Kareem Abdul-Jabbar showed an amazing fighting spirit in the opening stanza, and the 42-year-old, soon-to-be retired veteran still has competitive blood in his veins.

Throughout Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's career, he never won the regular season MVP award after 1980, and there was always a debate about the No. 1 center that the tall, skinny Muslim who looked a little squishy was not worthy of the title of number one center.

But he's been slapping his face with his performances all the time, destroying them again and again with hooks in opposition to other centers.

For example, Olajuwon, the highly-anticipated champion center, in many confrontations with Abdul-Jabbar in the regular season, the offensive data fell behind in an all-round way, and was cut by God by 40 in a row, which can be described as a loss of face.

In the 1986 playoffs, Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson worked together to make Abdul-Jabbar disgraced, sweeping the defending champion 4-1, which made Abdul-Jabbar extremely unwilling.

Abdul-Jabbar spent a lot of time in the offseason gaining weight and training to improve his strength and confrontation, and as a result, in the 1987 regular season, Olajuwon could no longer easily beat Abdul-Jabbar.

Now, Abdul-Jabbar, who has reached the end of his career, can still use the unparalleled Tiangou to score consecutive points on Gan Guoyang's head when he is full of physical strength, which makes the Lakers lead the Trail Blazers by four points at 13:9 at the beginning of the first quarter and make a good start.

"Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has one less game to play, but he doesn't seem to be stepping down from the No. 1 center position, and in the opening one-on-one meeting with Gan, Abdul-Jabbar scored six points on three shots, hoping that his performance can continue." Abdul-Jabbar's performance has also infected other Lakers players, Magic Johnson interspersed passes on the outside, combing the Lakers' offense in an orderly manner, his passing has reached the limit, and he is extremely penetrating, and he can always find opportunities that others can't see.

“Magic！ Pass to A.C! Layups...... was interfered with by Gan and didn't score, Gan got the rebound, which was a pity. Magic Johnson watched from the outside, and suddenly a very fast one-arm throw, the ball went straight to the basket from outside the three-point line, and the rest of the Trail Blazers players didn't react at all.

A.C Green, who cut diagonally to the basket from 45 degrees, received this cannonball-like pass, and Buck Williams gave the Lakers such a chance with just a small distraction.

Fortunately, Gan Guoyang reacted very quickly, jumped and blocked when Green made a layup, interfering with Green's layup, the ball rolled twice on the basket or fell out, Gan Guoyang easily took off the rebound and quickly passed the ball to Terry Porter.

Terry Porter didn't pause at all, holding the ball straight to the frontcourt, he didn't pass the ball to anyone, but took advantage of Byron Scott's defenselessness, AC Green was still under the backcourt basket, and Abdul-Jabbar couldn't come back at all, rushed under the basket and forced a layup.

"Porter's counterattack, the Trail Blazers' counterattack came so fast that the margin became two points."

That's the difference between Terry Potter under Adelman and Potter under Jack Ramsay, who will transform himself into a sharp knife if given the chance.

The current Trail Blazers are still very good at fast breaks, but their fast breaks are faster, more direct, simple, and rough, without too strict division of labor and formations, and each player can decide for himself how to finish and finish fast breaks when they have the opportunity.

This kind of open-ended fast break allows the players to further unleash their offensive talents, and the form of the fast break is more diverse, and the opponent is more difficult to defend.

However, the Lakers' counterattack also came quickly, and Scott's long pass to the Magic directly from the baseline was handed over, and the Magic ran to break through directly from the middle.

Johnson didn't fight with Cauchy for speed and explosiveness, but leaned on Cauchy with his body to wipe in, and then suddenly turned around, and left Cauchy behind with a slight block of his arm.

Now, the Trail Blazers' three-second zone is exposed to Magic Johnson, which is too dangerous for a team.

Gan Guoyang decisively chose to give up the marking of Abdul-Jabbar and stepped forward to defend against the magician, but the magician was not in a hurry, and with a low hook in the air, the ball slid from Gan Guoyang's side to Abdul-Jabbar on the inside.

However, the reason why Gan Guoyang dared to steal decisively was because he knew that Buck Williams would definitely come to make up for the defense, and Abdul-Jabbar did not take the ball easily and was almost cut off by Williams.

But Abdul-Jabbar still stumbled to get the ball, and then Williams had no choice, chose to foul under the basket and sent Abdul-Jabbar to the free throw line.

"Abdul-Jabbar Penalty ...... Hit both penalties! Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had eight points and shot 3-of-3 from the field and 2-of-2 from the free-throw line in the first quarter, while Gan had yet to score. In the first five minutes of the game, Gan Guoyang had a hook shot, but he didn't hit and didn't score a point, but only took 4 rebounds.

"Beep! Trailblazers pause. The referee blew the whistle and pointed to the Trail Blazers' bench, and Adelman called a timeout.

"Abdul-Jabbar won't have such good physical strength anymore, let's not wrap the inside, the inside line will fall into the Lakers' scheme, continue to defend one-on-one, they won't let Abdul-Jabbar play like this again. But that doesn't mean we're going to sit back, Gan, put a little pressure on them on the offensive end, and don't make Abdul-Jabbar too comfortable. Also, our defense, improve your concentration, don't get overly moved by passing, and save your energy. ”

Adelman's emphasis on saving stamina proves that so far, he is actually quite satisfied with the performance of the Trail Blazers, the game has just begun, and the younger and more physical advantage of the Blazers will have to accumulate their energy until the later stages.

At the same time, Adelman has to see how long Riley's Lakers can take the lead.

The timeout ended quickly, Adelman made a minor personnel change, he replaced Drexler with Jim Paxson, Drexler was not in great shape in the first quarter except for a dunk, but also carried a foul, his form was not too good, Adelman decided to keep Drexler to the second team to shock the opponent.

When Jim Paxson is on the floor, the Trail Blazers' outside shooting ability will be upgraded to a notch, and the Lakers' defense will inevitably expand to a certain extent.

At this time, Gan Guoyang's position will go deeper, Paxson has now become a good bottom corner shooter, and the cooperation between Gan Guoyang and Paxson is still quite tacit.

On the strong side, the three points composed of Gan Guoyang, Paxson, and Porter are an offensive triangle with strong projection ability and passing ability.

On the weak side, Cauchy and Buck Williams have very strong rushing rebounding ability and impact under the basket, and their secondary offensive ability will be the guarantee for the Trail Blazers to score in the case of missed shots.

After this set of lineups came up, the Trail Blazers focused on positional offense, and the Lakers' defense immediately began to be a little overwhelmed.

Gan Guoyang first took the ball, Sigma stepped to the basket to force Abdul-Jabbar, and after pushing away Abdul-Jabbar, he hit A.C Green and scored a layup, turning the Lakers' interior line upside down.

Subsequently, Abdul-Jabbar really couldn't maintain the continuity of the firepower, the hook missed, Gan Guoyang got another backcourt rebound, Porter reduced the speed of the counterattack this time, and Gan Guoyang took the ball again in the same position.

This time, he squeezed away Abdul-Jabbar with his back, and then suddenly turned the net baseline, pinched the basketball with one hand at a negative angle and made a rebound, scoring four points in a row to tie the score.

Byron Sterling is still afraid of Paxson's outside jumper and doesn't dare to wrap it easily, and Abdul-Jabbar is really old and can't withstand the impact of steel and iron like Gan Guoyang.

However, the Lakers also have a way to deal with it, and an important reason why this giant team has stood tall in the West for ten years is because of their overflowing talent.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is gone, the Lakers still have James Worthy in the low post.

Magician sensed that Abdul-Jabbar could no longer continue to output, and decisively instructed the players to change formations and began to let Worthy carry the ball to attack.

Worthy's low-post attacking skills are also extremely high, and once they get the ball in the low post, it will be difficult for either Cauchy or Buck Williams to stop the Cobras from scoring.

"Worthy turns around on the baseline and makes a rebound! The goal looked exactly like the one Gan had just scored. In the face of Cauthy's strict defense, Worthy still used his outstanding low post footwork to deceive Cauchy, and then slipped to the bottom line and successfully rebounded.

The ball looked very provocative to Gan Guoyang, and Wossey also sneered at Gan Guoyang after the goal, and the relationship between the two has not been good since the summer of 1984.

After the goal was scored, the Lakers fans were also coaxing on the sidelines, and the atmosphere of the fans at the end of the eighties was becoming more and more civilian, watching the Lakers' games was no longer like watching an opera, but like watching a movie, the fans were wearing more and more fancy clothes, and all kinds of placards were also standing in the audience.

Some fans began to hold up a caricature of Gan Guoyang, which depicted Gan Guoyang as an ancient Chinese with a Qing Dynasty whip, and his face was exaggerated, looking obscene and ridiculous.

However, at this time, Gan Guoyang was already nervous, he quietly returned to the offensive end, returned a turnaround jumper from the Lakers, scored two more points, and the score was tied again.

The two teams that returned to the position to attack slowed down, but the success rate of the attack increased, especially Gan Guoyang and Worthy, both of whom were good at playing singles in the low post and had extremely high shooting percentages.

This standoff lasted for the entire quarter, with both teams sticking to one-on-one defense, never wrapping around, never going around the front, and both Riley and Adelman knew that sometimes there was a price to pay for making changes, and they both saved their moves for the second quarter after surviving the first quarter.