On May 14, the Rockets' home game against the Lakers began. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 The Lakers were forced to make a comeback for Medvidenko, and the Rockets were relieved to replace a big man, with Wallace and Turkoglou forming the starting line. Malone's absence does have a greater impact on the Lakers, if it weren't for Malone's dominant play in Game 3, the Rockets would probably have a 3-1 lead at this time.

The Zen master was depressed, but he knew that he had to pretend to be calm to appease the players, so he was calm as usual. He spoke: "In the first quarter, Sha Ke mainly attacked, mainly hitting Yao Ming. The previous few fights were too polite, so I'll kill him today. If the Rockets are on the defensive team, Shaq will have to run aggressively on the outside and kill the Rockets with a three-point shot. ”

The Lakers players listened attentively, and O'Neal nodded.

Peyton, a seasoned veteran, had a very high ball quotient and quickly understood what the Zen master meant. After losing the strong point of Malone, he could only rely on O'Neal's trump card to fight and strive to establish an advantage in the first quarter. If the game is basically equal, the Lakers' bench is not as good as the opponent, and the morale is not as good as the opponent, and it is likely to collapse.

Tomjanovic was in high spirits, and contrary to Jackson, he laid out the outside-based tactics. On the defensive end, the tall small forward Tekoglou played against the Lakers' expected starting short power forward Medvidenko, and the defensive strong point Wallace played against Kobe. At this time, Tang Shuai believed that the initiative of this series was firmly in his hands.

According to the pre-game tactical arrangement, the Lakers handed over the first attack to O'Neal, and O'Neal took a big hat from Yao Ming as soon as he got up. Payton picked up the floor ball and immediately distributed it to Kobe, who pulled up a strong three-point shot and missed it. Maddie grabbed the rebound.

Billups assisted Maddy's jumper to take the lead, 0:2.

Fox lobs the ball to O'Neal, but the pass is too high under the interference of Da Yao, and O'Neal fails to receive it, seeing that the pass error is about to go out of bounds. Kobe Bryant jumped desperately and grabbed the throw-in in the air, but his body lost his balance, and his feet would go out of bounds when he landed, so he could only throw it as hard as he could, and as a result, he threw the ball in Yao Ming's hands.

Billups got the ball and quickly switched offense and defense, and Payton made a shooting feint against the returning defense, shook Payton to collect the ball and threw the ball again. Injection, 0:5.

Kobe Bryant's strong hit attracted the two of them and then hoisted it to O'Neal, this time O'Neal got the ball strong, Yao Ming raised his arms high to interfere, and the iron hit but the referee's whistle blew. Yao Ming defends the foul.

Da Yao looked at the referee with an innocent face, this ball can indeed be blown or not. O'Neal made 1 of 2 free throws to open the door for the Lakers.

The Zen master loudly instructed the Lakers players to defend aggressively, and it seemed that he was very unhappy with Payton's performance of being shot head-on with a three-pointer just now. Payton, nicknamed "The Glove," a former Defensive Player of the Year guard, was known for his defense as a young man. He got serious and really forced Billups.

Seeing that Chauncy was forced three or four meters away from the three-point line, Yao Ming immediately dropped O'Neal and ran out to cover. Billups took advantage of Yao Ming's huge stature to easily burst over, and made a shot in the open position, 1:7.

"This goal should be mainly attributed to Yao Ming's excellent awareness!" ABC's live guest, Doug Murphy, who was hired as the head coach of the Celtics next season just half a month ago. Rivers commented: "Even though Billups' shooting is also excellent, what is even better is Yao Ming's cover. Rivers was the head coach of the Magic at the beginning of the season, but was quickly fired by the team due to a poor start, and he immediately signed with ABC to play until the end of the season. In the future, he achieved great results in the Celtics team and was well known to Chinese fans.

O'Neal's single attracted the help of Turkoglou, and O'Neal immediately distributed it to Medvedenko, who was in the open spot, but unfortunately he missed the shot. And Billups hit another jumper, 1:9. Jackson got up to call a timeout, but hesitated and sat down.

The Lakers finally hit the first field goal of the game through Bryant's step-back jumper, but Turkoglu immediately closed the three-pointer to 3-12. The Zen master finally asked for a pause.

At this time, Maddie's killer nature was undoubtedly revealed, and on the first ball after the pause, he waited for an opportunity to steal Kobe's pass and directly staged a big slam dunk.

Bryant received the ball at 45 degrees on the left wing and took control of the ball with his left hand to the baseline. Wallace pressed step by step without giving in, Kobe Bryant made a jump shot, due to inertia the body was still leaning to the side, Wallace was in place but failed to block, and the ball scored 5:14.

Yuanfei nodded secretly, Wallace was well defended. For a superstar of Kobe's level of defense, it's unrealistic to let him not score. A good defense is to force him to make more difficult uncomfortable shots, and the rest is to see how Kobe Bryant feels. And Kobe Bryant did not reach the peak of his later technical strength during this period, and he was not the scoring maniac who faced high-pressure defense at will.

Sure enough, Kobe Bryant next hit three irons in a row. The Lakers struggled to rely on O'Neal's interior offense, while the Rockets blossomed more, leading by 13 points in the first quarter and widening the margin to 21 points at the end of the first half.

In the fourth quarter, when Kobe Bryant used the difficult technical action of holding the ball with his back in the high position, turning his body left and his right foot to reach the pivot foot and turning back, the Zen master sighed deeply. Wallace's comeback changed the entire series, and it was his successful defense of Kobe Bryant that completely overwhelmed the Lakers.

Of course, the goal didn't go in, and Bosh grabbed the rebound. Reed hit another three-pointer to crush the Lakers' belief in winning.

The Lakers finally replaced the OK duo, and the game officially went into garbage time. Rockets fans on the sidelines began to celebrate in advance when they saw this substitution.

At 82:109, a 27-point massacre, the rocket soldiers won the battle of Tianwang Mountain without blood. Wallace contributed 6+7+2 with mediocre stats, but completely contained Kobe Bryant on the defensive end. Bryant scored just 20 points on 8-of-24 shooting. O'Neal swept away the decline and revealed the first center's Zheng Rong to cut 26+15, but he couldn't prevent the Lakers' defeat.

At this time, the top four in the East also all entered the battle of Tianwang Mountain, and the Pacers, Heat, Nets and Pistons won their first two home courts in this round, and each committed suicide to a tie. In the same day as the Rockets, the Nets finally broke the unbeaten home streak of Eastern Conference teams in this round. They battled in three overtimes to draw 127-120 at Auburn Hills Palace Arena. Of the Pistons' starting five, only Bodiloga made it to the end, and the other four fouled all six, while the Nets also had Kenyon. Martin and four others were sent off. The Nets, the old overlords of the East, took a 3-2 lead.

In the next day's game, the Pacers built a huge advantage of 18 points in the first three quarters and finally won Tianwang Mountain, and Heat rookie Wade showed excellent organizational skills to score 16+3+10. The Timberwolves, on the other hand, relied on Sprewell's 34+7+6 to beat the Kings and also achieved a match point.

The four semi-finals finally came to the battle of life and death.