Chapter 60: Ending the Losing Streak
readx; After losing to the Magic, the Cavaliers then lost to the Rockets. The new version of the Big Three of the Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info Rocket performed very well. On the Cavaliers' side, Asik and others also came back from the ban, but even so, in the absence of backcourt All-Star player Huang Jun, they finally lost to the Rockets by 11 points from 93 to 104.
James scored 38 points in the game, while Iverson, the team's starting point guard, had 19 points and nine assists, but even so. The Cavaliers were still defeated by the Rockets, and as a result, the Cavaliers suffered two consecutive defeats. Huang Jun's absence hurt the knight a lot. Everyone knows this, but there is no way, you can't forcibly pull Huang Jun to the playing field, right? The regular season is over soon, and the Cavaliers have locked up a playoff spot, as well as a No. 1 spot in the East. Even if the Cavaliers lose all of their next games, the Celtics will not be able to catch up with the Cavaliers.
Therefore, the current Cavaliers are playing without any pressure at all, and they no longer care so much about whether they lose or not. However, they need to win one game to secure the top spot in the league, and they only need one game to win the top spot, so that they have absolute home-court advantage in that round of the playoffs, which is undoubtedly important for the Cavaliers. So in the next game, that is, against the Mavericks, Brown gave them the task of winning this game and locking up the top spot in advance.
In this way, he can rest at ease, let James Iverson, Battier and others take turns to rest, so that the players have better physical fitness to face the playoffs, after all, the playoffs will start in a little more than a week. So Brown also needs to plan well for his team's players so that everyone can go into the playoffs in the best possible condition.
The game against the Mavericks has finally begun, and the Cavaliers players are coming into this game with the confidence of victory. So in order to prove their win**. From the beginning of the game, the state of the Cavaliers was very hot, and as soon as the first quarter of the game ended, the Mavericks were beaten. In the single quarter, the Cavaliers led the Mavericks by a full nineteen points at 42-23, and no one expected that the Cavaliers, who had experienced two consecutive defeats, would play so well. If there had been such a state in the past, whether it was against the Rockets or the Magic, then the winning streak would not have been ended.
Players and fans of any team are convinced of this, but everyone knows that this is not possible because winning streaks are a thing of the past. The best performer in the entire first quarter was naturally James, who contributed 21 points in a single quarter. It seems that James is obviously crazy in this game, of course, not only James's performance in the first quarter is very good, but Iverson's performance is also very good.
Iverson scored five points, but he scored seven assists, which is a rare performance. Everyone knows that Iverson is a scorer, but that was clearly not the case in the first quarter. Instead, it is mainly based on assists to organize the team. Although it is incredible in the eyes of outsiders, it is so normal among the many players of the Cavaliers, and it is a very normal one.
Because they all know that the current Iverson is no longer the Iverson of the past, and Iverson has been constantly changed by Brown in recent games. There will be tasks for him to carry out in every game, and among these tasks, the assist tasks are above seven, that is, the field horse has to get seven assists. And such a task is still set according to the strength of the opponent, the opponent was very tough in the first few games, so Iverson's task in terms of assists is exactly seven, but Iverson not only completed, but also overfulfilled.
After so many workouts, Iverson has a sense of freedom in assists, and it is no longer as if he had to work hard to assist. Brown naturally saw this situation, and he became more and more relieved to see Iverson getting better day by day. Because not many people can succeed in this kind of change, there are coaches who want Iverson to make changes, but in the end they have not succeeded, and the reason why it has not succeeded is completely because the strength of the team is too poor. So this assist can't go up, so Iverson feels so alone.
But when there are so many strong teammates now, and he is happy to pass the ball, he is a person who is willing to pass the ball. After so many years of failure, he also knows very well in his heart that if he wants to win the championship, it is difficult to win it by personal performance. If you want to win a championship, there is nothing but the strength of the team. Iverson can be said to have a deep understanding of this, so he has been happy to assist in recent games, and now Iverson can be said to have put scoring in his second position. And in this way, the team has also been improved by Iverson's change.
When the first half ended, the Cavaliers led the Mavericks by more than 30 points. Forty to seventy-two, what a disparity in the score. For this game, all the Mavericks players felt that their faces were hot, and obviously everyone felt a sense of shame. Such a score is indeed a humiliating event in their eyes, and just after half-time, they are 30 points behind in the score, and this is the first time they have this season?
At the end of the season, there has only been one loss of more than 30 points in the whole game. However, now they have lost 30 points at half-time. And what about the end of the whole game? Thinking of this, the Mavericks' players have made up their minds in their hearts, even if they can't recover the score in the second half, they can't let the Cavaliers widen their point difference.
It's just their thoughts, because at the start of the second half, they weren't in the same shape as they thought they were. When the third quarter was over, the margin was forty points. Such a point difference has undoubtedly made them lose confidence in the victory of this game. Everyone understands this state very well, after all, when you watch the score continue to be widened, and it is still that kind of slaughter-level score. How could they possibly regain their faith?
This game is actually not that important for the Cavaliers, just to fight for a home-court advantage. However, this game is very important for the Mavericks, although they are currently in eighth place in the West. But with the end of this game, the Mavericks are not as stable in this position as before. The competition in the West is always so fierce, although the regular season is now over, and the teams that don't want to go home fishing right now are sprinting for a ticket to the playoffs, so the players on each team want the team ahead of them to lose.
Only if the team in front loses, they can catch up, if they win, and the team in front wins, then it is equivalent to another wasted game. Because there are not many games left in the game now, they must not lose, and not only must they not lose, but they also have to pray for the loss of the competing teams, only then they can take a further lead.
At present, the top six teams in the West have been decided, and the current seventh place is the Hornets, the eighth place is the Mavericks, and the sixth place is the Jazz. In ninth place is the Grizzlies. Now the Grizzlies are constantly working hard for their playoff spot, but they also know they want to make the playoffs. In addition to the need for their own performance, they also need the eighth and seventh place teams to lose. Only then will they have a chance, and the 10th-place Trailblazers will have a chance. It's just that the recent Trail Blazers have been hit by injuries and have fallen to tenth place all of a sudden.
And the player injured by the Trail Blazers this time was not Oden but Roy, and Roy's hands undoubtedly hurt the Trail Blazers very much. So the Trail Blazers suddenly fell all the way from the playoff spots to the current 10th spot. But even so, they still have a chance to grab a playoff spot.
In the fourth quarter, both teams fielded their own bench players. It can be said that the game entered garbage time early, and the victory of this game was won by the Cavaliers without any pressure. With this win, the Cavaliers ended their two-game losing streak, not only ending the losing streak, but also comfortably securing the top spot in the league. That would give them home-court advantage for all of the series in the playoffs, which would be a good thing for the Cavaliers.
Now that they are just missing Huang Jun to recover from injury, they naturally hope that Huang Jun can return in the last game of the regular season in advance to find the feeling of the game or something. However, they didn't talk to Huang Jun about this kind of thing after the game. I just said it yesterday, if I say it now, then it will give people the feeling that you are forcing others to come back quickly. So in order to avoid such a situation, no one mentioned it again.
They only need to wait quietly for the doctor's notice, when the doctor informs Huang Jun that he can play, they can rest assured that Huang Jun can come back, otherwise the injury may be aggravated if he returns before the injury is completely healed. This is not a good thing for the team's championship journey.
The game was over, and James had a stellar performance of 30 points and 10 rebounds in less than three quarters of play. Another outstanding player is naturally Iverson, who has played about the same time as James. Got 20 points and 12 assists, which is also very good.