Chapter 934
The two are compared, and the clumsiness is self-evident. Naturally, the Knicks were ridiculed by the media of good things, Billups was already depressed enough, who knew that at this time, there were still people who planned to take advantage of the fire to rob and fall into the well.
If you have to find a team in the NBA league that will not have a little burden in mind when competing, the Knicks players and fans will definitely choose the Los Angeles Clippers. Because of a well-known vendetta, the Los Angeles Clippers have not won a game against Lamar's team.
But without Lamar on the Knicks now, can this curse continue? Once the Los Angeles Clippers break Lamar's undefeated golden body during Lamar's suspension, Billups really doesn't know how to explain to Lamar.
The Knicks have had a lot of turmoil lately, and so have the Los Angeles Clippers. At the beginning of the season, the team's owner Raheem Sterling finally chose to rebuild again because he couldn't stand the team's poor performances in recent years. Elgin Baylor, the team's general manager who originally wanted to bring in Elton Brand and traded Lamar, also became a scapegoat, and was kicked out of Clippers management by Raheem Sterling. Of course, Baylor is not the only one who has left, a large number of team management, including the head coach, have left with all the way, and some of the former Clippers meritorious veterans have not ended well.
The team has left a large number of people, and the Clippers are naturally panicked, but fortunately, Elton Brand, the pillar of the team, is still there. Although the Clippers are working hard for the No. 1 pick, it can't stop Brand's vengeful heart.
Before facing the Knicks, the young and energetic power forward also showed his arrogance to the media: "I know the Los Angeles Clippers haven't beaten Lamar Odom's team for four years, and that's a very bad thing for us! We can't let this go on any longer, we have to do something to let the arrogant New Yorkers know that they're going to have the biggest setback of their lives in Los Angeles." ”
'I don't think Lamar Odom's suspension will be our chance, in fact I would have preferred him to be on the pitch. Then I'll be able to go head-to-face with him. Either way, it's a good thing for the team, and we're going to change things so that the next time those New Yorkers see us, they don't have the capital to show off. ”
"We're going to win this game, and we're going to give the fans in Los Angeles a great win! ”
Elton Brand is young and vigorous, or rather arrogant and fartful, and people don't pay attention to it. For the new head coach of the Clippers, this is a great opportunity to end that shameful record. As for Lamar's absence, it wasn't on his radar at all.
However, the speaker may be unintentional, but the listener may not be unintentional. Elton Brand's provocative words before the game still made a person angry.
Lamar had left Duke to return to New York and join the team when he returned from Los Angeles. Who knew that when he was at the airport, he saw the footage of Brand's interview from the window of the electrical appliance store on the side of the road, and suddenly Lamar's eyebrows were about to stand up.
"Chance? It's up to you bastards to take it!"
At the beginning of the game, the Clippers' offense was quite fierce.
Although Lamar was unavailable for this game, which made Elton Brand feel a little regretful, the team now desperately needs a win to stop the slump. For the sake of victory, in order to boost the morale of the Clippers, Brand can't care about any victory.
So the matter of challenging and defeating Lamar, Brand is no longer thinking about it now. With the increase of age and rich competition experience, although it is inevitable that he can't control his temper when facing Lamar and makes a lot of nonsense before the game, he still has at least calmness.
Truth be told, Lamar has improved so fast in recent years that Brand might have been on par with Lamar four years ago, but now he's been left behind too much by Lamar. However, with Brand's current skills and strength, it is more than enough to ravage the Knicks' current interior players.
As soon as he came up, Brand singled Hilario three times in a row, and caused Dampot to foul once, scoring seven points in a row. Then Brand drew Simmons' bag and hit a timely assist outside shot.
For a while, the Clippers played well, but the Knicks, who have always advocated offense, played a little timidly, and it was not until the third minute that Billups hit a three-pointer.
10:3!
The fans in Los Angeles seemed to really see the hope of the team's victory, shouting hard to cheer on their team. The Clippers players also played more and more fiercely, and by the end of the first quarter, they had led the Knicks by 13 points, and the score was 36-23.
The best performer on the Clippers' side was Brand, who scored 15 points on a single shot inside and outside, and also saw the opportunity to stage a shocking man-to-man dunk, which repeatedly raised the atmosphere at the Staples Center.
After the start of the second quarter, as Brand's physical strength dropped and he was out of the game, the Knicks also began to counterattack. The first to let go was Simmons, because Lamar was suspended, Battier was injured, he finally got the coveted main position, and he also performed quite well at the small forward position, after a few games, he averaged 15.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.3 steals per game.
Although the Clippers small forward opposite him in this game can be regarded as a strong player, because the Clippers rebuilt again, the powerful players walked and retired, and he had to play a full twelve minutes in the first quarter of the game, which affected his physical strength.
The result is naturally conceivable, as soon as Simmons hits, the Clippers' small forward is a little unbearable. The Knicks also seized this opportunity to put the offensive dominance in Simmons' hands and began to desperately chase down the score.
Seeing that the Knicks were about to catch up, Brand was once again in the field. As a result, he used two 2+1s and a tomahawk slam dunk after a breakthrough to beat the Knicks back to the bottom again.
Faced with the predicament encountered by the team, Jeff Van Gundy off the field was also very anxious, constantly making substitutions and adjustments, hoping to reverse the team's decline. But Brand's performance in this game was too rebellious, even if Jeff Van Gundy used Anderson and Darmster, two interior defenders, to cover Brand, he couldn't stop the captain from setting sail. On the contrary, because of the shrinking defensive space, Olowokandi, who has never been able to get a chance to perform, hit two dunks, which made this parallel champion who has been included in the trade list by the Clippers executives extremely excited.
By halftime, the Knicks were still trailing the Clippers by 13 points, and the situation was starting to get a little tougher.
At half-time, Jeff Van Gundy was furious at his team's poor performance. He knew very well that the Knicks could not afford to lose this game, not only because he couldn't explain it to Lamar, but more importantly, he had enough of the evaluation of him by those who ignored him.
"I don't have any coaching ability, I only play well because I have a player like Lamar!"
Even if Jeff Van Gundy was ready to face all doubts, such an evaluation made him a little unbearable. Although Van Gundy doesn't mind Lamar being the main character of the Knicks, at least he wants to see his name in the credit book when the Knicks are in glory, rather than being completely swept aside and becoming an insignificant little person like this.
"Are you just resigned to your fate?"
The Knicks' locker room was so quiet that every player could hear their breathing clearly. Jeff Van Gundy's words weren't loud, but everyone could clearly feel his anger.
They played really badly in this game, just like the previous game against the Sacramento Kings, they were completely suppressed by one person, which is simply unthinkable for a team that wants to win a championship. They can all imagine what the media reporters who have been waiting to see their jokes will say if they lose this game, and they have already experienced it once before when they lost to the Wizards, and no one wants to do it again.
Seeing that the players didn't speak, Jeff Van Gundy had to come up with the final killer move: "Do you want to disappoint Lamar? Or are you ready to break the jar? Chauncey, Devon, do you remember the promise you made to Lamar?"
Feeling Jeff Van Gundy's aggressive gaze, thinking of Lamar's helpless and apologetic eyes and trust in himself when he left the team, and thinking about this game, all the players on the Knicks felt like their chests were about to explode.
"Sir!" Billups hadn't spoken yet, but the Haitian, who had always been arrogant, took the lead in standing up and taking responsibility: "I know what I should do, the Knicks' basket in the second half will be handed over to me to guard, you can rest assured!"
At the start of the second half, Piakowski missed an outside shot, and Darm Porter picked up the rebound and handed it to Billups. The Knicks launched a fast attack, and just from the momentum, it is obvious that there is a big difference between the current Knicks and the first half.
The Clippers' defense speed is not slow, and the Knicks' fast offense can only turn into a positional battle in the end.
Hilario leans on Brand on the inside to ask for the ball. Due to poor form in the first half, Hilario didn't get many shots, only scoring five points. This is extremely abnormal for a team's interior offensive core. 2k reading web