Wish This Got Adapted Into An OVA
It's practically wishful thinking at this point since it's been 10 years but I really wish they could've adapted the Teiko summer training camp story from the Replace novel into an OVA or something.
If you don't know, the story went like this:
Teiko had a tradition of holding their training camp in Hawaii. They also held practice matches with the local schools there. While sneaking away to play at the beach, Kuroko and Aomine met Tiki, the SF from one of the rival schools that Aomine befriended during the previous training camp. While Tiki is an excellent player, he has a disadvantage in playing basketball in America since he's not particularly tall compared to the average American basketball player. But this year, Tiki was offered a scholarship to one of the schools in Japan under one condition; he has to win against Teiko during the practice match. This makes Aomine feel conflicted, as Teiko winning the match would mean Tiki need to give up basketball in the future.
Unlike most of the stories in the novels, the training camp does features a basketball match. Not only that, the match was:
- from a time when GoM still works/function as a team. The main series Teiko arc is quite fast-paced and I feel like we don't see them much.
- a match where Teiko was disadvantaged greatly. They were affected from jetlag + morale is down because most of the audience were friends and families of the rival school, so they were cheering for their opponents instead.
- likely the last ever time Aomine genuinely enjoyed playing while in middle school. As the training camp took place after his talent awakened but before he had his "the only one who can beat is me" mindset.
- the first ever time cyclone pass was used in a match. As Kuroko developed it just one night before the practice match (though they did mentioned that it was still imperfect at the time).
The manga adaptation of the novels, Replace Plus, only shows a bit of the scene of GoM in the airport. So I really wish there's a visual adaptation of the basketball match against Tiki.