The hot tears Moon Sung-gon shed, the story began in the summer of 2023.

On the day Suwon kt beat Changwon LG to reach the championship match for the first time in 17 years, Moon Sung-gon shed tears as he left the court. As the leader of kt, he maintained a poker face, but he was unable to control his emotions at the last minute.

Is it simply tears of joy about advancing to the championship game? However, it is difficult to sympathize 100% with Moon Sung-gon, who is on the stage of the championship game for four consecutive times. He has endured these tears for more than half a year.

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Moon Sung-gon became a free agent at the end of the 2022-23 season. As Yang Hee-jong's successor, he was likely to remain at Anyang KGC (currently Jeonggwanjang), but he eventually wore a kt uniform with many rumors. He left Anyang for Suwon with a five-year contract period and a large amount of 780 million won in remuneration for the first season.

But it was hard to be together in the offseason. Moon Sung-gon was on the national team's roster for the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games. He missed both the 2014 Incheon Asian Games and the 2018 Jakarta Palembang Asian Games. For Moon Sung-gon, who has a great sense of pride in the national team, the Hangzhou Asian Games was too urgent.

The problem was Moon Sung-gon's ankle. He had chronic ankle injuries and eventually worsened in Jincheon life, where intensive care was difficult. Coach Choo Il-seung could not easily let Moon Sung-gon, who was the center of the national team's defense, go. However, a detailed examination revealed a diagnosis of more than 8 weeks, and there was no justification for it to remain.

Moon Sung-gon agonized. He could participate if he risked injection treatment and, in the worst case, steroid treatment. It was difficult to easily abandon the goal of participating in the first Asian Games in his life. In fact, national team players relied heavily on Moon Sung-gon, and the coaching staff was no different. Instead, the 2023-24 season could not be guaranteed. If it went wrong, it could have ended the first season of the FA transfer with an injury.

After a long thought, he decided to drop out of the national team. He had so much affection for kt and fans that he put down his first Asian Games on his own. I couldn't ignore the large remuneration and high expectations given to me. He managed to erase such regret and left Jincheon Training Center.

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At the time, Moon Sung-gon said, "To be honest, I'm worried a lot. My family, especially my wife, sympathized a lot with this feeling of wanting to be on the stage of the Asian Games. However, I think it could be a competition after giving up the future in the worst case scenario. I still don't know what to choose or what is the right choice," he confessed.

Moon Sung-gon did not neglect to thoroughly rehabilitate and develop a sense of practice until just before the 2023-24 season. I tried to speed up as much as possible to fit the season plan of manager Song Young-jin and kt. Coach Song Young-jin once said, "I try so hard that I think I'm going too far."

Moon Sung-gon is the best defender representing the KBL, winning the Best Defensive Award for the fourth consecutive time. He is also a player who gives up his scoring and scratches itchy areas such as defense, hustle, and rebound. However, kt needed time to adjust. Unlike what he did at KGC, kt wanted from him. Eventually, the playing time decreased, and it became the first season in five years since the 2018-19 season that he could not play for more than 30 minutes.

Moon Sung-gon said, "I thought every defense I played was the answer. I had a big idea that I wasn't wrong. But the defense of KGC and KT was different. In KGC, if I had to help someone, kt tried to defend someone helping me. (Song Young-jin) I didn't match the defense that the coach thought, and the playing time was reduced like that. He couldn't blend into the tactics the coach wanted and had to change himself. "We came to the conclusion after thinking about the first round of the semifinal playoff against Hyundai Mobis."

Moon Sung-gon, who has changed so much, has been showing his strength throughout spring basketball. As we know, Moon Sung-gon was on the court, and Hyundai Mobis and LG struggled. KT expected Moon Sung-gon's presence and gave him a large amount of money, resulting in the result. As a result of advancing to the championship game for the first time in 17 years.

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For Moon Sung-gon, the 2023-24 season has never been convenient from before the opening until the end of the regular league. All I've always heard in my conversations with him throughout this season was, "I have to do really well this season." As such, there was a lot of pressure on his male mother.

Moon Sung-gon thought and thought about it every moment, and even put down his pride that he was the best in order to overcome the neglect (?) that he had never done before. The fact that fans' expectations were high because he brought "winning DNA" was sometimes a joy and sometimes a burden. It was a championship game that came with such strong pressure and overcoming himself.

Maybe that's why. When he was confirmed to advance to the championship game, he couldn't hold back tears. There was nothing special about Moon Sung-gon, who already advanced to the championship game three times in a row from 2020 to 2022, but it was definitely "special" that he overcame the past and climbed up as a kt player, not KGC.

The remaining mission for Moon Sung-gon is now to win with kt. The "Super Team" Busan KCC is clearly too much to deal with, and both coach Song Young-jin and Moon Sung-gon describe it as "not defective." Nevertheless, there was no giving up. KT has been fierce throughout the spring this year and has not been easily collapsed. It's not a team to watch KCC rise to the throne. Moon Sung-gon is at the center of it.

Moon Sung-gon said, "A short-term battle is a mental battle after all. We came all the way up here, beating KCC well. I have another thing to do and I'm proud (laughs). KCC has a lot of good players and they are all close. I want to compete with them. I definitely want to go to the 7th round and decide to win on my birthday," he said.

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Min Jun-gu, reporter at MK Sports.