It's not that McMillan didn't have the experience of playing the "Kombat Whirlwind", when he was in charge of the SuperSonics and held the two ace shooters of Ray Allen and Rashad Lewis, he was forced to play "run-and-gun tactics" for a while.

If you really want to talk about it, the supersonic team at that time played a really good "run-and-bomb tactic", where Ridno burst out, Allen and Lewis and a group of shooters shot there, and they could play a high score casually.

And the team not only has Allen (23.9 points per game, 37.6% three-point shooting, 7.1 three-point shots) and Lewis (20.5 points per game, 40.0% three-point shooting, 6.1 three-point shots), but also Radmanovic (11.8 points per game, 38.9% three-point shooting, 5.2 three-point shots), Reedno (10.0 points per game, 37.6% three-point shooting, 2.2 three-point shots), Daniels (11.2 points per game, 29.7% three-point shooting, 2.2 three-point attempts) is a real firepower. It is precisely because of the existence of these shooter groups that it is not surprising that they upset and made the top three in the West.

But that was a long time ago, when McMillan was young, and then he was different.

From McMillan's true thinking, he doesn't like to play offense at all, he started as a defensive player, and naturally wants to inject his defensive style into the team.

As a player who lived through the '90s era of suffocating defence and super-physical confrontation, McMillan's ideal team is a disciplined, steady, old-school style of play.

It is with this goal in mind that he has trained a team of slow-paced, disciplined youths. It is also based on this goal that McMillan likes to use constant blocking and covering to open the way, and likes to use constant physical contact and strength to fight against the broken formation, hoping to grind the opponent to death and win through these rogue plays that are almost close to hand-to-hand combat. Just like the very unpleasant Seattle SuperSonics team in the 90s, a group of people can be disgusted to death just by being nauseous.

So why did head coach McMillan's previous successful style of play with the SuperSonics and Trail Blazers not work with the Pacers? You know, this group of players on the Pacers team is much better than the SuperSonics and Trail Blazers back then, and they are young enough and obedient enough.

The real constraint on McMillan's tactical execution is probably the team's management. That's right, the root cause that prevented McMillan from instilling his "ugly basketball" into this team was the team's domineering president, Larry Bird.

Want to know who Larry Bird is? He is one of the NBA's top 50 legends, the ignorant and well-known superstar "Big Bird" Larry Bird, the league's first person to win awards such as regular season MVP, Finals MVP, All-Star Game MVP, Coach of the Year and General Manager of the Year (Manager of the Year), and he is a great figure at the level of the godfather of the NBA.

With such a god man as the president of the Pacers, do you think there is a lot of pressure on the head coach below him? It's also true that during the years that Bird has been at the helm of the Pacers, the team's head coach hasn't had many good days. Bird, who thinks highly of himself, doesn't give the manager much power to build his own team at all. Although Bird is the president and top decision-maker of the team, his job has long gone beyond his own work, making a rebuilding plan, signing free agents, selecting rookies, building the team's style, and it can be said that he has almost done all the work of general manager and head coach alone.

How can a manager who can't choose players and formulate a style according to his own ideas show his coaching skills? The good thing about Bird's talk is to assist (overhead) the head coach, and the bad thing to say is that Bird likes to listen to politics and treat the head coach as a "backstabber".

Before McMillan took office, he knew that President Bird had a penchant for overstepping, but he had no choice, in order to mix a bite to eat, in order to gain a foothold in the league, for the sake of green dollars, McMillan had to accept Bird's various interference in the team, such as giving him tactical orders, such as opening a small stove for core players, brainwashing, such as changing a few new faces to the team from time to time.

To sum up, it is not difficult to explain why the Pacers' defense has been sparse this season. Obviously, McMillan's head coach is taking the blame for President Bird, and the strange combination of the offensive Bird and the defensive-focused McMillan makes for a peculiar and varied Pacers team.

This Pacers team can play a suffocating defense for a certain period of time, or they can immediately change their style and pull their chest hair to change to run and shoot, which can contribute to an ugly 88-69 win over the Orlando Magic, or a vigorous stand-and-death game like a 106-142 loss to the Golden State Warriors.

This is the current situation of the Pacers, a team with an extremely weird style of play and many changes, to put it nicely, this is tactical diversity, and to put it badly, it is tactical chaos.

But how can a normal team withstand the repeated changes of multiple tactics in a game, although the players of the Pacers admire Bird and often accept his teachings, but they also have to listen to McMillan's instructions, and over time, even the players themselves sometimes go crazy and don't know who is the head coach of the team.

In the second quarter, the "run-and-gun tactics" were exactly what President Bird meant, and the ugly game of the first quarter was slow and leisurely, and he felt a little bored to watch. According to his previous thinking, the team had to use a beautiful offense to crush the Knicks from the front, and George had to crush Roy on both offensive and defensive ends at the same time, just like he did back then, how could he play such a lewd defensive tactic.

Besides, if you really want to talk about the secret that George can prevent Roy, it's not because of himself, since he has a way to contain Roy, of course there is a way to win the Knicks beautifully, President Bird said to do it, and he immediately told McMillan his thoughts through his mobile phone.

At the beginning of the second quarter, we had to play offense, we had to play a beautiful offense, we had to use the Pacers' beautiful offense to defeat the Knicks, and we had to use the Pacers' beautiful offense to defeat the old opponent "Utah Three" on the opposite side.

At the beginning of the second quarter, the situation changed abruptly.

The Pacers' sudden change in tactics hit the hands of the Knicks, and Hornacek was still discussing with Stockton how to break the Pacers' bucket lineup and how to arrange tactics while Roy, Porzingis and Rose were resting, but the Pacers' initiative change made all the problems easier.

Playing against the offense is the Knicks' best and favorite situation, in the previous games, all the teams that played against the Knicks, ran and bombed, and played the "blind chicken X fight" tactics, which team ate good fruit?

Just look at the previous Utah Jazz, Brooklyn Nets, Portland Trail Blazers, Minnesota Timberwolves, Sacramento Kings, and the recently slaughtered Denver Nuggets.

Seeing that the Pacers gave up their deep ditch and fortified walls to take the initiative, Farid and Brown immediately enjoyed the superman.

The pace of the game is getting faster and faster, the Pacers are not getting any benefit, their bench depth is not enough, Al Jefferson and Aaron Brooks are long gone, and they are suddenly bored in the face of the impact of these big men of the Knicks.

The two teams just went back and forth for half a quarter, and seeing the Knicks slowly pull the score away, head coach McMillan had to call a timeout.

We still have to go back to the old way of playing, my president, and it turns out that the Pacers can't play the "run-and-gun tactics".

Before the timeout, McMillan asked the assistant coach to feed back the situation to Larry Bird, who was sitting in the box, and he wanted to change his style of play, but the reply he received was a firm "no". No way, Bird would never allow the mortals to question themselves.

McMillan was furious, but the thought of which box Larry Bird was sitting in and watching him had to suppress his anger.

Can't be impulsive, Bird is not easy to mess with, he hasn't been a head coach for several years, this opportunity is really rare, for the future, for the money, you still have to be patient.

McMillan is well aware of the importance of maintaining harmony with management, he was fired from the team twice due to tensions with management, and this time McMillan had to endure wearing a grandson for his own job.

McMillan has no other way to do it after the timeout, he has to continue to carry out the "will" of the president of Bird, and now the only player he can hope for is Paul George.

"Continue to defend Roy to the death, and other tactics will continue as usual."

McMillan finished the entire pause with a light sentence.

Defend Roy to the death, other tactics as usual?

George is not a fool, he knows very well that the premise of his previous ability to prevent Roy is that the team has limited the speed of the opponent, and now he has to run and bomb the opponent while limiting Roy, is this kidding me? What about you and I being Superman?

George's concerns were right, and when he returned to the game, he found that he really couldn't stop Roy.

With the distance to sprint, the space to break through, and the opportunity to counterattack, Roy was alive all of a sudden, he was like a shark returning to the sea, and he could rush left and right unscrupulously to devour those fish, shrimp, crabs and frogs.

There is no way, when the two sides start to attack, George's speed disadvantage is infinitely magnified, and his steps in retreat are comparable to Roy, who is running wildly with his legs. Without the help of his teammates, George's defensive power was greatly reduced, Roy's shooting rate quickly improved, and now it was the turn of "Pickled Pepper" to circle around Roy.

And as Roy recovered, as the Knicks got better and better, the audience also came back to life.

"Kill George, Roy."

"Avengers, gather to fight the boss!"

"Another 50 points, Roy."

Roy's high-speed breakthroughs over George again and again made the Pacers' star lose face. Roy's score suddenly went up, and his trash talk became more and more cheerful.

Now, the clumsy George looked even more down.

And after Roy scored the last goal of the half to lock the score at 58:48, he finally refreshed.

"Paul (George), don't play with the Pacers, hang out with me next season."

It was Roy's last trash talk to George before halftime, and it was a big trash talk......