Spurs head coach Alexander Pope knows his team is unlikely to win if they want to go toe-to-toe with the young Runners.

While there was a lot of confidence in the series from both players and fans, Pope himself knew that the Runners weren't as inexperienced as San Antonio media portrayed.

However, for everyone in the team, Pope himself looks confident, at least he seems to be very confident.

In fact, in private, Pope admires Wang Lei, a young coach who is one round younger than himself, and he thinks that this young man who can cross the border and achieve achievements in two competitive sports is definitely not an ordinary person.

Pope was also a professional player in his early years, and he also loved many sports, Pope knew how difficult it was to play multiple sports across families, and Pope, who had been trained in baseball as a child, eventually chose basketball because of his height, and when he retired and planned to fulfill his childhood dream, he found that he could no longer wield a baseball bat.

Although Wang Lei is engaged in coaching, Pop admires this even more, compared with athletes, coaches need to have a more in-depth and thorough understanding of the projects they coach, otherwise how to direct players to play and train.

However, no matter how much he admires Wang Lei and the Runners, Alexander Pope's responsibility is to lead his team to defeat the opponent, so in order to deal with the usual playing style of the Runners, Alexander himself first made changes.

Pope started with veteran Hartle Troy as the starting center, and he was originally a space-oriented power forward with average confrontation ability but excellent projection and passing.

In the first meeting between the Spurs and the Runners in the regular season this season, the 35-year-old veteran Hartle used his performance to teach the Runners' young interior door a good lesson, and scored 23 points in a single quarter in the third quarter, and the veteran shot it, making the Runners' sloppy defense quite dumbfounded.

In addition to a more perimeter defensive lineup, Alexander Pope also added Javier Knight, a very physical youngster, in the No. 2 position.

In short, Pope is determined to stay on the ground in Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs.

As the referee tosses the basketball high in the middle circle, the brand-new Runners' first playoff journey begins.

Erwin won another rare jump ball victory, the veterans are veterans after all, they are indeed experienced, but in terms of physical fitness, they cannot be compared to the youngsters.

The Runners, who won the jump ball, immediately attacked, and Wang Lei arranged for the team to play fast from the beginning, and then use the physical advantage and physical advantage to drag down the Spurs.

However, as soon as Turgun received the ball, he was met by the defense of Fernando Torris, the Spurs' core point guard.

In the regular season between the two teams, Fernando Torres did a good job of defending Turgon, and his superb "acting" made Turgun repeatedly deflated.

However, in the playoffs, Fernando Torris put away his acting skills and instead defended Turgun seriously.

However, this is only on the surface, and where the referee can't see, Fernando constantly harasses Turgun with his various "little tricks".

Turgun is understandable for Fernando's defense, having played two seasons in the NBA, and Turgun has long understood and understood many of the popular "techniques" in the league, and Turgun has also used his own means to counter the opponent's moves.

As soon as Fernando's hand touched Turgon's body, Turgun immediately waved his arm and opened it directly, and the physical contact between the two sides was very much, and the referee turned a blind eye to this kind of ball that would definitely blow in the regular season.

The players of the Runners did feel the difference in atmosphere after the start of the game, and the confrontation in the playoffs can be said to be more direct and frequent than in the regular season, and the referee's penalty scale is more extensive than in the regular season.

Overall, it seems that the Runners have the upper hand on the field, with players running more aggressively and a more positive mentality in the game.

But Wang Lei knows very well that his players are nervous, and they brought some of their excitement to the playoffs, in fact, he himself has this emotion, but he didn't show it.

The Runners' first offense was good, as Turgun took advantage of Erwin's cover to create a misalignment, then shook Spurs veteran Hartle away and hit a two-point shot.

Entering the playoffs, Wang Lei asked Turgun to let go of playing, and the team needed him to be full of firepower.

Compared to the excitement and nervousness of the Runners players, the experienced Spurs players seem to be very calm, almost all of them have a wealth of playoff experience, and know that at this time, the more important it is to maintain a normal heart and at the same time maintain an aggressive spirit, which is a difficult state to master.

The Spurs' offense was tepid, with Hartle Troy on the inside as the axis, and then the perimeter players forming a continuous screen block-and-roll coordination, and Hartle made a high-post mid-range shot when the offensive time was almost up with 24 seconds left.

Both sides started well, but in fact it was the Spurs who took it a little more at ease, holding down the pace of the game and letting the Runners' speed advantage not play to it.

The Runners then had a lot of problems on offense, Turgun tried to open up the situation himself first, and then help his teammates score, but the Spurs were too experienced against Fernando Torris who defended Turgon, and he repeatedly relied on his timely slots to limit Turgon's shots, and at the same time deprived the Runners of the lead.

Wang Lei made a gesture on the sidelines, and the players of the Runners understood that the team needed to directly raise the speed next, and they could no longer consume the Spurs like this, and this slow consumption would only make the players of the Runners completely lose their patience and normalcy.

So Turgun started to pick up speed, and everyone on the Runners showed their speed.

The Spurs are struggling at the moment, no matter how experienced they are, but in the face of this kind of play that doesn't care at all and just blindly pushes quickly and then shoots three-pointers from the outside, experience is not very useful, because this kind of tactic has never appeared in this world before.

The Spurs players were forced to follow the Runners to pick up the pace, because once they were open, the Runners players would not hesitate to shoot, and this decisive attitude made the Spurs players even feel that their previous nervousness was not fake.