611. Two of the most critical opponents
It's time for Kidd to flatter Antetokounmpo twice a year.
After playing the Rockets, the Lakers hosted back-to-back games against the Bucks.
Kidd said he was very sad this year, and in the summer, he only drew the No. 4 pick for the bottom of the East, and watched Towns be taken away by the Timberwolves, not only that, Russell and Okafor did not get any of them, and these three showed their superstar talent early, which made Kidd cry.
Not only that, Kidd originally wanted to choose Moodier, but considering that Moodier played average in the CBA, he finally chose Mario Hezonia, a big man from the Spanish league, and wanted an excellent instant combat force, Herzonia's performance in the Spanish league was excellent, especially that three-point hand.
However, like the vast majority of European players who come to the NBA, the NBA's personal ability requirements are much more important than the requirements of tactical literacy.
Unfortunately, the 2015 draft was not a big year, and the only ones who were selected behind Herzonia were Porzingis, Devin Booker, Winslow, Moodier, and nothing else.
The most talented in the Bucks lineup is Jabari Parker, although he was reimbursed for the season with a knee injury last season, but it also shows his talent, the template is Anthony when he was young, with excellent physical fitness and excellent skills, and he can average 15 points and 5 boards per game after returning this year, which is very good.
And the best player of the Bucks is Rajon Rondo, although he averaged 12 points, 12 assists and 7 rebounds per game, but as soon as he played, the Bucks were finished.
Aside from Rondo and Jabari Parker, the Bucks are really without people, and it's understandable that they're messing around.
So far this season, the Bucks have a record of 4 wins and 20 losses, the lowest in the league.
The Bucks, who didn't have much attraction in the summer, didn't attract any stars other than Rondo, so the task this year is to continue to mess around, and this year's mess has to be more thorough, because the 2016 draft is smaller than the 2015 draft, and so far in the NCAA basketball league, only Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram are considered young players who have the potential to become superstars in the future, and the others don't even have the potential to be All-Stars. There aren't even many potential players to become NBA starters, and the Bucks can't make the playoffs, not even the top 10 in the East, so they have to be completely rotten, and only if they get the top pick or the top spot can this season not be wasted, and if there is no first and second pick, Kidd doesn't think the Lakers will accept their other chips.
However, anyone can play badly, but when you beat the Lakers, Kidd will never play badly!
It's not that Kidd hates the Lakers, on the contrary, he desperately wanted to join the Lakers in 2007, but the Lakers can't give trade chips, and he still has a good relationship with the Lakers.
After arriving in Los Angeles, Kidd told his team that the best player in the game against the Lakers would be the team's next starter.
Kidd's words shocked the Bucks players, except for Rondo and Jabari Parker this year, the Bucks starters have changed frequently, and if you can sit firmly in the starter, the benefits are self-evident.
The more playing time there is, the more opportunities to perform, and the possibility of getting good data to get a big contract in the summer!
And Kidd thinks like this, except for point guards and small forwards, the players in other positions are almost bad, and whoever plays the starting line is almost ......
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Back to back, of course, the Lakers are going to take a rotation, and today's Lakers starting lineup is Antetokounmpo, Kobe, Liu Ren, Gasol, Monroe, Green and Whiteside are resting today.
The starters on the Bucks' side are Rondo, Mayo, Jabari Parker, Ryan Kelly, Johnny O'Brien III.
The best scoring guard of the Bucks is actually Mayo, who began to become a big fat man in the summer of 2013 after the Bucks got a three-year 24 million contract, and the best power forward is actually Kelly, who the Lakers used to trade Antetokounmpo, and the best center is the No. 6 pick in the second round in 2014, and now O'Brien, who averages 12 points and 6 boards per game, so the Bucks mess Milwaukee fans not only do not object, but strongly support it, this lineup is really miserable! If you don't mess up, it's just Rondo and Jabari Parker.
The Lakers came on the court with the mentality of abusing the Bucks with ease, and when they saw the opposite lineup, the Lakers couldn't bear to bully it, it was too miserable, compared to the previous years when the 76ers signed a bunch of players that other teams didn't want and the lineup that was undrafted.
However, the Bucks startled the Lakers as if everyone was crazy, frantically attacking the defense under the basket and playing with their bodies to fight hard.
In 2013, Mayo got a 3-year 24 million contract, but in the summer of 2014, he became a big fat man, and even his agent, Bill Duffy, a famous NBA player trader, has excellent character and reputation, and was ridiculed by David Falke as a bad good person, gave up on him and did not continue to cooperate with him, it can be said that no one in the agent world is willing to cooperate with him.
Finally it was Mayo's contract year again, and he finally felt a sense of crisis, because the Bucks had no intention of renewing his contract at all, and there was no rumor that any team wanted him, at which point he began to panic, because the Bucks had not continued to guarantee his starting position this year, and he had been squeezed into a shooting guard to compete for playing time with a rookie and a second-year player selected by the 2014 second-round draft pick from the Lakers.
The fat man is the most terrible to fight, Mayo's meat-like body shape, coupled with his really good physical fitness to become a tanhuaxiu, he was stunned to become a tank-like breakthrough machine at the beginning, Antetokounmpo was too thin to bear, Kobe Bryant was too slow to keep up, and the advantages of the flexible fat man were brought into full play.
Kelly played well with the Lakers at the beginning, otherwise the Bucks would not have wanted him, but his characteristics are shooting, defense and interior ability are basically absent, and he played well under Rondo's passing, averaging 14 points and 3 rebounds per game this year.
However, today Kelly has become the hardest person on the inside line of the Bucks, throwing his weak body to grab rebounds with Gasol and Monroe, not to mention, the barefoot are not afraid of wearing shoes, normal people are afraid of being stunned, and at the beginning of the game, Kelly won rebounds in a row.
Not only that, the Bucks' five-man defense is fighting hard and is not afraid of fouls, coupled with O'Brien's vicious-looking meat shield, as well as Jabari Parker, who has excellent skills, and Rondo's super organizational skills, the Bucks started 19-8 in the first half of the first quarter!
The Lakers were taken aback, what are the Bucks going to do!
It's not okay to fight a happy battle between the two sides, and you want to die?
Originally, the Lakers didn't plan to defend much, and were going to use offense to just wave with the opponent, play a little better, and give Kidd a little face, but I didn't expect Kidd to be a demon first.
The Lakers were furious, Gasol and Kobe Bryant, two veterans with old arms and legs, went down to rest, and Antetokounmpo, Liu Ren, Nance Jr., Biyombo, and Blake were five defensive iron men on the court.
This lineup of the Lakers basically gave up three points, but the defense just got a beep! Two short centers who are fast, jumping, and have excellent defensive awareness, and three tall outside forwards who are fast and defensively good, even Nance Jr.'s speed is not worse than the Bucks' scoring guards.
At the beginning of the second half of the first quarter, the Lakers began to defend brutally, Mayo can hit it, let Liu Ren defend, Jabari Parker's skills are good, let Antetokounmpo stand in front of him and only need to interfere with the shot, and ignore the feints, Kelly bullied Monroe and Gasol today, the two people who play honestly, are not, let Biyombo, the African beast, scare him to death, O'Brien, Blake's big eyes are responsible for staring at him with big eyes.
As for Rondo...... Nance Jr. receives the basket, ready to grab rebounds and long passes at any time, Nance Jr.'s biggest feature is in addition to dunking, that is, a long pass is very good, Rondo is willing to shoot, let him shoot.
The bloody half of the game began, and the Lakers sent this steel-muscled male iron-blooded defensive lineup turned the game into a slaughterhouse......
The Bucks, who were able to score 19 points in the first seven minutes of the first quarter, scored only five points in the next five minutes, including a three-pointer that Rondo made by the hell.
The Bucks were frantically defended by the Lakers' savage but skillful defense, and the Lakers seized the opportunity to fight back continuously, and the five men with the physical fitness who ran fast were crazy to counterattack, and the speed was amazing, and there were often pictures of five people collectively counterattacking, so scared that the only one or two of the Bucks who were fast in defense did not dare to stand under the basket to block.
With the muscular physique of Blake and Biyombo, it's hard to say if they can finish this game when they collide......
In the second half of the first quarter, the Lakers played a crazy 22-5 counterattack, which was not over, and the Lakers continued to stumble in the second quarter......
In the second quarter, the Bucks shot 3-of-26 from the field, almost hitting the lowest shooting percentage in a single quarter since 24 seconds, scoring only 9 points in a single quarter, while the Lakers defended frantically and counterattacked when they had the opportunity, playing a 36-9 single-quarter score......
64-33 at halftime, the Lakers beat the Bucks by 31 points at halftime.
Seeing Antetokounmpo, who played the first half, show a contemptuous look at his side, Kidd sighed in his heart, it seems that he got away with it today! Originally, Kidd wanted to boost the fighting spirit of the players, so that Antetokounmpo could see that although his team was bad, he had the momentum to win, so as to attract the attention of Antetokounmpo, who wanted to be the boss.
But I didn't expect this group of cubs to usually play hard, and at this time, they fought so hard that they completely angered the Lakers, and then the Lakers started the crazy torture mode, which made Antetokounmpo completely contemptuous of this opponent......
Kidd is also a player, he knows the mentality of the player very well, and from the look in Antetokounmpo's eyes just now, Kidd feels that he is getting farther and farther away from Antetokounmpo's rare super all-round talent......
……
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In the end of the game with the Bucks, the Lakers still didn't hurt the killer, after all, it is the league's bottom-to-bottom team, or don't fall into the ground and continue to step on it, D'Antoni just wants to hurry up and make the game have no suspense, otherwise the momentum of the Bucks will be completely up, and the game will be difficult to play, after all, they are all NBA teams, and even the 76ers, who were the penultimate in previous years, can repeatedly snipe strong teams, and the Bucks are naturally okay.
In the second half, the Lakers replaced LaVine, McCollum, Nick Young, Korver, Nance Jr., and Ci Shiping...... waited for the lineup, played against the Bucks, did not continue to play with the defense, and finally won the game easily with a 25-point advantage of 117-92.
The game against the Bucks was just a small episode, and the next opponent was the focus.
After playing back-to-back games between the Rockets and Bucks on the 13th and 14th, the Lakers had two days off, and the 17th challenged the Oklahoma City Thunder away, and the Lakers arrived in Oklahoma early in the morning on the 16th.
Before the Thunder hosted the Lakers at home, the first game of the back-to-back at home was against the Warriors.
The top four in the West this year are basically unshakable, the Warriors, Lakers, Spurs, Thunder, especially the Thunder, as the champion of the Northwest Division, they are bound to be the top four, but they are indeed far from the top three in the West, the Warriors are now 25 consecutive wins, which is not bad at all than the Lakers last season, the Lakers are 22-3, the Spurs are 20-5, and the winning rate is more than eighty percent, while the Thunder is only 16-9, and the Clippers have a good record of 18-7, But who has allowed the Clippers to have two teams in the Pacific Division in the top four, and it is a basically unshakable record.
It's been almost two months now, and people are starting to predict what the playoffs will look like, and the current situation looks like the Thunder are very likely to meet the Clippers in the first round, and the Warriors or Lakers are very likely to meet in the second round, so tonight and tomorrow night, the Thunder will even pick the top two games in the West to attract fans' attention.
Although even if the Clippers fall to fifth, if the record is better than the Thunder, the Clippers will have a home-court advantage when the two teams add in the first round, but relatively speaking, people are more optimistic about the combination of Paul, Griffin, and Jordan Jr. with Westbrook and Durant than the Clippers, so it is believed that one of these two games may be a preview of a very high-profile series in the second round of the Western Conference playoffs.
Whether it is the Warriors or the Thunder, it may be a very important opponent for the Lakers.
The Lakers are still likely to catch up with the Warriors, although it is only theoretically possible, but it is possible after all, if the Lakers overtake the Warriors to become the first in the West, then the Thunder and the Warriors may be the Lakers' two opponents in the second round of the playoffs and the Western Finals, and it is very likely, so that today's Thunder and Warriors directly face, whether the Warriors win or the Thunder win, it is possible for the Lakers to find a way to beat these two teams.
Even if the Lakers don't overtake the Warriors in the end, then the Warriors are the final opponent of the Lakers in the West, and it would be great to see how the other strong team will deal with the Warriors.
And Liu Ren was one of the most active people who wanted to watch the game, and he was able to receive other documents from Pelinka's company from the chick, and he sensed something unspeakable between Durant and Curry......