Chapter 195: Mentality Determines Destiny
The benches of both teams played for the last time in the early fourth quarter, and the players who had not yet scored had to take advantage of this time to grab two points, and the last seven or eight minutes will be a battle between the main forces of the two teams, and they will have no chance if they don't score again.
"Don't send me on the field!" Emperor Wu muttered secretly in his heart.
In the fourth quarter, if Van Gundy hadn't replaced him in the early stages, he would have planned to let him play the last seven or eight minutes, otherwise he would have been the same as in the first half, and he could only play the last two or three minutes, which was much worse.
Big Van Gundy thought about it, and soon decided to replace the Big Three of the Green Army at the beginning of the final quarter, in his heart, Rondo's offense is not as good as Wu Huang, and the strategy may not be stronger than Wu Huang, and the Knicks point guard, who is good at the fast offensive rhythm, is more suitable for a game like the All-Star, so it will be more appropriate to use Wu Huang at the critical stage.
When Wu Huang saw Rondo playing, he was secretly happy in his heart, and now he knew that he would definitely be able to play the last half of the game.
Fourth quarter, Eastern lineup: Rondo, Wade, Pierce, Garnett, David Lee.
At the beginning of the final quarter, Billups' first attack was a long-range shot from outside the three-point line, setting off a wave of 7:0 counterattacks from the Western Army.
Rondo scored a layup to try to curb the West's offense, but Billups hit another three-point jumper, and although Wade hit a mid-range step-back jumper, the West still took a 122-120 lead.
The rhythm of the game in the fourth quarter really changed, and the stalemate of the score made the atmosphere of confrontation on the court more and more intense, Billups was full of crosshairs, and hit a three-point shot from a distance, and Wade then forced a foul free throw to help the East team not be thrown away by the opponent.
At 9:10, Zach Randolph of the Western team finally opened the pot, only to see him arch David Lee and turn and hook the shot.
Randolph: This is already the way of playing in the regular season. Turning his head, David Lee wanted to get it back, but Rondo didn't refute his face and passed the ball inside. However, neither David Lee nor Rondo expected Duncan to help defend him. One palm covered David Lee's turnaround layup.
Parker received a basketball and countered to give the West a five-point lead over the East.
Big Van Gundy didn't give the New York center face and substituted him after half a minute, with Horford coming on in place of David Lee.
Wu Huang saw David Lee in a frustrated mood and patted him on the shoulder, he knew that it was embarrassing to be replaced like this, but it also reminded him that the last quarter could no longer be played as casually as the first three quarters. Otherwise, if he was replaced like David Lee, the media didn't know how to mock him after the game.
Two minutes later, Da Van Gundy finally let Wu Huang warm up, the score was 130:128, and the Green Army's Big Three really played an effect, and the three of them on the same team were able to run some complex tactics, but the West did not have this innate condition, if it weren't for Billups and Durant's hands. The Eastern Army has overtaken the score.
There was a dead ball on the field soon, and Big Van Gundy replaced Wu Huang and James in one go. The lineup became: Rondo, Wu Huang, James, Garnett, Horford.
Wu Huang was pushed to the position of scoring guard, this change of formation was unexpected, including Wu Huang himself did not expect it, but after a glance at Kidd and Williams on the opposite side, such a change of formation is easy to understand, everyone is a double point guard lineup. Emperor Wu theoretically did not suffer a loss.
After the game restarted, Williams decisively held the ball and hit Wu Huang, causing the latter to foul defensively, and the little fat man seemed to want to use the tonnage advantage to bully Wu Huang.
Wu Huang naturally didn't collide with this fat man, and gave the other party room to break through. Intend to use Garnett's excellent help defense to defend. Having said that, he has long wanted to work with this kind of interior line who has excellent movement range and is good at helping defense, so that he can be lazy and play his excellent cooperative defense ability by the way. But what he didn't expect was that Garnett didn't want to make up for it in this kind of game, and Williams hit the basket twice in a row, and the margin was stretched to 6 points.
"Damn, you're not going to replace me, are you?" Wu Huang was taken aback, Garnett didn't give him a defense, and in the eyes of the fans, it became that he was taken by Williams, and this kind of defense was like Nash!
Big Van Gundy did frown off the court, but instead of replacing Wu Huang, he told Howard to prepare for the warm-up.
The fans may not be able to see it, but he can see that since Garnett doesn't want to work hard in this kind of game, he simply changes it.
Wu Huang was blown up on the defensive end, and he also got a scoring opportunity on the offensive end. Rondo was more fond of passing the ball than he was, and when he saw Wu Huang running out of gear like Ray Allen, he immediately passed the ball to him. Wu Huang received the ball and shot quickly, hit a three-pointer, not only with color, but also scored his 18th point.
A minute later, the East replaced Garnett with Howard, who was moved to the power forward position.
The lineup of the Eastern team looks more reasonable, Wade's strength cannot be doubted, as the core of the team, he is now stronger than Wu Huang. But in this lineup where anyone can be the core, Wu Huang's projection ability is more suitable for the second position than Wade, which is also related to the fact that the opposite side also plays a double point guard lineup. Besides, James's shooting is enough, plus a three-point shooting Wade who is even more, and the offensive ability of the East troops outside the three-point line is a little unwatchable.
It may be unfair to say this, James's three-point shooting has been improving, and in the past two seasons, everyone can no longer say that his three-point shooting is inaccurate, at least it is also the mid-stream level of the league, of course, it can't be compared with sharpshooters like Wu Huang and Nash, but it's unfair to compare them.
Wu Huang soon got another chance to shoot, but this time Kidd changed the defense in time and did not give him another chance to shoot in the empty space.
Kidd's old monster's defensive awareness didn't say that when Wu Huang met Kidd in the regular season, he could clearly feel that the other party did not give his best to defend. This kind of veteran rarely plays hard in the regular season, but when Kidd is occasionally serious, he can immediately make Wu Huang feel uncomfortable. For example, this time, the old monster made a judgment in advance and crossed in front of Emperor Wu, without giving him a chance to shoot in an empty position.
Wu Huang passed the ball, and both Kidd and the players of the Western team breathed a sigh of relief. In this game, Wu Huang's three-point shot was 3 of 4 shots, which was as perverted as yesterday's three-point contest, and Kidd didn't dare not seriously defend his three points when he remembered the terrifying performance of Wu Huang's 29 points thrown yesterday.
James receives the ball. Without the slightest hesitation, he shot directly outside the three-point line, and the basketball was castrated extremely fast, smashing it on the basket and bounced into the net!
There was a burst of cheers in the cowboy gym, and James was much more popular in the stadium than Wu Huang, at least no one booed him after he scored.
After a brief stalemate between the two teams. The game quickly entered the final five minutes, and the coaches on both sides changed their strongest lineups.
Eastern lineup: Wu Huang, Wade, James, Bosh, Howard.
Western lineup: Billups, DeLong, Anthony, Nowitzki, Stoudemire.
Wu Huang felt that these two guards of the western team were very annoying at the moment, no matter which one was at least two levels stronger than his strength, which made him very passive on the defensive end, especially when he was alone, he had to help him defend inside.
Thankfully, Bosh and Howard have excellent footwork, and Wu Huang has a cunning position, although in the eyes of fans, he is always broken by his opponents. But Billups and Williams didn't have a good chance to shoot after the breakaway, and they had to get past Howard or Bosh to help defend them.
This task is too difficult, even if they can break through the help of the interior players again, Wu Huang will defend back from behind, considering his long arms and height, the chance of being blocked is very high.
On the other side, the Eastern team's offense reopened after the Gang of Three was all on the court. But it's not all the credit of the three of them, and it is also one of the important reasons why Emperor Wu no longer secretly throws pots at the three of them.
The game went into the final five minutes later. Wu Huang is no longer obsessed with fighting with the three, and now the outcome of the game is the key, and he is not allowed to engage in these small actions, otherwise if he loses, none of them will want to win the MVP.
In the 4th minute and 40 seconds, Wu Huang hit the ground and made a wonderful pass to Nowitzki, which was skillfully beaten to complete 2+1. Wade then made a steal of Smalls, passed to James, and the Gorillas staged a two-handed dunk, and the Eastern team's lead quickly reached five points, and it seemed that the victory was in hand.
West's Billups stepped up at this point. Wu Huang has been taking a big step back to prevent the opponent from breaking through, but he didn't expect Billups to raise his hand one step away from the three-point line and shoot, and the basketball hollowed into the net.
"Damn, how do I feel like I've become a soft persimmon?" Wu Huang was **** a goal, and in the last quarter he had been scored by Billups and DeLong for almost ten points, and the Western Army seemed to treat him as a black hole on the defensive end and a soft persimmon for the Eastern team.
Of course, don't look at him swiping a lot of assists and scoring a lot, but compared to Wade, James and the other two insiders, Wu Huang is obviously the best point to break through in the Eastern Five, and it is strange that the Eastern Army does not insist on hitting him.
Billups just scored a goal, Delon ran to bully Wu Huang again, these two purely use their physical advantage to play strongly, the rest of the Western team is responsible for pulling away the defense, if Howard and Bosh come to Wu Huang to make up for the defense, they will miss Nowitzki and Xiaosi, these two are not close, once there is an open shooting opportunity, enough to shoot the opponent.
Bosh this time was to help Wu Huang assist in defense, and was received by Nowitzki from the little fat man, and hit a jump shot in the low post, and the Eastern Army relied on this goal to equalize the score.
Seeing that it was not good, Big Van Gundy quickly called a timeout and rearranged the defense on the outside.
He didn't replace Wu Huang, and Rondo was not a point guard with excellent confrontation ability, and Van Gundy still chose to trust Wu Huang at this time.
Wu Huang was shocked when he saw that the eastern troops called a timeout, he also knew that he had become the opponent's breakthrough, and he was worried that he would be replaced, it would really be a whole game for nothing.
"It's okay, the coach didn't replace me, but how do you defend these two dead fat men?" Wu Huang felt distressed for a while, and Da Van Gundy didn't have any good way, this is not like the game in their respective teams, there is no team in the NBA where the starting five can attack with the ball, so they can selectively let go of a player who has a bad offense, and use the bag and clamp tactics to help their side attack the strong and defend the weak player.
But in the All-Star Game, basically everyone is the core of the team, and everyone can attack with the ball. The five men of the Western team, no matter which one is released, is enough to cause fatal consequences. So in this kind of game, everyone is a single defense, and at most the interior players help the outside to help defend a little, but it is also easy to give the opponent a chance to miss the open shot, and Nowitzki's shot just now is an example.
The Western team did not replace Nash at the critical stage, and it was also worried that he would become a breakthrough for the Eastern team.
After the game restarted, Wu Huang didn't know how to defend, Billups and Delon were not like Wei Shao or Rose, these two people's three-point shots were very accurate, and his big step back defense was completely useless to these two people, as soon as he retreated, people shot directly.
This kind of opponent is what Wu Huang hates the most at this stage, if he weighs about 190 pounds, although his strength is still inferior to these two, but at least he will not be unable to carry it at all, using the bonus of long arms and steps, at least he will not be as passive as he is now.
In the last 2 minutes and 01 seconds, Billups once again forced Wu Huang, pushed the latter to throw a shot, and the basketball smashed on the rebound and bounced into the basket accurately.
The referee not only ruled that the goal was valid, but also blew a defensive foul on Wu Huang, two plus one.
Many fans at the scene laughed out loud, Wu Huang could be bullied enough in the fourth quarter, and almost every attack of the Western Army in the last five minutes was launched from him.
The score was 145-140, and Billupsga hit a free throw, giving the Western team a five-point lead.
"Calm down, the coach didn't change me now because I still have a role to play on the offensive end, and if my offense is affected by the defensive end, then I will definitely be replaced." Wu Huang reminded himself to stay calm, he knew that he had not yet been defeated, he had already scored 18 points and 18 assists, and he was about to 20+20, which is why he could still stay on the court.
The Eastern Army attacked, James and Wade did not go to receive the serve, now is not the time to fall into the ground, Wu Huang understands this truth, and everyone else understands that victory is the most important thing now.
Billups defends Wu Huang, Mr. Key is not young, straight line acceleration and explosiveness and seven or eight success at the peak, but the flexibility of the pace is much less than in previous seasons, which is most obvious on the defensive end, Wu Huang continued to break through with emergency stops and change of direction, used his young knees and ankles to bully opponents, and also broke through one-on-one to the inside.
Nowitzki and Xiaosi's defense is much worse than the inside line in the East, Wu Huang can pass the ball at the moment, and he can also assist his teammates, he chose to score by himself, his embarrassment on the defensive end, too much need to offset with a wonderful goal, this ball he chose to dunk, before Nowitzki and Xiao Si returned to the basket, Wu Huang picked up his arm is a big windmill slam dunk, and he let out a bad breath!
For the first time, the cowboy stadium gave Wu Huang a more obvious applause, before he had a wonderful performance, only seven or eight thousand female fans and a few male fans were cheering, and now finally tens of thousands of people applauded him.
The audience at the scene can also see that Wu Huang is still not stunned in such an unfavorable situation, and he can get close to 20+20 data despite the boos of the audience, this kind of performance can not be done by few people in the entire league, and this mentality alone is worthy of admiration.
Wu Huang high-fived his teammates one by one to celebrate after landing on the ground, he may not be able to defend his opponent now, but he can make up for all his mistakes on the offensive end, and that's what he has to do now.
The players in the east also dispelled some of their dissatisfaction with him because of this goal.
If Wu Huang doesn't contribute on the offensive end, but keeps dragging his feet on the defensive end, even if Big Van Gundy doesn't replace him, these players will have an opinion about him. (To be continued.) )