Defense is by no means something that can be cultivated overnight, and Leon spent three years at the Boston Celtics to carefully adjust, and he himself continued to learn to build the Boston Iron Wall.

The Suns' defensive foundation is not as bad as people think, and although they are far from the top of the league and not at the level of a championship team, their defense is not useless.

With Marion and Bale, the two defensive giants, plus the team's good defensive enthusiasm and teamwork ability, the sun maintains a good defensive intensity, but when it comes to the playoffs, their defense can hardly cause problems for strong teams, especially the Spurs.

Leon is not ready to overhaul the Suns' defense, and unless Nash and Smalls are sold for reconstruction, it will only be half the effort and will not bear fruit.

But as one of the most experienced defensive coaches in the league, Leon has a lot of defensive tips and strategies in his head to help the team solve the dilemma on the court, at least not to let James play Nash in such a misplaced position.

He decided to use an EAK strategy to force James or Damon Jones to take the breakout route that they weren't very good at, and then let the other players come in time to delay and prevent too many one-on-one misalignments.

The point of this strategy is not to make the opponent play the non-dominant hand, which is a common tactic in defence, but to advance the amount, Leon pulled Nash, and said to him: "Follow Damon from the beginning of the midfield, force him to go left, and then don't change the defense." Of course, don't overthink it, follow your experience and instinct, and don't overthink it. ”

Leon kept reminding Nash not to think too much, because overthinking about "letting the opponent go non-dominant" will slow down the player's defensive reaction, so Leon has to set a lead time to let Nash go online early. The upside is that you don't have to go to the top of the arc and start thinking about how to stand, and the downside is that it's a test for Nash's defensive footwork.

Leon then made a substitution, bringing on Jascovy Hughes and Ragabel, using a two-point guard combination to enhance the team's flexibility on the offensive end.

This substitution is very risky, because the Suns are already at a loss, and Gooden and Big Z are estimated to steal the rebounds, but Leon still decided to replace defense with offense and use firepower to drown the Cavaliers' advantage.

As for LeBron James, Leon's strategy is the same as always, letting him go and letting him shoot.

The timeout was over, the score was 30-26, the Suns still had a four-point advantage, and the two sides returned to the court, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith were still chattering on TV, and they were quite surprised to see Leon actually replace Jasco Visius.

"The Suns have brought in their backup center, Jasco Waisius from Europe, to protect their backcourt rebounds, and I think that will definitely work."

Barkley joked without hesitation that Jascovitius's lack of confrontation in the East had made him suffer, while he didn't get the opportunity he deserved with the Warriors.

After coming to the Suns, Jasco Vysius performed surprisingly well, but it still fell short of expectations, after all, there is a Manu Ginobili presence in the league.

The game continued, and after Jascovisius came on the court, Nash gave him possession, so that the Suns had three points on the court that could control the ball, Nash, Jascovitius, and Boris Dio, and the opponent could no longer rely on Nash's death to stop the Suns' offense.

Jasco Visius controlled the ball and Nash started playing off the ball, which was one of the few opportunities in his 11-year career and a challenge, but with Nash's basketball IQ, it wasn't that hard.

The Suns made a position to clear the baseline, Jascovisius and Smalls made a block, Nash slipped to the left corner to take away the defense, Jascovisius held the ball and walked in the middle, his breakthrough was not too threatening, and he couldn't tear apart the Cavaliers' defense.

But Xiao Si went down to the left low post, Dio moved to the high post, Jasco Vysius passed back to the high Dio, Dio tried to drop the ball to the low post Xiao Si was unsuccessful, and instead passed to Nash in the bottom left corner, Nash directly dropped the ball to Xiao Si, Xiao Si took the ball in the low post to open Gooden, turned inside and threw the right hand to hit.

This is a set of low-post single tactics that were very rare for the Suns in the past, starting and passing the ball with a bit of Spurs' style, so that Kenny Smith couldn't help but exclaim: "Is this still the Phoenix Suns?" Is this still Nash and Stoudemire? ”

This is not a clever tactical routine, but any professional player, from childhood to college to various teams, this simple tactical cooperation is familiar with it, and it can be done by instinct, but it depends on the requirements of the coach.

Leon on the offensive end is asking everyone to let go, to make the offensive tactics more abundant and more crazy, they have such good offensive talent and talent, there is no reason to suppress them.

Back on the defensive end, Nash followed Leon's instructions, Damon Jones stepped forward to press just after half court, and when he felt that James was going to come over to cover behind, he decisively turned sideways, James had two options if he wanted to cover, one was a frontal block, allowing Jones to go to the left; A side block that still allows Jones to go around Nash on the right, but the side block risks moving the screen.

James chose to block head-on, Jones went down from the left, Marion delayed Jones, squeezed Nash to keep up and buy time, and then immediately returned to defend James, this time without James playing Nash in a misplaced situation.

Compared with tactics, tacit understanding of details on the defensive end and concentration are more important.

As soon as Jones went to the left and then passed back to James, James still faced Marion's defense, and this cooperation was in vain.

However, the Cavaliers still have a chance inside, Gooden is stuck in the middle of the three-second zone, about a second of passing space, James grabbed it, a straight plug passed to Gooden's hands, Gooden received the ball and turned around to lick the basket, but it didn't hit under the interference of Xiaosi.

Smalls protected the backcourt rebound, and he did a good job of defending this time, and Leon clapped the sidelines as encouragement and yelled "Run" for his team to launch a quick counterattack.

The Cavaliers' return defense was fast, and they didn't give the Suns a chance to break fast, this time the Suns were Nash with the ball, and he dribbled out of the opponent's three-second zone and found that the person defending him turned out to be James. Because of the rapid retreat, the Cavaliers' defensive formation was chaotic, and James came back the fastest, facing Nash to follow.

Nash waved his hand at the rest of his teammates and told them all to clear and walk away, and he was going to single James on the open field around 45 degrees to the left!

Whether it's strength, speed, height or explosiveness, Nash doesn't have any advantage over James, he only has an advantage in experience, skill and, of course, his outstanding will.

Nash dribbled and adjusted the rhythm, the entire American Airlines center fans stood up, James lowered the center and focused on it, defense relied on instinct and will, instinct does not come from talent, but from muscle memory formed by daily hard workout, and will comes from the lessons learned from experience.

James has good instincts, but his willpower is still not enough, Nash chose to break through with his dominant hand, he is not fast but the rhythm is good, James follows very closely, Nash rushes to the middle in an arc, when he is about to step into the three-second zone, he suddenly makes an emergency stop, and then the whole person falls backwards!

The stop was rather abrupt and barely precededed, and James instinctively stopped and reached for Nash to interfere, but it was too late.

Nash threw a rather exaggerated step-back jumper that sent the ball in a high arc in the air before landing firmly into the basket for a two-point shot!

The American Airlines Center was full of jubilation, and Phoenix fans found that the new style of play brought by Fox Leon can be just as exciting, as long as you can score, as long as you can win, what do you care so much? At 34:26, the Suns once again stretched the gap to 8 points, regaining control of the game in their own hands, and Leon sat back on the bench.

It seems that Nash is in better form than he thought, and if so, Nash may really be able to make a difference in scoring this season.