The Last Dance

Another year passed and Hideki and Megumi are now third years. 

Many things have changed and things have come and go for the both of them.

For the basketball club that they belong to, they had 3 new members who joined the club, 1 manager and 2 players. 

The new manager is a freshman by the name of Aya Yamamoto. If you remember past members of the basketball club, this was the Yamamoto's twin's younger sister, she joined due to her older siblings love for the sport and dedication to help themselves and others, so she wants to experience it for herself.

For the players, the team had a new Point Guard and a new Center, who will be this team's new young core of budding talents.

As for the leadership role, Hideki is still the captain and ace and Shogo Aoki was named the vice-captain, due to his experience in games, it was only second to Hideki's in comparison.

On the other side of Tokyo, Teiko had a late addition to their team last year after the Nationals. For outsiders, it was just a rumor that was starting to get bigger and stay as a runor, the fabled "Phantom Sixth Man". 

Hideki knew of this rumor due to Momoi, but Momoi did not tell more info and Hideki respected the privacy as it concerned another team's players.

Speaking of Momoi, Momoi's and Hideki's relationship bloomed, but is still "kind of dating, but not in a relationship" both teenagers are commited to their teams so they are taking things slow. But it was slowly getting there.

---

This year the Nationals seedings will again be changed, the last year's changes were welcome but needs more fine tuning, and wanted to value the current performance more rather than the previous year's matters, as some of the teams was ideally or on paper, 'more weaker' than last year.

So they changed it with a weighted formula where the present score gap matters more and all teams will be seeded depending on their score gap. 

(A/N: Another Formula part, skip if you want to, and the next part is after another A/N)

Nationals Seeding formula (X ⋅ 0.25) + (Y ⋅ 0.75) = Z

Whereas

X is the previous year's placing (same as last year, if in a group use the highest number. E.g. 17 to 24 uses 24, 9 to 16 uses 16)

Y is the current year's placing in terms of score gap

Z is the magic number, the fewer the number the higher your seeding.

(A/N: I made it sure that this would be shorter than last time.)

---

In our story, this would be considered Hideki's last dance, as he is now a third year, and the team is getting more stale, only he is improving by leaps and bounds, but not as much as the Generation of Miracles.

Well the nickname Generation of Miracles was thrown around by a random press member but it stuck as they couldn't find a better nickname.

You may ask what about Hideki and the others, like Kiyoshi Teppei and Makoto Hanamiya? They are called the Uncrowned Kings, they are prodigies like the Teiko sophomores but, they have yet to win a chip to prove their 'King' status.

Well amongst the Kings and some members of the press, they regard Hideki as the King of Kings, meaning he is above the Kings, but he is still below the Miracles in terms of success. 

And Hideki is out to prove them.

---

Months passed and the Nationals Qualifiers passed. Hanabira breezed through the tournament with relative ease but not as much as Teiko did, with Hideki as the reliable scoring option of Hanabira and Shogo Aoki and Renji as the team's second and third leading scorer, Hanabira's game got a little bit more 'predictable' and with Renji's inconsistent scoring (but much better than last year) and Aoki's rather limited offensive abilities, Hanabira had a few games where the score was closer and most of their matchups were against Tokyo's best teams not named Teiko.

So they got second to the last, in the score gap ranking, among other schools, they got beaten by almost everyone and of course Teiko. 

So in the end they got 20th in the overall seeding, meaning they will have one more game and will most likely face Teiko in the Semi-Finals, may people are now dubbing this the pre-2010's Lakers vs Celtics, but with the 2-time champions winning 2 of the 2 matches in the last 2 years.

But that doesn't take away that Hideki improved once again. Now he has double digit output on all categories and is averaging 35 points per game with his reliable inside scoring and above average mid-range scoring. And of course his monstrous defense is still top one among all active Middle School players, and eclipsing his previous years performance.

---

Now that the Nationals is beginning, there will be interesting matchups and matches, and for Teiko's side, the narrative is the budding emergence of Aomine Daiki, and his continuing growth as a player. He is repeatedly breaking ceiling after ceiling of what people thought was his potential, only a select few knew that he's just getting started.

Teiko also deployed their Phantom Sixth man sporadically, but when he enters the court, it's overall dynamic changes, it becomes his offense, as passes are continually curving and on very rare occassions, accelerated as if the ball was punched.

The other 'Kings' had entered the Nationals stage and are doing, fine, not really that flashy as all lights are shining brightly on Teiko's side. 

And speaking of the Kings, the first King's matchup would be Hideki against Kotaro Hayama. The Wild Tiger against the King's shield