Chapter 123: I Don't Want to Play Inside
As soon as Zhang Yu came on the court, Lakers fans immediately cheered for him!
Although they had no way to take Olajuwon in the first quarter, Zhang Zhu overfulfilled his task on the offensive end, scoring 9 points, 5 rebounds and 1 assist in the first quarter, which is the data of a proper star power forward. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info
Besides, Zhang Zhu's cameo is a big forward, not a center, and his task to defend Olajuwon is not him.
Horry, who is quite a star today, should not have any injuries on his body, which can be seen from his footwork and confrontation.
The news of the Los Angeles media is obviously cheating, and the only role played is to let Zhang Zhu play the No. 4 position once.
But regardless of whether Horry is injured or not, he basically can't beat Zhang Mao, who played the No. 4 position for the first time today, in terms of static defense and dynamic defense.
With a score of 35:38, the Rockets were unsurprisingly educated by Magic at the beginning of the second quarter under the leadership of young Sam Cassel.
By the time Zhang came on the court, the Lakers had chased the margin to just three points, and the Magic today made the talented Cassel realize that even if he is old, he is not a potential star.
The Lakers' lineup during this period is also very interesting: Marrick Seely, George Lynch, Michael Finley, Zhang Mao, Magic.
Many people see such a strange lineup, their brains are a little messy, and a question immediately arises in their hearts: This lineup doesn't seem to have a point guard, do you want the inside line to control the ball? It's new!
Harris's arrangement is misaligned, and the Lakers' performance in the first quarter has proven that no matter how clever they are at the center position, they are no match for the Rockets.
Then simply don't have a center, I want to find a way to make your center on the defensive end can't do anything with me, which can at least narrow the gap between the two sides and give the Lakers a chance to complete the comeback from the outside.
The Magic has a heavy load in this strategy, and he has to cause some problems for Olajuwon on the offensive end.
As for what to do to cause trouble, the question is left to him.
Harris just gave him a task, how to complete it can only be done by himself, this is the role of a superstar, and the Magic has been doing this job for more than ten years, and he successfully used his organizational mobilization to help the Lakers narrow the gap on the offensive end.
Lakers fans saw their "baby koala" also return to the court, and felt that the situation should be better in the next game.
Zhang Zhu showed good chemistry when he was on the same field with the magician, and many tasks Zhang Zhu could throw at the other party, as long as he focused on how to kill the opponent, the magician could liberate his output ability in many cases.
As soon as the match began, Zhang was given the opportunity to single out Horry on the weak side, and the Magic had created a good singles environment for him before that.
Horry's attack on Zhang has always been very embarrassing, and his weight is 235 pounds, so it stands to reason that he will not suffer at least in static confrontations.
However, he found that he was always in a passive situation, and when he thought about it carefully, he found that he couldn't keep up with the speed, which inevitably put him in an embarrassing position where his center of gravity was unstable, and it was difficult to exert the strength in his body.
Zhang Fu is just the opposite, he really wants to fight with the other party for static power, and he can't beat most of the No. 4 players now, which is not a smart approach.
He will mobilize the opponent's center of gravity as much as possible when attacking, as long as the defender's footsteps are not stable enough, the strength must be at least seven folds, at this time, Zhang Fu, who has the advantage of speed, agility, and even confrontation, can easily destroy the opponent.
The Lakers needed just two minutes to equalize after Zhang came on the court.
Horry has no way to take Zhang Qi in defense, the latter is not much better than the "Admiral" in the abuse link, as long as your body or technique is too far worse than me, then you can't compete with me, and you will be blown up properly!
Generally, this kind of player is a data maniac, and brushing up the data is enough to make his fans orgasm!
In the second quarter, Zhang Yu only played less than three minutes before turning his scoring data into 15 points, and he shot 3 of 4 in these minutes, completely treating the Rockets' defense as air.
Tang Shuai can only ask for a timeout, but how to deal with Zhang Mao, who is in amazing form, is a difficult problem he is helpless at present.
No one on the Rockets' coaching staff could have imagined that Zhang would come to play the No. 4 position today, let alone that he would play such an amazing form in this position, and the Lakers' lineup made them scratch their heads and had no time to react properly.
"Damn, then just don't take precautions!"
Tang Shuai also came up with the same choice as the Lakers, although I can't get your No. 4 position, but you can't get my No. 5 position, so lethal to see who is more lethal?
The underlying line of his idea was: Can that first-year rookie of yours do more damage than my Olajuwon?
It's really impossible to say, although the closer you get to the basket, the higher the shooting percentage, but it is also relatively easier to defend and easier to fall into the encirclement of multiple people.
After the restart of the game, neither team changed their lineups, which was intended to be a dead end.
Olajuwon faced the Magicians in the second quarter, although the advantage in height was obvious, but it was not easy for big dreams to eat cunning magicians.
Before the Magician retired, his defensive ability has been criticized, mainly because the defensive attitude is not positive enough, and the disadvantage of being tall is that the lateral movement is not fast enough, so the Magicians of that year generally did not defend the opponent's No. 1 position, but would switch to the No. 2 and No. 3 positions.
These two problems are actually very easy to solve, especially the problem of attitude has long been no longer a problem.
The magician still insists on making a comeback at such an old age, so naturally he will not be as negligent in defense as he was when he was young, otherwise why would he have to make such a hard comeback?
Although the defect of lateral movement is still there, this refers to the situation when the outside line was played back then.
Now that the Magic has switched to the No. 4 position, this defect has been greatly compensated, and it is not a problem to defend the center at the moment, even if it is a magician with a strong body, he will not have the problem of lateral movement when defending the center.
The Magic's ability to judge the ball on the defensive end was evident before he retired, with the two-time "steal king" proving that he has a knack for defending passing lanes, and now he relies on that trick to defend Olajuwon.
The Magic is well aware that it is almost impossible to completely limit Olajuwon, and it would be nice to keep him at an average level.
So he chose to defend the Rockets' outside passes from close quarters, and used his constant interference to reduce the number of shells Olajuwon gets, which can indirectly reduce his output.
Now the Rockets team has no shortage of players who can feed the interior with shells, and Kenny Smith is up to the task, as are Kassel and Drexler's passing skills, and the trio are good enough to make it difficult for the defender to stop Big Dream from receiving the ball inside most of the time.
But it was different to add another Zhang Qi to the magician's side, his mobility and magician's combined were enough to make it several times more difficult for Da Meng to catch the ball, reduce the number of times he attacked with the ball, and occasionally successfully complete a steal.
Cassel's next pass was cut off by Zhang Mao, who had been guarding for a long time, after evading the magician's blockade.
The Lakers' quick counterattack is now a situation that any team should try to avoid, once the rushing Zhang Qi can hardly be stopped, even the Bulls can't cope with Zhang Qi in this state, so the best way to avoid losing points is to avoid giving the Lakers a chance to play a fast break.
This time, the Rockets could only watch Zhang Qi break the ball and his teammates in the front court to score three to three, the Lakers' fast break is difficult to stop even when the defender has a numerical advantage, if the numerical advantage is not dominant, losing points is a matter of nine times out of ten.
The Rockets began to struggle on the court, on the one hand, they could not stop Zhang Zhu's strong attack on the offensive end, and on the other hand, after the Magic came on the court, they could not send enough troops to encircle Zhang Qi.
The Lakers' two three-point offensive points on the outside and a baseline rat almost form an all-round firepower net without perspective, as long as Zhang can take out the opponent in heads-up and a small number of packs, the Lakers will be difficult to beat at this time, especially if they have home-court advantage.
At this time, the Rockets need their own outside stars to step up, and Drexler's task is to make the opponent unable to focus all his energy on Olajuwon on the inside, but today's "glider" is not in good shape.
The stars of the seventies and eighties, with the exception of a few who were in persistent form, mostly had premature aging, which can be attributed to the late introduction of rules against malicious fouls and the lack of control of drugs on players.
Drexler is not a premature star, but at most he has played an average number of years, and he basically disappeared after an injury in 93.
"Glider" had a second-place MVP finish in his best years, and it's okay to say he's an MVP-caliber player, and he wasn't inferior to Wade and Carter in those years. And in the better years, it is probably about the same as "Yellow Mamba".
But this season, Drexler's state has slipped half a notch, and today when he needs to stand up, Drexler is difficult to use his breakthrough to kill the Lakers, and in the second quarter, two ball-holding offenses were missed under Zhang Mao's interference, and the other two long-range shots couldn't find their touch, and the Rockets were quickly seized by the Lakers to play a wave of 10:0 scoring drought.
Harris now a little bit wants Zhang Qian to simply play the No. 4 position, his ability to help defend is not inferior to Rodman, and the rebounding protection is stronger than all the Lakers' interior lines, and he can also pull out to break through like the outside, and there is no problem with long-range shooting.
Zhang Wei didn't think so, and it was no problem for him to make a cameo appearance in the No. 4 position occasionally, but he was unwilling to let him play the No. 4 position all the time.
He has always felt that playing the inside line is too hurtful, and he is not willing to always fight hand-to-hand with the opponent under the basket, and today is to meet an opponent who has also changed from the No. 3 position to the No. 4 position, otherwise he doesn't know how hard to play, as long as he thinks about the muscle sticks of Malone, Mourning, and Barkley, he is too lazy to play hand-to-hand combat with these guys on the inside.
After the first half, the Rockets couldn't solve a lot of troubles, and Tang Shuai couldn't stop the team's decline even after calling a few timeouts.
The Lakers led the Rockets by 11 points at 59-48, and the Houston didn't score much in the second half of the second quarter, but the Lakers were in a hot state on the offensive end.
Zhang Qi became the offensive arrow of the Lakers in the first half, and scored 21 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks in only half a game, such an all-round performance made the mentality of the Rockets players a little broken.