Half of the first quarter has passed, but our Lakers can be said to be completely pressed by the Jazz, but we actually have no more way, after all, we are back-to-back away games at this time, and it is really difficult to take advantage of the powerful Jazz's devil's home court.

But I'm definitely not willing to be beaten by the opponent like this, just like the last game we played against the Jazz, in fact, we were beaten very badly in the first half, but in the second half we still relied on our own efforts to pull the point difference back, so we can't just give up so quickly, even if my teammates plan to give up in advance, I can't be affected by their thoughts.

What I have to do is keep my own efforts and keep the game going, as long as I don't give up, anything can happen.

In the second half of the first quarter, the substitute players came on, and today our starters performed poorly, so the head coach Silver Fox Harris replaced the substitute players very early, which is actually understandable, after all, with our performance today, I am really a little sorry for the playing time, but we can see how the substitute players are today.

When I was on the bench, I was carefully observing the game on the court, and I found a problem, that is, although the Jazz's tactics are quite powerful and the execution is very strong, in fact, their tactics are not very varied, which means that their tactics are actually relatively fixed.

If you do some special research on their tactics before the game, there may be a chance to find a solution to their unblocking tactics, but it may not be so easy to find.

For the rest of the day, I was able to concentrate a lot of attention as much as I would when I was on the pitch, and in this state I was able to spot a lot of details that most people wouldn't find, and it's really important for a professional player like me to have that quality.

Because in order to become a real top player, in addition to having good physical talent and basketball skills, you must also have a certain degree of basketball IQ, and basketball IQ is more acquired in addition to some innate factors, so in order to continuously improve my own basketball IQ, I will be very serious to watch the details of these games.

I spent a lot of games off the bench at the beginning of the season, and those days on the bench taught me a lot of things, and some of the most important things are that you can't focus on basketball at any given time.

Why, because on the basketball court is a whole that is constantly changing, you need to have a holistic mind, and if your attention is only on the basketball, then there can be a big problem, and one of the huge problems is that you can't really notice anything outside of the basketball.

For example, the positioning of the opposing players, the overall tactical execution, the movement of your teammates, and the position you are in throughout the pitch.

Many times some players have strong individual ability, but they can't play on the basketball court, one of the important points is that they lack a clear enough sense of position on the court, once they are on the court, they become unaware of what they should do, which is really a very fatal problem for a professional player, and the fatality of this problem is sometimes far beyond your imagination.

In the second half of the first quarter, our Lakers bench players played quite well, at least stabilizing the score a little bit on the court, and to be honest, Eddie Jones felt surprisingly good in this game, and I found that he didn't panic at all against Stockton's defense, not only did he not make mistakes, but even used his footwork and dribbling to score several times under Stockton's defense, and he didn't do it once or twice.

I was a little surprised by this, because the fact that Eddie Jones was certainly not as good as me in his individual singles, but he was much better than me in singles Stockton, which had to surprise me, so I focused my attention on him to find out why he was able to do all this.

In fact, Eddie Jones' individual singles skills are relatively unpretentious, and I think it may be because his style of play is closer to Stockton's, so when facing Stockton's defense, he will seem more relaxed, unlike me who has a bit of a hard time adapting to Stockton's defensive style.

In the second half of the first quarter, our Lakers bench players stabilized the scene on the court, and also narrowed the difference slightly to three points, which is quite good, and our Lakers bench players are early, and the starters can return to the court early at the beginning of the second quarter, at this time the Jazz players on the court are basically bench players, at this time we can get some better offensive opportunities, if we can grasp this opportunity, there is a great possibility to further close the score.

During the break after the end of the first quarter, head coach Silver Fox Harris began to arrange and restructure the alignment of our starters, and one of the most interesting points was that the head coach Silver Fox Harris asked me to play against Stockton on the defensive end, just like Stockton played against me on the defensive end, and he told me not to have a mental superfluity when facing the opponent's tight defense, just play to my strength.

And since Stockton was able to limit me on the defensive end, he also believed that I had the ability to limit Stockton on the defensive end as well.

After listening to head coach Silver Fox Harris, I couldn't help but feel that I really should do it, and since Stockton was able to limit me on the defensive end and make me feel very uncomfortable, then I need to do it too.

However, the real headache of the Jazz team is their blocking and dismantling tactics, in this era, when defending the dismantling, there is actually not much use of the dismantling to replace the defense, because many times the players lack the tactical practice of blocking and dismantling, so there is no way to really implement such defensive tactics in the game.

But it doesn't mean that there is no way to use the tactics of blocking and changing defenses, after all, these cooperation between players is not a day or two suddenly appeared, even if we don't have this tacit understanding on the defensive end now, but we can gradually improve our tactical awareness through game training, which is still very important.

I told head coach Silver Fox Harris about my idea, and at first I thought he would oppose me, but this time he gave me rare support, and it seemed that he wanted to use this game as a test to see if it was possible for our Lakers players to use a defensive strategy that they didn't usually use.

In fact, the principle of blocking and changing defense tactics is very simple, but the actual operation is not necessarily so easy, and one of the very important reasons for this is actually that it is very difficult to develop a tacit understanding between our players, and sometimes it is not possible to do it in a few games.

Like in the later small-ball era, the Warriors' Splash Brothers used the Warriors' infinite blocking and dismantling tactics to have a very terrifying outside deterrent, and later various teams began to train the players' infinite defensive ability in order to deal with the Warriors.

The second quarter of the game started quickly, at this time our Lakers naturally replaced all the starters, in fact, many of our starters today are relatively depressed, which may have something to do with some of the psychological shadows left by our previous Utah Jazz game, after all, the last time we visited the Utah Jazz was quite difficult.

This time, from the beginning of the game, it seems that what awaits us will still be a very difficult situation, but I am not particularly worried about this, because we are not determined to win today's game, we knew before the game that this game is difficult, and we do not force victory, for us, as long as we can play our own state, there is no need to worry about other things.

After the start of the second quarter, I went all out to get into my scoring state, because Stockton finally got off the break at this time, and Stockton played 10 minutes in the first quarter, and I only played 6 minutes, so I got more rest than him, although now our Lakers are 12 points behind the Jazz, but I believe we can recover the difference soon.

At the beginning of the second quarter, our Lakers scored mainly on my singles, because everyone didn't seem to be very excited, and they didn't run very aggressively on the offensive end, and the Jazz's defense was not small, so I saw that my teammates didn't have many offensive opportunities, so I decided to attack on my own.

In the absence of Stockton to defend me, there are basically no players on the Jazz bench who can match me, and the defensive strategy they mainly use is man-to-man, and rarely pack-and-man, and their starters have very good single defense ability before, so the effect of man-to-man is very good.

However, now that I'm getting better and they still have to use man-to-man defensiveness, I'm going to make them pay for that choice.

In the face of my singles, the Jazz didn't pay much attention to it at first, but when I shot inside and outside, and scored more than ten points in a row, the Jazz had to call a timeout, in fact, in the process they had changed three people to defend me, but in less than three minutes I took all the ten points of our Lakers team alone, although I knew that my style of play was a little unique, but when my teammates couldn't contribute, it seemed that I needed to step up and score.

My scoring efficiency exploded at the start of the second quarter, hitting five of his eight shots, a shooting percentage of over 60 percent, so I don't think there's anything wrong with me going to the main shot.

The Jazz called a timeout, and it was only a little more than three minutes before the start of the second quarter, and the difference between our two sides had been reduced to only five points at this time, which was indeed enough to make the head coach of the Jazz team, Jerry Sloan, unable to sit still, he has always been known for his strict will, so it is naturally very unhappy to see his players in such a situation.

I looked at the Jazz's bench on the bench and found that Jerry Sloan is really angry now, and on the other hand, on our Lakers side, the players finally have a smile on their faces, although their own game state has not yet recovered, but after all, someone can lead our Lakers team to score, which is a very important thing.

The timeout was over quickly, and I knew that the rest of the game was going to get more intense, and the Jazz would never let me score so easily, and they would definitely try to stop me from scoring the next points, and maybe even let the starters come on the court a little earlier and let Stockton come back to defend me.

But I really hope they will change the main players on the field, and it is really not good to bully their substitutes, I am not afraid of them, and when my competitive form is already played, it is not so easy for Stockton to try to prevent me again.

In fact, when we played against the Jazz in the last game, we were also defended by them in the first half, but then after gradually entering the rhythm of the game, we still proved the strength of our Lakers team, and the 30-point difference was much closer, which may also be the reason why the Jazz continued to hit us very fiercely after this game.

They must know that the strength of our Lakers team is not bad, so they just want to take advantage of the shortcomings of our slow entry into the state at the beginning of the game, and crush the morale of our entire team in one go, so that after gaining a huge advantage in points, they can naturally easily win the game in advance.

Because back-to-back away games like ours generally don't go all out, because our bodies are too tired, and if we exert too much force, it is likely to lead to injuries, and it is for this reason that we must have reservations when facing them, after all, this is not a playoff game where every inch is not conceded, our Lakers team's overall record is very good, ranking in the top three in the league, the first Bulls, and the second is their Jazz.

So in this case, we will probably give up the game early, and we replaced the starters early, which actually made the Jazz a little bit lighter, so that we had a chance to catch up later.

At this moment, they are only afraid that they will come up with a very terrible defensive pressure against us again.

After all, I'm the only player on the Lakers team who has really recovered, and their tactics are likely to turn into blocking me alone.

Then let the player with the worst hand in the team just let him go and shoot, so that it could probably give them a dominant position in the game.

After the timeout, the Jazz were playing a lot faster, and their starters were back on the court by this point, but then again, their starters' breaks were a bit short, but compared to the fatigue of our players, it didn't really make a difference to their playing time.

The Jazz's passing became much faster, and the ball was not exactly in Stockton's hands alone, in fact, when I went to play against Stockton, I also did a very good job of preventing him from receiving the ball, which made it difficult for him to easily get the opportunity to catch the ball, and if Stockton couldn't get the ball, the Jazz's offense would honestly not have the same fluency as before.

However, it is clear that I was wrong, because even if Stockton does not hold the ball, the Jazz can still play a fairly smooth offense, and I have to say that the Jazz players are really very good at tactical execution, and their head coach Jerry Sloan must be a very strict head coach in his usual training.

Under his coaching, all the Jazz players are in a very high competitive condition, they just want to be a whole, when some of them are not in good shape, everyone else can step up, in the face of such a strong opponent, we have to think about it, what should we do to not lose too badly in the confrontation with them.

Although Stockton did not hold the ball, but Karl Malone has become a point of possession, their tactics are changing quickly, before I felt that the Jazz's tactics were not enough to change when I was off the court, and the on-court changes were very single, now it seems that their tactics are not single, but because they only need to use a single tactic to win the game, so it may not be necessary for them to use too complex tactics.

This is obviously not good news for us, they not only have a variety of tactics, but also a strong execution, this tactical change is not arbitrary, it is completely targeted, it is likely that they originally intended to retain the real strength, so many real tactics they are not fully used.

It's a terrible thing.