When the first quarter ended, the Lakers still led the Celtics by three points at 24:21.

"Drink some water, everyone have a good rest, think about the problems you encountered in the first session, and adjust your feelings. Remember, you need to be more aggressive in the front court, and keep rushing for the ball, no matter what the consequences. Leon told the players between the two quarters.

As head coach, Leon doesn't like to shout words of encouragement at the players during breaks or timeouts, but instead tells them what they should continue to hold on to in the upcoming games. For example, in this game, he asked several players on the interior to increase the scramble for frontcourt rebounds.

Leon called out to Hellam Porter and said, "I'll give you one more quarter to grab more than three frontcourt rebounds, and I'll consider keeping you on the court." Come on lad, this task is not too difficult. Learn to use your body's ......"

In the first quarter of the game, Damham Porter's starter did not play a role in disrupting the Lakers' interior, as a 6-foot-11 center, his frontcourt rebounding impact was actually not enough. In addition, the Lakers pursued the strategy of shrinking the whole team and grabbing rebounds in the backcourt with the whole team, and Durham Porter only grabbed a frontcourt rebound with hard work, but after getting the ball, he was a little flustered because of his lack of experience, and finally was snatched away by the opponent.

However, Leon was patient, and he only replaced Ballam Potter in the eighth minute of the first quarter with Tony Barty. The Haitian looked a little depressed, and he looked sullen until the end of the first quarter, just like Wang Zhizhi sitting on the side.

Leon's encouragement gave Bowler a lot of confidence, but he still didn't understand why he insisted on grabbing frontcourt rebounds, and in the previous four games, the Celtics were not keen on frontcourt rebounds. They often choose to defend at the first time due to the lack of height on the inside, at the cost of giving up the frontcourt rush, which is one of the reasons why there are many rounds in the first few games and the offensive and defensive transitions are particularly fast. This is undoubtedly what Leon would love to see.

But so far, Damham Porter has hardly been able to return to the defense at the first time, which makes him very unaccustomed to it, and he has to squeeze into the Lakers' three-second zone to fight for that ball. At this time, he thought of Dennis Rodman, who was here last season and always showed up in the right place to grab the ball, and Durham Porter really wanted to ask Rodman how to grab the rebound in the front court now.

Without thinking too much about it, the second quarter of the game soon began, and Leon tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to go straight to the court.

The lineup on both sides at this time. The Celtics are the second team of Hellam Porter, Chris Anderson, Eric Williams, Steve Kerr and Joe Johnson, while the Lakers are Kobe, Brian Shaw, Robert Hawley, Devin George and Medvedenko.

The Celtics served the baseline ball, Kerr dribbled past half court, and the veteran of Jackson's team is still quite familiar with the Lakers' set of defense, loves to dig traps, and gambles to give up some long-range shooting areas. Create a psychological barrier to the opponent's shooting. So Kerr gave the ball to Joe Johnson, who was in the right side of the pitch, and then pulled away to let Johnson one-on-one.

Joe Johnson is facing Kobe's defense, the league's best No. 2 defender at the moment, although Joe Johnson tries to challenge Kobe. But after trying to dodge and move, it was difficult to find the right shot, and he was pressed to the baseline by Kobe, which made it difficult for Joe Johnson to get the ball out.

"We should step up our training for positional attacks." Looking at the scene on the field, said Dave Cowens, who was sitting next to Leon. Throughout the training camp. The Celtics' positional offense has always been a shortcoming, but Leon never seems to have the will to step up.

"A solution will be found......" Leon just whispered. At this time, Joe Johnson still barely passed the ball to Eric Williams, who came to pick up. Williams shot from mid-range at around 45 degrees 19 feet, and the ball hit the right side of the basket and missed.

At this time, Durham Porter was like a black King Kong, he pushed away the two players of the Lakers, reached out, and took the ball into his arms without much jumping. He listened to Leon's words and began to use his body, and after getting the ball, he did not hesitate like last time, but decisively returned the ball to the outside and into Cole's hands.

At this time, Kerr was standing outside the three-point line on the left side, a position he was very accustomed to shooting, and after receiving the ball, he made a three-point shot. In a standard shooting posture, the ball crossed a high arc in the air, guiding the eyes of more than 20,000 people in the court, and then crossed the net and fell into the basket!

The referee made a three-point gesture, and after the goal, Kerr also made a three-point gesture to the bench, an important three-pointer, and equalized!

At this time, Leon's restless heart has calmed down a little, but this is just the beginning, and there is still a long time to get through.

Sure enough, in the second quarter of the game, the inside line composed of Damham Porter and Chris Anderson began to exert their power, desperately rushing to grab the frontcourt rebounds, although there are side effects, that is, once you can't grab it, you are likely to be counterattacked by the Lakers, especially in the case that the Lakers have Kobe, once Kobe has a chance to go straight in the fast break, then basically two points are given away.

But Leon knows that Kobe Bryant can't kill people like this, and the initiative of the game will slowly fall into the hands of the Celtics.

At the end of the first half, the Celtics led the Lakers by 2 points at 51:49, and Durham Porter and Chris Anderson teamed up to grab five frontcourt rebounds in the second quarter, which means that the Celtics had five more offensive opportunities at once. It's not a staggering number, but it's based on the Lakers' shrinking defense.

"Right now, the Lakers' defense has shrunk and can't shrink anymore, but our three-point performance is not too good, maybe it's not adapting, or something else. Deal with them! Solve these problems! From the third quarter, the three-point shot will be our main theme, and in the first five minutes of the third quarter, we will lay the foundation for victory with the three-point shot. "In the Celtic dressing room, Leon finally revealed to everyone the full picture of his tactics for this game.

In last night's preparation, how could Leon not look at the Lakers' games and technical statistics, their backcourt rebounding is doing quite well, because even without O'Neal. However, their two main backcourters, Kobe and Fisher, are both outstanding rebounding players among the guards, Kobe Bryant aside, Fisher's strong body and power forward do not suffer from rebounding.

And the Lakers' forwards like Devin George and Hawley are all-round forwards who can shoot three-pointers and rebound on defense, and both of them, including Fox in injury, have the shadow of Scott Pippen, which is undoubtedly the type of forward that Phil Jackson likes, and he has always preferred this kind of forward in his past, present and future coaching.

Therefore, the Lakers, who grabbed rebounds together as a team, did not suffer rebounds without losing their main center. Besides, O'Neal wasn't a super defensive rebounding monster in the first place.

Because of this, Leon didn't want to use the frontcourt rebounds to gain an advantage at all, but he needed frontcourt rebounds to open up the situation. In the second quarter, Leon made Durham Porter desperately grab the rebound, which had a certain effect, and Phil Jackson kept shrinking the team's defense in order to curb the situation. By the second half of the second quarter, Bryant and George weren't even going down very quickly, as they had to stay and grab rebounds, and they were few by Durham Porter and Anderson. But the constant frontcourt rebounds held back.

As a result, the Lakers' three-point line began to gap. When players focus on the inside card and rebounding, the rotation and pressure on the outside will be correspondingly reduced, and the Celtics will begin to have more opportunities to do more transmission and three-point shooting opportunities on the outside.

Sure enough, after the start of the second half of the game. Paul Pierce took the lead with a pass-through adjustment shot and hit a three-point shot, which was a very simple two-man combination, but it kicked off the Celtics' three-point bombardment in the third quarter.

A team's defense will produce inertia and continuity in a certain game. Especially in the regular season, once the game is early to midway, the team's defense maintains a certain intensity or strategy. Then it is difficult to suddenly change and adjust in the second half of the game. Even if it is adjusted, it is not something that can be changed in one or two rounds, and some of the top defensive teams can often do it, which requires the team's defensive system to be very orderly, with a clear division of labor, and have the general discipline of the army.

Obviously, the Lakers' defense was great, but it didn't get to that point, they fell into defensive inertia at the beginning of the third quarter, and still went to get stuck with Hellam Porter in the second quarter and grab rebounds in the backcourt. As always, Baller did Leon's request to grab the rebound, but this time he was no longer obsessed with grabbing, but instead wanted to point the ball out and give his teammates a chance to shoot from the outside.

Arenas, Reed, Walker, Pierce, four shotguns from the outside, took turns shooting, especially Antoine Walker, who was holding back for several games and suddenly got Leon's release order, allowing him to play and shoot three points on his own when he had the opportunity.

As a result, one step outside the three-point line and two steps outside the three-point line have become the locations where Walker shoots three-pointers. And his three-point is very uncooperative, the opponent's defense is slightly exposed, he pulls it up and shoots, regardless of whether his teammates have better opportunities, and whether the rebounding player gets a better position.

In contrast, Pierce was more cautious, Reed only shot in the bottom corner on the right side, and Arenas put his shooting point on the front and pulled it out directly through the pick-and-roll combination with Walker. The four of them threw 11 three-pointers in the third quarter! Hit six of them! A three-point bombardment suddenly stretched the difference between the two sides to 14 points.

While the Celtics hit three three-pointers, Jackson sat steady on the sidelines squinting as if asleep, and when Arenas hit a three-pointer on the counter, Jackson's eyes opened. When Reed threw in a three-pointer from the corner, Jackson couldn't sit still, but he didn't call a timeout. When Paul Pearce was in his favorite position at 45 degrees on the left side and received Chris Anderson to get the ball and hit his sixth three-pointer, the Zen master finally couldn't sit still and called a timeout.

The Celtics have more firepower than he could have imagined, and he doesn't know what kind of magical and effective training this team has gone through in the summer, he just knows that he misses Shaquille O'Neal.

Thankfully, he also has Kobe Bryant under his roof of him. (To be continued.) )