Morris Cheeks, the second-year head coach, struggled to prop up the Trail Blazers, who were about to collapse when Sabonis left in the summer of 2001, and has been doing very well, at least while the bearded, hideous-looking head coach is still around, the Trail Blazers can at least maintain close to 50 wins a year, and as soon as he leaves, the Portland Trail Blazers will become the Portland Prison Team.

Coach Cheeks always surprises Trail Blazers fans, and the former 76ers' five-time All-Defensive Team and four-time All-Defensive Team legend has always come up with weird tricks on the defensive end.

Generally speaking, most teams don't want the opponent to pass the ball on the offensive end, they don't want the opponent to play a smooth team attack, and it is better for the opponent to play alone all the time.

Unless the combination is strong enough to be OK, both of them are invincible players in their respective positions, and they can beat the opponent to death in life, generally speaking, any team wants to play the team attack, and no one will want their opponent to pass the ball up and play a coordinated attack.

But today, the Trail Blazers really did just that, forcing the Hawks starting lineup to keep passing the ball, and not giving Rahim, who has an absolute single advantage, a chance to succeed in singles, is to defend the basket and quickly turn defense from the outside, forcing the Hawks to keep passing the ball.

This shows the excellent defensive awareness that Coach Cheeks has as a former No. 1 defensive player in the league at the point guard position, and judges the weakness of the Hawks' starting lineup without a player who can truly play the core of the playmaker.

The first ball, relying on Muhammad's flash of inspiration, received the ball and turned into a non-ball block, the Eagles' first offense played well, and the second offense Rahim was assigned to Prince, and Prince also threw it, but this is not the team offense that the Eagles' starting lineup is good at after all.

Since Jason Terry didn't have to be in charge of organizing the offense since the second half of last season, and even more so this year, the playmaking aspect has degraded a lot.

A team needs different roles, a player comes to a team, especially a strong team, and also needs to make progress and degradation for the role, when Jason Terry was selected by the Hawks, he was trained as a core point guard, and he also averaged 5 assists per game in the second year, and he should have averaged 7+ assists per game in the third year, but after Liu Mang came, Jason Terry's talent in scoring was more vividly displayed, and there were not so many opportunities to perform in passing.

It's not that he doesn't give the ball to let him organize the attack, it is indeed a big improvement in one aspect, and it will inevitably decline in the other aspect.

Just like the interior core Bosh of the 361 group, when he and James cooperate, they need to be transformed into a three-point interior, and then play very well as a three-point interior, which has improved greatly in one or two years, but grabbing rebounds and defending under the basket has become extremely poor, and after James leaves, he can't return to the original Raptors style of play.

This is a technical choice, and when it is good to develop in a new direction, some of the original technologies will not be used for a long time, and over time they will decline, and then degrade.

Jason Terry averaged 20+ points per game last season that he hadn't achieved in 20 years in his career, and the playmaking and offensive roles became less and less, and his organizational skills began to weaken a little, and his organizational ability should have had seven assists at the peak, but this season it has basically stabilized at four assists.

Of course, because Jason Terry is still in his formative years, and he is focused on developing his scoring ability, it is very likely that he will be able to reach heights that he would not have been able to achieve in his all-round development.

In fact, there is a Jason Terry who averages a few assists per game, and Raheem, who averages 3 assists per game, the organizational ability of the starting lineup is enough most of the time, and there is no big problem in normal times, the Hawks average 17 assists per game, these two add up to almost half, which is completely enough.

But the Trail Blazers' lineup defense is good enough, specifically for the Hawks' offense, and the Hawks' originally cut strong and weak sides are forcibly stuffed together, which is the Hawks' biggest problem, the starting lineup has two interior players who don't know how to pass the ball, and a rookie who doesn't know how to pass the ball, so that they can occasionally have a flash of inspiration, and it's okay to make a good pass, and Deandre Jordan can also hit a mid-range turnaround jumper, but let them play as a regular tactic, and it will soon be a problem.

Of course, this is based on the fact that the Trail Blazers have a well-rounded defensive master like Rasheed Wallace and an experienced veteran like Pippen.

After more than 7 minutes in the first quarter, it seems that the Eagles did play a lot of runs and passes, but the ball always went to positions that the players were not good at, such as Mohammed's mid-range, Ratliff's baseline mid-range and close-range, Jason Terry was often blocked under the basket, and it seemed that the Eagles passed the ball or something okay, but it was difficult to score in the end.

In turn, the Eagles' defense against the Trail Blazers is ready to defend the Trail Blazers' offense, but today the Trail Blazers played very simply, Rasheed Wallace's close-range singles, Wells' breakthrough scoring and low post strong eating, playing with a play that was completely unexpected by the Hawks, and the efficiency was extremely high, Wells' skills have become better this year, and he just got the first year of the big contract, so he has to perform better, don't fall into the impression of a contract year player, and it's not too late to be lazy in the second year......

By the time of the official timeout in the first quarter, the Hawks trailed by seven points at 9-16.

Liu Mang saw that the pioneers actually had such a strange trick, and secretly sighed that it was really worthy of being a team that could not be left behind in the western power, and the strength was really strong!

The reason why Coach Krueger did not make a substitution in advance, but waited until the official timeout to make a substitution, is that he wants to study the offensive and defensive strategies of the Trail Blazers, and it is not a big problem to fall behind by a few minutes, and the game is still long.

"Ace, Tyshawn, Sherif, Carlos, Kevin, you guys play, Kevin pay attention to the top defense of the inside line, Carlos pay attention to blocking the opponent who cuts in the air, Sherif I'll leave the two bottom line areas and the basket to you, Ace and Tyshawn do a good job of the outside single defense......" Coach Kruger didn't arrange too many offensive tactics, at this time the offense was handed over to Liu Mang, a guy who was always so surprised, and focused on arranging defensive tactics.

Liu Mang, who was on the court, was a little puzzled, didn't the other party focus on singles today? Why is it still arranged to prevent the opposing team from attacking?