Chapter 103: Another Victory
After several consecutive offenses were scored by Lance, the Heat called a timeout first to find a way to curb the Pacers' momentum. After the timeout, the Heat made personnel changes, replacing Chalmers with the more experienced Ray Allen.
After James came to the front court with the ball, he faced Reims's defense again, and chose to directly call his teammates to help block and dismantle, after the simple blocking and dismantling, James immediately started, using his physical advantages and inertia after rushing up to forcibly knock away Ye Xuan, who changed defenses, and then easily jumped to score the ball.
With less than three minutes left in the third quarter, the Pacers took the lead in making personnel changes, replacing Ye Xuan with George Hill and Roy Hibbert and David West with Masimmy and Scola. Leaving Pickles and Lance-Stephenson to lead the bench for a while.
The Heat, on the other hand, continued to let the Big Three play the third quarter on the court, and after the third quarter, the Pacers relied on Lance Stephenson's super efficiency and Ye Xuan's assist to temporarily lead the opponent by as many as 8 points at 77:69.
At the end of the break, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Pacers replaced Pickles and Lance, and they were all substitutes on the court. And the Heat also replaced the other two giants except James. James was left alone on the court to lead the Heat's bench in a run to chase points.
Although in the face of Solomon Hill's defense, James could not effectively force the opponent alone, but Solomon could not completely block James's passing route, under the organization of James, the Heat's benches hit outside shots one after another, so that Coach Frank had to call a timeout and replace Ye Xuan in advance.
After Ye Xuan came on the court, he immediately pinched the strongest firepower point on the outside of the Heat team-Ray Allen. After James held the ball to attract the bag, he passed the ball to Ray Allen, who thought he had run out of the gap, but Ye Xuan's defense was not so simple to let you get rid of, and when the opponent jumped up and was about to shoot, Ye Xuan had already come to him and jumped high to drop the opponent's inevitable shot.
After George Hill on the side picked up the basketball under the hat, he immediately started to rush to the front court, Ye Xuan also followed, and after coming to the three-point line, Ye Xuan stopped directly, and Hill continued to kill the opponent inside, James chased after Hill and was going to reward the opponent with a big hat.
But after seeing Ye Xuan stop outside the three-point line, James thought about it for a while and decided not to chase the hat, after all, if he didn't chase in, the opponent should just score a two-point goal, but if he chased it deep and the opponent passed the ball out, then with Ye Xuan's shooting rate, wouldn't he directly send the opponent 3 points without defense?
Hill didn't care what James's mental activity was, and when he entered the box, he found that James had given up chasing after him, so he jumped easily and picked the basketball into the basket. Instantly broke the Pacers captain's two-minute scoring drought.
Then the offense of the two sides also began to be frustrated, first James assisted Chris Anderson's basketball because the latter did not grasp it and flew directly out of the bottom line, and then Ye Xuan also missed the shooting on the offensive end, fortunately, Luis Scola felt pretty good, and in the next two offenses, he shot the ball through the catch after the block, which was regarded as relieving the pressure of being chased for the Pacers.
The game went on for less than 3 minutes, and the Pacers took advantage of a dead-ball opportunity to directly replace all the main players. The Heat, on the other hand, followed suit and switched to their strongest lineup, and the Pacers still had a five-point lead over their opponents.
A 5-point gap is not much, but it will take at least two rounds to recover. At this time, the Pacers also stopped continuing their style of quick counter-attack and opportunistic shooting, and turned to a steady and steady play, playing a Spurs-style positional offense. After Ye Xuan brought the ball to the front court, he began to suppress the rhythm, dragging the time until there were less than 10 seconds left before he began to make a move.
Unlike the Pacers, the Heat are still lagging behind, so of course they can grab time when they attack, but the Pacers' defense is as solid as ever, so the Heat can't find any way to play fast, and in desperation, they can only look for opportunities in the same positional battle as the Pacers.
But the Pacers have a strong interior line like Hibbert, and David West can also cause some trouble to the opponent on the inside, so after the positional battle, the Heat team, which is not particularly good today, failed to recover the score as expected, but because of Ye Xuan's clever passing and organization, the opponent once again seized the opportunity to play a wave of 7:2 small climax, which instantly stretched the difference to 10 points.
Seeing that their team's offense was blocked, James and Wade were also anxious to jump to their feet, but as the Pacers' key defensive targets, the two had no special way to tear apart the Pacers' defense. But at this point, the real giant stepped up, used a counterrun to open up the distance with Hibbert, and then received James's point from outside the three-point line and shot a crucial three-pointer.
On the defensive end, Bosh was forced to foul Hibbert, who was attacking the inside, and gave the opponent two free throws, but in the end, he hit another three-pointer near the top of the arc, and after this three-point shot, it also gave the renewed Heat hope of victory.
It's a pity that at this time, Pickled Pepper stood up and poured a basin of cold water on the opponent, and after holding the ball outside the three-point line, he forcibly broke through Wade, and then forced the shot to cause another foul of the real giant, the most terrible thing is that after this foul, the basketball that Pickled Pepper threw directly into the basket.
As time went on, although the Heat still didn't want to give up, and used foul tactics and three-point shooting to chase the score to only 4 points in one fell swoop, but with Ye Xuan's two free throws and Ray Allen's three-point shot, the Heat also lost hope of a comeback.
At the end of the game, the Pacers defeated the mighty Heat 96-90, and the defending champions fell behind 0-2 in the playoffs for the first time since the formation of the Big Three. The biggest contributor to the game was Lance Stephenson, who hit 10 of his 13 shots in the game, and his 17-point performance in the third quarter alone laid a solid foundation for the Pacers' victory.