Pat Riley didn't expect Adelman to be so bold and suddenly bring on newcomer Sabonis, who had never played before, and now is not garbage time.

Since becoming head coach, Adelman has never been known for being bold and innovative, but for being stable and reasonable, and even criticized for being stubborn.

But Adelman is still very good at seeing people and discovering the potential of players, and he can see that Sabonis is different from most NBA centers, and it is not particularly suitable to use him as a backup for Gan Guoyang.

Sabonis does not have the physical fitness of Gan Guoyang's flexibility and strength, and the two play styles are also very different, and Adelman is not optimistic that Sabonis can make up for Gan Guoyang's defensive holes and control of backcourt rebounds after he is off the court.

Therefore, letting Sabonis play Gan Guoyang as a substitute is a test for the team's tactical adjustment, and the outside players will inevitably have to run more to fill the position on the defensive end, so that the team's counterattack speed will definitely decrease, and the consequences are obviously a series of consequences.

The best choice is to let Gan Guoyang and Sabonis be present at the same time, and let Gan Guoyang come to the position of big forward and give full play to his energy.

"Sabonis looked a little slow on the court, but he was really tall, Sabonis received the ball at the top of the arc and passed it to Gan, who made a jumper! Ball in! ”

Sabonis came on and immediately contributed an assist, he advanced all the way from the middle, and after receiving a pass from Porter at the free throw line, he turned around and threw a hook hand, Gan Guoyang just came around from the outside, and received the ball at the corner and made a direct jumper.

A standard, smooth catch-and-shoot with an extremely standard posture, perfect shot arc, perfect hand shape, and the ball is also hollow into the net, without grazing the basket a little.

After the ball was scored, Gan Guoyang stepped forward and high-fived Sabonis, and then pointed at Sabonis and said: "Beautiful big guy!" ”

Sabonis smiled happily, having been looking forward to his first game for many games, and when he actually got on the court, standing under the dome of a huge NBA arena was bigger than playing in an Olympic final, but it was only a regular season game.

However, Sabonis's nervousness disappeared as Gan Guoyang told him "catch the ball in the middle, I want to shoot", and the two made a skilled small cooperation, Gan Guoyang hit a jumper, which is a coordination routine that the two have practiced many times in the team's training, using Sabonis's huge stature and Gan Guoyang's flexible footsteps, so that such two interior players can do a small cooperation on the outside, and it is too difficult for the other party to defend.

At this time, others realized that Sabonis's arrival was not to equip Gan Guoyang with an interior bodyguard who grabbed the board, supplemented the defense, and blocked, but an interior point guard who could pass the ball to him and cooperate with him.

In the past few seasons, an important problem that the Trail Blazers have to face is that it is too dangerous to feed Gan Guoyang inward at critical moments.

Gan Guoyang does not have the height of Abdul-Jabbar, and the Trail Blazers do not have the interior height of a point guard like Magic, and the price that Gan Guoyang wants to pay for receiving the ball in the low post is often very large, and last year's Lakers seized the weakness of the Trail Blazers, using Sampson's pinch to reduce Gan Guoyang's offensive efficiency, and then defeated the Trail Blazers.

The Trail Blazers want to solve such a problem, there are two ways, one is to equip Gan Guoyang with a large number of outside shooters to open up space, which is a direction that the interior team is gradually trying in the current environment where three-point shooting is becoming more and more important, but this disadvantage is that the front line will be relatively weak, and the current Trail Blazers are very dependent on the front team.

The second is that Gan Guoyang changed his style of play, tried to catch the ball more on the outside, and improved his offensive ability with the ball on the outside, which is also the reason why Gan Guoyang lost weight in the summer and further improved his mid-range ability.

However, Adelman sees a better solution in Sabonis, which is to bring Gan Guoyang to the position of power forward, Sabonis takes on the responsibility of center in the center position, and Gan Guoyang can freely choose to switch on the front line, giving him more freedom.

Adelman couldn't guarantee that such a line-up would work, so after watching a few games and thinking carefully in training, he decided to try such a combination in this high-profile and crucial match.

Adelman succeeded.

After completing the first cooperation with Gan Guoyang, Sabonis quickly integrated into the game, and did not feel timid because it was the first NBA game, after all, he had been preparing for this game for a long time.

Defensively, Sabonis sat in the three-second zone one-on-one Abdul-Jabbar, Gan Guoyang came to the position of power forward, became the scavenger between the three-second zone and the three-point line, and his defensive range even extended beyond the three-point line, and began to interfere with Magic Johnson's passing ball.

After Abdul-Jabbar's low-post threat was greatly reduced, the Lakers' positional offense became more and more reliant on Magic's offensive combing, and when there was a 6-foot-10 big guy in front of Magic at all times to block his passing lanes, he would undoubtedly have less time to observe and think.

Moreover, the Magic has never been a point guard with low turnovers, and his turnover average has been around 3.8 per game for many years, which has to do with his height and sometimes because of his overly bold passes.

"Johnson went in the middle, passed the ball from behind, was cut off, and it was Gan again, the fast break of the Trail Blazers! The Lakers' retreat was quick, and the Trail Blazers' tempo slowed. ”

The middle of the Trail Blazers has been blocked by Gan Guoyang and Sabonis, and it is even more difficult for Johnson to open a breakthrough from the middle, coupled with the straight rise in Gan Guoyang's steal level, this difficult back pass was cut off by Gan Guoyang with a palm.

And Porter, who was advancing with the ball, saw that the counterattack opportunity was not good, and immediately stopped to play the position, Gan Guoyang fell to the low position very quickly, hesitated, or handed the ball to Sabonis first, because it was AC Green who defended Gan Guoyang, and he was desperately going around.

Sabonis took the ball in the front, he was too tall, I saw his hand shake slightly, the ball flew straight inside, a reverse hanging!

Gan Guoyang made a small move under the basket, gently pulled AC Green with his hand, and then shook off Green and ran into the inside, and after receiving the ball, he slammed the dunk with both hands! Easily add two points to the Trail Blazers.

"At 48:38, the Trail Blazers stretched the margin to 10 points, the Lakers had some problems on the defensive end, bad problems, they couldn't do anything with Gan and Sabonis, Gan has scored 17 points, and the Lakers have to come up with something."

The sudden change in the Trail Blazers' style of play made the Lakers look very uncomfortable, and they could only rely on the personal ability of Johnson and Worthy to score points, and the outside players had no opportunity to shoot in the open position, and the inside players were shrouded by Gan Guoyang and Sabonis, and the air cut completely lost its effect, and Johnson's ball could not be stuffed in.

Pat Riley immediately called a timeout, and there was a hint of anxiety on his face, for the simple reason that although he called a timeout, he had no solution to the problems on the court in his head.

Riley looked around, and the only interior player available on the bench was veteran Mark McNamara, a 6-foot-11 white center, and Riley didn't think he could solve the current problem.

For Riley, the only solution is to pinch Gan Guoyang on defense and hand over the offense to Magic, further accelerating the pace of offense and chasing points quickly.

However, when Sabonis was on the field, Gan Guoyang's receiving range became larger, and his position was more erratic, and it was undoubtedly a great price to pay if he wanted to pinch Gan Guoyang, and it may not be effective.

On the other hand, on the Trail Blazers' side, Sabonis has already delivered three assists in just over six minutes on the court, and he has greatly liberated Gan Guoyang as a big axis on the inside, and he no longer needs to limit himself to the low post or the top of the arc, he can make choices based on his understanding and reading of the game.

"Good job Avidas, but the Lakers will definitely speed up the offensive tempo, the defensive pressure will also increase, and be prepared to be trapped." Adelman reminded Sabonis.

Of course, Sabonis has also exposed some problems, his speed in the defense is still a little slow, Riley will definitely further speed up the pace of the attack, magnifying Sabonis's weakness in the slow defense.

"Gan, put more energy into defense, and the offense is now in the hands of Potter and Clyde, to keep our advantage and keep them at bay." Adelman also instructed Gan Guoyang to speak.

Gan Guoyang nodded, so far he has "played" enough, he has tried all kinds of scoring methods, and he is basically successful with another three points.

However, after two playoff defeats to the Lakers, and a regular season against the Lakers, Gan Guoyang understands the terrible things about the Lakers, they can play extremely high-intensity defense in a short period of time, and rely on this defense to play an offensive climax.

In the fourth game of last year's playoffs in Portland, the Trail Blazers, who led 2-1, took a maximum 13-point lead in the first half, but in the last two minutes of the second quarter, the Lakers hit a wave of 10-0 and narrowed the gap to three points.

Then in the second half, the situation of the game was turned around by the Lakers, the Lakers' harsh bag defense and windy offense overwhelmed the Trail Blazers, and finally the Trail Blazers lost the fourth game, lost a great opportunity to take a 3-1 lead, and lost Tianwang Mountain in a row.

The key node of that game was the Lakers' sudden strong package defense, which made the Trail Blazers mess up, and was led by Magic Johnson to play an attack wave, which made the Trail Blazers lose a good handicap.

This time, Gan Guoyang decided not to let the Lakers and Pat Riley succeed easily.