Paul Pearce began to deliberately hold back his energy in March, during which time he was regularly criticized by the media for playing without energy and for being too clubbing because of the incident that followed the police questioning at the bar. That sentiment has been building up and brewing into the playoffs, and even in the first half of Game 1, Pierce didn't really fire and watched as Allen Iverson kept scoring points.

In the third quarter, he finally didn't need to hide anything, and in this season's MVP selection, Pierce reached the third place in the current rankings, and his competitive form and technique began to enter their peak, and Leon retained absolute trust in him.

After a breakaway dunk at the start of the second half, Pierce scored seven points in a row on the next two offenses, a back-to-back jumper and a quick counter-attack to catch the ball and then a three-pointer. The 76ers, on the other hand, were blinded all of a sudden, and they seemed to be stuck in the slow, attritional style of play of the Celtics in the first half, and they did not react at all in the face of Pierce's whirlwind attack.

Two minutes later, Larry Brown called a timeout, and the explosive power he expected for the Celtics' home field did not appear in the first quarter, but in the deadly third quarter, which was much more terrifying than it was in the first half.

Leon high-fived Pierce, who was off the court, and watched Pierce score in a row, and Leon was also relieved. For a coach, no matter how perfectly the strategy is, if there is no player to execute it, or if the player can't throw that damn ball into the damn basket, then everything is in vain.

Leon can see that Pierce is in good form and is in no way inferior to Allen Iverson, and neither Van Horn nor Aaron McGee is an obstacle to Pierce's progress. Now Leon needs to worry about what cards Larry Brown has in his hand to deal with Pierce. Leon still has a lot of cards in his hand, but he wants to play Pierce's card well in this game.

Because as the team's number one star, you must play well at the beginning of the playoffs, which is the basis for the team to win, and if a team's star can't play its full energy, then it is impossible to win the series just by relying on other players to work hard.

After the timeout, Leon did not change his tactical arrangement, and continued to concentrate his firepower on Pierce. Of course, Brown made the adjustment, he decided to let Kenny Thomas mark Pierce one-on-one, and then put Van Horn against Walker, risking Van Horn being disabled by Walker, while also letting Van Horn help guard Pierce.

Brown's defensive system is very distinctive, a typical block-and-go and then base-line pinch set, which other teams also use, but rarely follows Larry Brown to the end, even using a ruler to measure the distance between players in training to tell them how to stand. So in the face of Pierce's outburst, Kenny Thomas began to push Pierce to the bottom line, and as long as Pierce had the intention of going to the middle, Van Horn would come over to help defend.

But the problem is that Van Horn is not the Hill of the year, although Hill is rough and a pure coolie power forward, she is active and fierce in defense, while Van Horn is as soft as a noodle when helping to defend.

Pierce didn't have a chance to face the bag, he would choose to take a step back and then accelerate to sprint through the middle. The past 76ers have Dekembe Mutombo on the inside, and at 7-foot-2, he's a huge hurdle for any raider. And now the 76ers' interior is Coleman, and when Pierce scored basketball, Coleman's foot was just off the ground.

There were three times in a row, and after Larry Brown adjusted his defensive strategy, Pierce scored three times in a row in the middle, one on a breakaway, a pull-up jumper and one foul, which made Larry Brown hold on to his glasses and shook his head.

There's no doubt that this 76ers team is no longer the same 76ers from '01, and they can't play that kind of defense anymore. Of course, their offense is more talented, and Larry Brown is not in a hurry to replace Van Horn, because Van Horn can still contribute to the team on the offensive end, and his fixed-point threes and low post attacks are still a threat to the Celtics. Because the Celtics' defense is simple, it's one-on-one.

Such a simple defensive system, lack of strength but strong resilience, and in the first half, under the encouragement of Leon, the Celtics relied on strong willpower to play a tough defense, and in the second half, once the offense blossomed, the defense inevitably relaxed.

And at this time, the effect of desperate defense in the first half was revealed, even if the Celtics' defensive intensity declined, the 76ers other players except Iverson still did not find the offensive feeling.

Leon watched as the 76ers' shooting percentage slowly picked up in the second half, while the Celtics, led by Pierce, scored all the way up and returned to the bench from the sidelines. He subconsciously dug into his left pocket, only to find out that he didn't have a cigar in it, and that he wasn't going to smoke it here. He dug into his right pocket again, took out a small piece of tactical paper, and wrote down the hit rate of both sides at this time with a pen.

Without asking the technical statistician, Leon himself can count the percentage of shooting from memory, the Celtics have reached 49.7, while the 76ers have slipped to 44.5, but the 76ers still have some advantages in frontcourt rebounding, and they have relied on frontcourt rebounds to keep themselves alive several times. Allen Iverson is still in good form, but it's coming down from the first half and he's hitting more often.

"They're still not much better than they used to be......" Leon thought to himself, looking at the data. Compared to 01, the 76ers have not completed the transformation, although they have acquired new so-called offensive players on the offensive end, whether it is Van Horn or Coleman, these two former champions and top players, are very talented on the offensive end. But they still play the same set in 01 tactically, and the people who can play the same set in 01 are no longer there.

That's Larry Brown, he doesn't care about the team he's taking over, what the players are really about, he's just going to make this group of players into the team he wants to be, and if someone doesn't fit in, then you leave.

Leon also took the time to get to know Larry Brown, a coach who started coaching professional basketball in the 70s and was named the best coach in the ABA three times.

In the '80s, he left professional basketball to return to college basketball, won two NCAA championships, and when he came to the NBA, his style changed dramatically. began to wear a gray suit and round-framed glasses that have not changed for thousands of years, and played defensive tactics that have not changed for thousands of years, bringing those teams who are not too talented to new heights.

Leon wondered what had happened in 10 years that had turned Larry Brown so drastically and what impact those 10 years of college coaching had on his basketball philosophy. Of course, now as an opponent on the court, he has no way of understanding these things, he only knows that the current Philadelphia 76ers cannot beat the Celtics.

The impression of fans and the media is always illusory, judging and predicting the strength and weakness of the two teams from some paper things, only real players and coaches, in this arena, face to face with the opponent, can have a deep understanding of the situation of the two sides. Although Leon is far less experienced than Larry Brown, Leon has an extremely sensitive nose for the movement of the game.

In the second half of the game, the Celtics had led the 76ers by 13 points, which was not a big score, but Leon knew that the 76ers had no way to turn over in this game. Just Paul Pierce broke out alone, scoring 17 points in a single quarter, and knocked the 76ers down, while Walker and Michael Reed just played normally, and the score on the court was also very low, and the Celtics only led 77-64.

Iverson's shooting percentage went all the way down, and the others couldn't open the game, and in the second half of the fourth quarter, when Reed and Arenas each hit three-pointers on the counterattack, the Celtics stretched the margin to 19 points, and the game was completely out of suspense.

At 101:79, the Celtics defeated the Philadelphia 76ers by 22 points at home, and Boston fans had a comfortable night, and the 76ers, who were originally favored by the media and fans, had no resistance in front of the Celtics. Iverson was once again a lone hero, scoring 35 points in a single game, but still couldn't lead his poor teammates.

In the days that followed, the Celtics added one game at home and one on the road, with the exception of the third game in Philadelphia, where the 76ers, who had come to the brink of home advantage, fought hard to win a game, and now the Celtics easily led 3-1 in the first round. In the fourth game, they broke the opponent again with a 99-81, 18-point advantage in Philadelphia, and the Celtics' odds to win the championship soared for a while.

Even Leon himself did not expect that the Celtics, who had undergone a month-long rest and recuperation, would burst out with such a strong fighting force in the playoffs, and after the end of the fourth game, Leon even told reporters at the post-game press conference: I am already thinking about the next opponent.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the Orlando Magic unexpectedly also led the Detroit Pistons 3-1, and the Magic's star Tracy McGrady said the same thing as Leon, and he was thinking about his next opponent.

I just don't know if these two people who think about each other can meet in the next round. (To be continued.) )