Chapter 347: Familiar Rhythm

The half-time break is long or short, and at least those who are in the middle of it will find that the second half is about to start all of a sudden. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info Such a short time couldn't help Phil think slowly, so he made a quick decision to play a big and four small lineup in the second half to see who was the strongest runner.

Due to the fierce confrontation between the two sides for most of the second quarter, Phil and McMillan both coincidentally put out their bench lineups at the beginning of the third quarter, hoping to create more rest time for the main players. To McMillan's surprise, Phil actually put Gasol on the field, which made him a little unclear about the opponent's path, shouldn't the starters be rested at this time? Everyone else is off the field, what do you mean by putting Gasol up?

McMillan didn't figure it out, but by the time he was groaning, Gasol had already led a wave of offensive spurts on the court, and his high shots inside made the Trail Blazers' bench players completely overwhelmed and had to be stopped by fouls. But it was useless for Gasol, who was always in the middle of the free-throw line and fouled him just to give him points, perhaps the only good thing was that it didn't make him 2+1.

The Lakers quickly tied the score under the leadership of Gasol, and the Trail Blazers came to their senses, and Batum, the leader of the bench lineup, also started his own scoring performance, which did not allow the Lakers to directly overtake the score. Watching Gasol's heroic performance on the court, McMillan fell into deep thought: Now that Gasol is now on the court with a substitute lineup, it is obvious that a different main lineup will be put on in the future, does Phil still have illusions about Bynum and hope that he will save the Lakers?

It didn't take long for McMillan to know that his guess was simply the opposite of reality, because Phil took the lead in sending the main lineup in the middle of the third quarter, and it was not Bynum who thought he would be playing with Kobe, Artest, Blake, and Odom, but Wharton Jr., who had not played much before.

This lineup surprised McMillan, although the Lakers are not playing a pure small lineup, but with Odom's movement speed, it is completely possible to ignore his height of 2.08 meters, this guy can be seen as a wing player with the height of a big forward. So the Lakers' current lineup on the court can also be accelerated. As a result, the Trail Blazers' previous offensive approach of implicating inside defense and then going through the back door will be greatly limited, at least not so easy.

But soon the biggest weakness of this lineup was exposed, and that was the little Wharton Jr., who was entrusted with the task by Phil. In fact, it makes sense to send Wharton on the court, he is probably one of the few people with the highest ball quotient on the team, and he also has a deep understanding of the triangle offense, and the bonus to the team on the offensive end is quite large. But the counterpart to this is his malaise on the defensive end, or rather a less drastic word, stealth.

Wharton Jr. is indeed the most obvious hole in the entire lineup, because his defense is not satisfactory, because he plays as the team's power forward, and Odom has to constantly move between the inside and outside lines, he has to take on the responsibility of marking Ye Feng, and our Ye Feng classmates obviously will not let him have a good time.

It seems that the two are of similar stature, but Ye Feng's strength completely crushed little Wharton, and he didn't even plan to use feints to shake it off, he only needed to find a little gap, just like a road roller, he directly relied on his body to run over and directly hit the basket. As a result, Odom had to make up for it, and he chose the former between letting Ye Feng attack the basket and preventing other Trail Blazers players from running empty-handed, so he missed the shooter from the outside.

Phil is not good at criticizing Odom too the sidelines, in that case he has almost no other options, Ye Feng is undoubtedly the most important point, Odom's choice cannot be wrong. But then the Lakers will have to give up their defense and go all out against the Trail Blazers to see who can score more points.

The surging offensive game is undoubtedly the rhythm that the Trail Blazers are most familiar with, and they have a lot of experience in this area, while the Lakers are a little confused. They're just as fast-paced, but they look a little chaotic, not at all as organized as the Trail Blazers, who have been more of a half-court offense before, and they're still a little unaccustomed to creating scoring opportunities by interspersing runs and passes.

Under Ye Feng's strategy, the Trail Blazers played a near-perfect team offense, and what is even more rare is that they are still very sophisticated, and they do not have the momentum or impatience that a young team should have. Everyone is very patient, and even when the 24-second offensive time of a round is about to end, they will not hesitate to pass the ball to a better teammate and willingly become the one who plays the game.

Of course, this doesn't mean that they have lost their good transition offense, but Ye Feng has changed from the role of a terminator to an initiator. He can often be seen picking up rebounds on the heads of Lakers players and turning around to throw the ball to the frontcourt before they even hit the ground, while Cunningham and Matthews form the spearhead of the Trail Blazers' transition offense. The division of labor between the two is very clear, with the taller Cunningham being responsible for protecting the rebounding ball and Matthews being responsible for scoring the ball.

The Lakers fought back under the leadership of Kobe, but they were helpless in the face of the Trail Blazers' crazy outside shooting. Coupled with the fact that Ye Feng, Matthews and even Mills took turns to break through with the ball after the Lakers players changed their defenses, the Lakers' defense was completely like paper paste, and they could only watch the opponent continue to score.

The Trail Blazers' move did a miracle, as they forced the Lakers into their familiar rhythm and suppressed their opponents' firepower in the process. In fact, McMillan didn't plan to fight with the Lakers in defense at the beginning, because the Trail Blazers are definitely at a disadvantage in this regard, and if they want to win the game, they must hide their flaws and give full play to their strengths, so as to compete with the Lakers.

In the third quarter, the Trail Blazers scored 42 points in a single quarter, including 5 of 8 three-point shots, which made the Lakers fans present curse loudly, such a three-point shooting rate is indeed too bullying. The Lakers' 37 points are indeed their normal level, but it is clearly not enough, and with the nine points they fell behind in the first half, they have fallen behind by as many as 14 points in the third quarter, although this is not an unbridgeable gap, but the confidence of the Lakers players has been shaken to varying degrees. On-site commentators had to admit that the Trail Blazers' small lineup did play the league's top firepower, but they just didn't know if the Lakers would just tie their hands in the fourth quarter.