.

Wayne was officially feeling fl.u.s.tered due to that great play we just ran. Just when we were about to get back on the defense, we heard another whistle call as the referees had called another flagrant foul on the center and kicked him out of the game.

This confused everybody as we all looked back and saw that their center had fallen on top of Sheila. The center seemed lost and confused, he felt something soft under him, as he continued to grope whatever it was, getting a good feel of it, with a red face, Sheila quickly pushed him off, blus.h.i.+ng hard and trying to compose herself. The referee saw this as s.e.xual hara.s.sment and called a flagrant foul on the center, making the Australian team lose their minds. Their coach threw down his clipboard and started yelling at the referees, who told him to relax.

Their coach started getting wild, and the referees kicked the coach out of the game, along with the center. Wayne was beyond devastated at this point and lost his drive to fight for the win. His best player, who was the Center of their team, was out, and he had n.o.body to depend on anymore. So he quietly took this loss as we started celebrating, I went and sat down on the bench watching the time run out.