Payton played aggrieved, and the triangle tactics were too unfriendly to him.

To be precise, triangle tactics are not friendly to point guards, in the Zen master's system, the playmaker guard is a role that dribbles the ball through the half court and ambushes the bottom corner, but even if Payton is 36 years old, he is still a skinny camel bigger than a horse, and the result of fame is greater than strength is that he still wants to have the right to attack independently.

But as soon as he attacked, the tactical system was messed up, and although he scored double-doubles in the game, the fans still didn't buy it, and it seemed that the last-minute stunner to turn the tide could not hide the fact that he undermined the team's offensive system.

In fact, this problem has been criticized by the media for a season, and it is somewhat far-fetched to throw the pot on Payton, but the contradiction between O'Neal and Kobe Bryant is not suitable to be exposed at this time, so when the media threw the blame on Payton, no one stood up to defend Payton.

Payton had to endure all of this on his own, and he was making changes, but he knew better the result of the changes — it would amplify the holes that would slow him down on the defensive end.

He's defensively good, he've been good, and as he's gotten older, he's probably good at a given game, but it's too difficult for him to keep up a whole playoff run.

After the first day of the game, everyone was gathering information about the game.

The two games in the East were basically crushing, with the Pacers slaughtering the Celtics 104-88 and the Nets pressing the Knicks to the floor at 107-83.

The other game on the Western side is the game between the Spurs and the Kings that basketball experts are more concerned about, although the pre-game prediction that the Kings have a small chance of winning the Spurs, but the Kings are a strong offensive team after all, and anything can happen once the score soars.

It's a pity that their scoring did not soar, 98-74, and even the Spurs suppressed only a season-low 74 points.

The main reason is that Webber has just returned from injury, but everyone can see that Webber, who has returned from injury, is not as good as before in terms of bounce movement and speed.

Webb couldn't stop Duncan at all, his knees slowed his movements, and he was completely suppressed by Duncan.

At this time, people found out that the old spurs are still the strong team that makes people palpitate.

The regular season was inconspicuous, pretending to be dead and taking a break for a season, and only in the playoffs did they show their hideous faces.

Eight teams were battling it out on the first day of the playoffs, and the other eight teams weren't idle.

The day the SuperSonics spent all day in the tactics room studying footage from their tomorrow's opponent, the Mavericks.

After studying the footage of the Mavericks' games, all the SuperSonics players felt that the first round of the playoff journey was no problem.

Although the Mavericks won against the SuperSonics in January, it was the result of the SuperSonics' negligence on their opponents, and the SuperSonics believed they could penetrate the opponent's porous defense with their offense.

"What do you think we should do in this game?" McMillan asked.

Rasheed Wallace grinned and showed his jagged teeth and smiled: "It's still according to the usual plan, starting from Lu, the Mavericks' Nash defense is not good." ”

Ray Allen thought for a moment: "The interior is also their defensive weakness, and Nowitzki's defense is also terrible. ”

Everyone you say a word, it seems that the Mavericks' defense is really vulnerable.

The Mavericks' defense is actually not bad, comparable to the Kings, especially the old Nelson will emphasize strengthening the defense every playoff game, but the flaws of the lineup are there, and it is difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice, and some things are put there No matter how much emphasis is placed.

At the start of the season, there were three team deals that made sports headlines.

The first is to rely on O'Neal's strong appeal and charm to lobby Payton and Karl Malone to join, plus Kobe Bryant in the original team, so that the team has gathered four future Hall of Fame-level Lakers Purple Gold F4.

The second is that through a series of trades, the Timberwolves got two star backcourts in the East, Cassell and Sprewell, with the omnipotent Garnett and star shooter Szczebiak, just looking at the surface is already the team's best team in 20 years.

The third is tomorrow's supersonic opponent, the Dallas Mavericks.

The Mavericks, who had just set the best record in team history the year before and had their first 60-win attempt, were certainly gratifying, but ultimately lost to their rivals Spurs in the Western Conference Finals.

Cuban is definitely a good boss, but this year he is really impatient, he is not soft on money and wants to win the championship, he is often making trades, always trying to poach star players from other teams to strengthen the lineup, hoping to win a quick championship.

I saw that the Lakers and Timberwolves have made significant upgrades, plus the original Spurs and Kings.

Cuban thought to himself: "If the calf doesn't make a deal, it is a regression, and if he doesn't pick up money, it is equivalent to losing money!" ”

So, the Mavericks also made reinforcements.

Although the news exposure is not as good as that of the Timberwolves and Lakers, on the surface, strictly speaking, the Mavericks have strengthened more than these two teams.

First, they took a solid bench dominated by Vin Axel and brought Antoine Jamison to the Warriors.

Again, the Mavericks sent hard-soled center Reeve Lafrentz and two shooters, Chris Mills and Keeley Wales, to Boston in exchange for Anthony Walker.

One is the star of the Warriors, a super scorer who has scored 50 points in two consecutive games. One is one of Boston's two-gun guns, an all-round star forward who can control, pass, and shoot.

Coupled with the original Mavericks three musketeers Nowitzki, Nash, and Finley, what kind of lineup is this?

Not counting the others, these five people alone can score on the field to break 100.

These five people are lined up, and the degree of gorgeousness is not inferior to that of any other team in the league.

Even in the past, only the Lakers and the Boston Five Tigers in the 80s could shine so brightly...

But this time head coach Nelson is going to have a headache.......

How to arrange the first strike?

Nowitzki and Nash are the ones who won't move, and Mr. Mavericks Finley is the team's most disruptive wing player, and he also has good defensive and outside capabilities.

So the old Nelson put out such a lineup:

C: Nowitzki

PF: Danny Fortson

SF: Anthony Walker

SG: Finley

PG: Nash

In principle, this preemptive strike lasted less than two months before it was abandoned.

Why?

First, Nowitzki carrying the center does effectively open the opponent's penalty area offensively, but he doesn't necessarily take much advantage of it defensively.

Second, considering the above, it is reasonable to rank the extremely strong Fortson, if you grab rebounds and do rough work, Fortson can be said to be the best among them, but this person has a shortcoming, he is too easy to foul, and he is also very short-tempered, often as soon as the foul is a foul, the whole person rushes up in anger and looks like he wants to fight with the referee, or it is a foul that does not know moderation as soon as the temper comes, and it is common to commit crimes in less than 15 minutes on the court.

Third, although the defense of the box is a problem, the most serious problem of this group of starters is in the backcourt, Nash is not a good defender himself, but Walker's defense is even worse, and he can hardly defend any wing player when he plays small forward in the new season. And although Finley defends well, he is not good enough to be called a big lock level, and he alone can't make up for the holes of the other two in terms of defense.

The Mavericks started the season with a 15-12 record.

Last season, they were on 12 defeats before the All-Star break.

The main reason for the poor record is that the wing players are too weak, Walker is very versatile, but after all, he is still good at playing at the position of power forward, although the Western defense full of monsters is terrifying, but it is even worse to pull him to the wing.

However, coach Nelson made a bold change of formation after spotting the problem.

It was this change of formation that allowed them to win the supersonic in January.

The changed lineup is as follows:

C: Nowitzki

PF: Anthony Walker

SF: Josh Howard (Marquis Daniels)

SG: Finley

PG: Nash

Nowitzki and Walker may be the worst defensive box duo in the league, but offensively, their combined firepower is enough to blow up opponents, and Nelson's best set-up is to use the rookie wings of Josh Howard and Daniels.

Although they are all rookies, whether it is in terms of physical fitness, defensive enthusiasm and attitude, the help they bring to the team is like timely rain.

The two of them, who are both 6 feet 7 inches tall and have both speed, can support the inside and outside defenses defensively, and are often catch-and-finish finishers in the offensive and defensive transitions of the whole game.

Throughout the season, Howard was able to have a high-quality performance of 8.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 1 steal and 0.8 blocks in about 20 minutes of playing time, while Daniels had 8.5 points, 2.6 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1 steal.

It's fair to say that when the five-star duo stole everyone's attention in the pre-season, no one would have thought that it would be two rookies who helped the team rebound in the middle of the season, and neither of them was a rookie in the early stage, one was the 29th pick in the first round, and the other joined through a short-term free agent contract, and was not selected by any team at all.

The Mavericks, who changed the starting lineup, looked like they had semi-abandoned the interior defense and used the advantages of the existing lineup to start scoring with the opponent.

Looks like it's working.

In the remaining 55 games, the team has a 37-18 win rate of nearly 70%.

The average score exploded from 101.5 to 107.1.

Of course, there are a lot of points conceded.

Relying on the strategy of bombardment, the team won 52 wins in the end and entered the playoffs with the sixth place in the West.

And met with supersonic.

But in the eyes of the supersonic team, although the Mavericks scored fiercely, they also lost points at an astonishing speed, and the shortcomings of the near vacuum on the inside and the team's unreliable defense in the regular season were exposed.

The SuperSonics are the league's leading offensive powerhouse, and they are confident that they will not lose to any team in the league.

McMillan was a little hesitant, he knew that what everyone was talking about was indeed the shortcomings of the Mavericks, but there was always a faint sense of unease in his heart.

"What you say makes a lot of sense, and we're confident that we have an advantage that the outside world can't see." He coughed lightly to interrupt the discussion of the players, the reason why the outside world is not optimistic about the SuperSonics is nothing more than the loss of the SuperSonics to the Mavericks, he continued: "But the Mavericks did cause us problems in the regular season, this is an indisputable fact, we must prevent this kind of thing from happening again, especially in the deadly playoffs." ”

The lights in the room flickered, and he cut the video back to the game the Supersonic lost.

"Don't worry, Mike, I'll beat Anthony Walker all over the ground." Rasheed Wallace laughed: "It was just an accident, they couldn't have been so accurate every game. ”

"What if they're just that accurate?" McMillan asked rhetorically.

"Uh......" Rasheed Wallace was momentarily speechless.

There was a sudden silence in the room.

Only the sound of the game in the video is still ringing.

After a while, Ray Allen nodded and said: "What Mike said is not unreasonable, but we must be confident, because our offensive firepower is not inferior to the opponent, even if they are so accurate, we are not the first team after these months of running-in, and we will not have a collective dumb fire like this one." ”

At this time, as the boss of the team, he was cheering for the big guys.

McMillan shook his head, Ray Allen is a good player, he gets along well with his teammates and treats people politely, but at this time, in addition to encouraging his teammates, it seems that he should remind his teammates.

His eyes looked at Lu Fei, who was sitting in the corner and had been watching the video without speaking.

Lu Fei felt the gaze of McMillan, and knew that McMillan needed someone to stand up and help him say what he wanted to say, and it was obvious that he wanted that person to be himself.

He coughed lightly, and after attracting the attention of his teammates, he said lightly: "Actually...... We could have done a little bit better defensively. ”

Defend?

Rasheed Wallace frowned slightly, and asked puzzled: "Lu, I understand what you mean, the playoffs must be defense to win, but our defense has done a good job, and it also belongs to the middle and upper reaches of the league, not to mention that we have increased our defense in the past few days, I don't think our defense has done anything bad." ”

Wallace's words basically represent the views of all players, and even Ray Allen just thought about it, but it only passed through his mind.

Because the supersonic defense is really not bad, otherwise it would not be able to stand in the third place in the West.

That's why Ray Allen didn't mention it.

Lu Fei smiled: "I'm not saying that our defense is not good, but we can target the Mavericks' lineup and do a better defense." ”

"A lineup against the Mavericks? Is it different from our usual defense? Rashid Wallace asked.

"Yes."

Lu Fei stood up and walked to the tactical board,

"Everyone should have heard the saying, 'The offense may be out of order, but the defense can't,' and the team that can defend in the playoffs will be the winner."

"And what we're going to do is use our defense to make the Mavericks' offense dysfunctional."