Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-294840-20170617233752/@comment-30323490-20170619151418

He made the shadow clone right after he and Neji collided.A little time passed between their collision and the clear of the dust/Neji rising. Naruto was already in the hole, so he just made a shadow clone, while his real self dug up a little further in the ground. It's not like he went 100 meters in the ground. He had time... And Neji didn't react to him coming about because simply he couldn't. If you rewatch the episode, you would see that Neji barely walked to Naruto's hole.

And the last time i checked, Naruto's clones did take out partialy transformed Gaara...but i guess Neji is way stronger than that Gaara, right? Imagine Naruto doing that attack on Neji...how would he even survive that? Imagine Naruto throwing all those shurikens at Neji, like he did with Gaara. Neji would most likely use the rotation to defend himself...and then what? How would he counter 2000 punches coming to him? Gaara had his shukaku sand shield on, and still got hammered.And again, consider that Neji's rotation was matched by a powered up Naruto...Honestly...talking about plot...