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The battle of Tianwang Mountain in the playoffs has long been considered the most important series game in addition to the tie-break, and the outcome of the game will most likely directly determine who the final winner is.

Therefore, before the start of this game, both teams attached great importance to the battle of Tianwang Mountain and were unwilling to lose the game easily.

And when the much-anticipated Grand Final Battle of Tianwang Mountain began at the Amway Arena in Orlando, the game began to develop in an unexpected direction.

At the beginning of the game, the Lakers quickly established a slight score advantage around the inside twin towers and Kobe, but their advantage did not last long, because on the Magic team's side, Wang Chao's performance exploded in the first quarter of the game, shooting 4 of 5 from beyond the three-point line, and scoring 18 points in a single quarter.

Feeling the huge threat posed by Wang Chao, the Lakers began to use a lot of wrap-and-trap tactics in the second quarter of the game to limit Wang Chao's scoring, but it was not effective.

In the second quarter, Wang Chao scored another 14 points, and his personal score reached 32 points at halftime!

Relying on Wang Chao's personal offensive ability, the Magic led by 14 points at halftime 62:48.

In the third quarter of the game, the Lakers, led by Kobe, began to try to launch a counterattack to catch up with the score, but failed to do so.

The Magic team played well in this game not only Wang Chao, Howard was sandwiched by Gasol and Bynum on the inside for four games, and finally broke out.

In the first half alone, Howard grabbed 12 rebounds, including four offensive rebounds, and scored on all rebounds.

Although he doesn't have enough interior offensive skills, Howard's ability to grab offensive rebounds is still very good, and because Wang Chao's firepower outside the three-point line is too fierce, so that when the two of them block and dismantle together, the Lakers have no time to take care of it when Howard cuts down the inside line, and they don't have time to block the passing route in advance, which also allows Wang Chao's best partner talent to be reused.

Frequent pick-and-roll dunks allowed Howard to score 12 points in the third quarter, including 3-of-6 free throws.

Although Wang Chao played less time in the third quarter of the game, he also scored 7 points, and at the end of the third quarter, Wang Chao had scored 39 points.

The Lakers, who couldn't catch up with the difference, began to be a little anxious.

Losing this battle of Tianwang Mountain does not mean that the finals are completely lost, but the Lakers are bound to be in an extremely disadvantageous situation, and if Wang Chao scores 50+ points in this game, it will be even worse!

You must know that so far in NBA history, there are only 5 players who can score 50+ points in a single game of the Finals. Baylor scored 61 points in 1962, Barry scored 55 points in 1967, Jordan scored 55 points in the '93 Finals, and Jerry scored 55 points in 1996. West scored 53 points in the Finals, the last of whom was 1958 Bowler. Petit's 50 points.

In the future, there are two more who can reach the great feat of 50 points in a single game in the Finals, namely James in the 2018 Finals with 51 points and Antetokounmpo with 50 points in 2021.

To put it bluntly, this honor is also an extremely rare and highly valuable honor in the league.

Of course, the Lakers don't want Wang Chao to step on them to get such an honor, and now Wang Chao is only 11 points away from 50 points.

"OMG! Wang Chao is really crazy today! If he can score 50 points, he will become the sixth player in history to achieve such a miracle, and at the same time, he will be the first Chinese player to score 50+ points in the finals! ”

In the CCTV sports studio, Director Zhang's tone was excited. "I can't wait for this scene!"

In the fourth quarter of the game, the Lakers' defense of Wang Chao has reached the level of omnipotent.

In addition to Artest's defense throughout the whole process, even Kobe Bryant will come forward to help defend Wang Chao, just so that Wang Chao will not continue to score.

But now that he has played, Wang Chao himself also wants to create this record.

Therefore, he began to no longer be limited to attacking with the ball on the field, and as at previous critical moments, when the opponent used the tactics of chasing and intercepting him, Wang Chao started his old business, and running without the ball can often play a miraculous effect!

Especially when the game reaches the fourth quarter, usually Wang Chao's long-distance runner talent has at least activated the second stage of the characteristics, 5% of the running speed bonus, coupled with his speed agility that has already reached 93 and 92, making Wang Chao as fast as a lightning bolt on the field, Artest, who is not particularly mobile, can't keep up with Wang Chao at all, even Kobe Bryant is quite difficult to keep up!

In the first minute and 21 seconds of the fourth quarter of the game, Wang Chao ran out of the gap to receive a pass from his teammates, and shot a 3-point shot in the second before Kobe Bryant's defense, and his personal score rose to 42 points.

In the 3rd minute 08 seconds, Wang Chao borrowed his teammates to cover the basket without the ball and cut the ball to the basket to score a layup, scoring 44 points personally!

In 5 minutes and 18 seconds, Wang Chao fired again outside the three-point line, 47 points!

For a long time afterward, Wang Chao had no chance to score, but the Magic's offense did not stagnate, but because Wang Chao was a terrifying deterrent on the offensive end, the Lakers' defense collapsed across the board, allowing other players to get extremely easy scoring opportunities.

The future Warriors, under the deterrence of the Splash Brothers' outside projection, also have the same effect, so that some role players in the team can often play bright games on the court, not because the Warriors are full of talent on the bench, but because the deterrent power of Curry and Thompson causes opponents to invest too much attention on the defensive end, making it much easier for other players to attack.

And even under the Lakers' highly targeted defense, Wang Chao still managed to reach 50+ points.

At 10 minutes and 57 seconds into the game, the Lakers made a mistake when passing the ball, and were stealed by Afraro to form a fast attack, and the Magic players all accelerated to the frontcourt, and then Wang Chao, who came to the bottom corner three-point line, received a pass from his teammates, and hit a three-point shot against Artest's defense, scoring the 50th point of the game!

The Magic team cheered thunderously, and countless fans cheered wildly to celebrate this historic scene.

Throughout the history of the Magic, no player has had such explosive scoring ability.

O'Neill didn't, Anferney. Hardaway didn't, not even Maddie, who won two scoring titles with the Magic.

But now there is, Wang Chao, who they spent a lot of money to get in the summer of 07, did it!

Before the end of the game, Wang Chao hit another shot after a pick-and-roll cooperation, and the score was fixed at 52 points, and then the whistle blew at the end of the game, and the battle of Tianwang Mountain ended in an extremely dramatic result.

At 109:103, the Magic team successfully defended its home court, won the key battle of Tianwang Mountain, rewrote the score of the finals to 3:2, and took the lead in getting the match point.

"Congratulations to the Magic for winning the game, which will bring them two match points, and if they win one of their next two games, they will lift the NBA championship trophy for the first time in franchise history!"

"The Magic team was able to win this game, and the outside core player Wang Chao accounted for more than 90% of the credit, which is not an exaggeration, and in the whole game, Wang Chao shot 18 of 29, 10 of 18 three-pointers, and 6 of 6 free throws, and got 52 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists."

"The 52 points in a single game is also the fifth highest score in NBA Finals history, behind Baylor, Jordan, Barry and West, and is a great record that will go down in history! Wang Chao proved with his strength that his honor as the regular season scoring champion is by no means brushed out, he does have all the characteristics of the league's top scorer, and we finally have a super scorer who I think can be comparable to Jordan Kobe! ”

In the slightly excited introduction of CCTV sports commentary and guidance, Chinese fans were excited.

Cattle! It's amazing!

Kobe Bryant's performance in this game was actually not bad, he continued to perform efficiently, scoring 33 points in the whole game, and so far in the finals, Kobe's personal score has never been lower than 30 points, counting the 33 points in this game, he still averages 35.6 points per game.

With 52 points in this game, Wang Chao successfully completed the corner overtaking, and surpassed Kobe Bryant to become the series scoring champion with an average score of 37.4 points per game!

It's just that Kobe Bryant at this time is in no mood to think about the score, the total score is 2:3, the Lakers are about to step into the bottomless abyss, and they can't lose in the sixth game anyway!

With this momentum of breaking the boat, in the sixth game of the series, after the venue returned to the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Lakers showed an extremely tenacious will to fight, won the game hard, and tied the score of the finals to a 3:3 draw.

Kobe Bryant continued to play at a high level and scored another 36 points, while Wang Chao seemed to be in a state of empty blue bars after letting go of the big move in the last game, and his performance was slightly inferior, but his 28 points, 4 rebounds and 8 assists were not particularly bad.

It's just that in this way, the score of the two teams came to a 3:3 draw, and they had to fight a key life-and-death battle and tie the seventh.

The Magic's experience in the tie-break is significantly worse than that of the Lakers, who only played the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals last year, and the other opponents have basically won by a large margin.

Ty-breaking means that the strength is too close, the battle is difficult to solve, and the really strong team should rarely have a tie-break.

The most typical example is the peak year of the Lakers' OK combination, that is, in the 00-01 season, in the playoffs, the Lakers swept all the way 4:0 to win the championship, and they only lost 1 game in the finals in the entire playoffs, with an exaggerated record of 15-1.

The current version of the Lakers, of course, is far from comparable in combat effectiveness to the peak OK team, plus there are many giants in the West, so they have also played many tie-break games in recent years, including this season and last season, and the Rockets Big Three have played a tie-breaker.

In terms of experience, the Lakers certainly have the advantage, but the psychology and home-court advantage are in the Magic.

On June 20, the last game of the NBA 08-09 season finals officially began at the Amway Arena in Orlando.

The jump ball phase was still Howard's victory.

The Magic team executed the first offense, still playing the most common super magic combination blocking and dismantling tactics, Howard successfully received Wang Chao's pass after blocking and causing Bynum's defensive foul, and made 1 of 2 free throws to start the game.

……

At NBA headquarters, looking at the ratings report that the assistant had just reported, Stern smiled with satisfaction.

The Lakers and the Magic team have successfully exceeded 30 million in the ratings! This was the league's highest rating since Game 6 of the Bulls vs. Jazz in 1998, surpassing the ratings of all Finals games during the Lakers' OK Combo period, and more than three times the average rating of the Spurs vs. Cavaliers in '07!

Seeing this data, Stern knew that he had made the right decision.

Whether it is the Magic or the Celtics, the ratings of entering the Finals and the Lakers matchup will not be low, and even if it is the Celtics, considering the grievances and hatreds of the Lake-Kai war for many years, if it reaches the tie-break ratings, it may be slightly higher than this.

But what Stern wants to see is not just the high ratings of a single game, but the long-term sustainable path.

The Celtics triumvirate is dying, and there is not much left of their prime, and even if they create ratings glory in this year's Finals, they will basically have nothing to do with them in the next few years.

But Wang Chao and Howard's Magic team are different, the two core players are very young and have unlimited potential, combined with Kobe's exaggerated fan base in the United States and even the world, it is definitely the traffic password in the next few years!

With his hands behind his back, Stern shook his head slightly with a smile on his face.

"But they are still too young to continue to grind, when Michael won the first championship of his career at the age of 28 and began the road to legend, one more hard and unforgettable defeat will make the fruits of victory even sweeter."

And...... Kobe Bryant's commercial value still has a lot of potential, two consecutive championships or even three consecutive championships in the future, Kobe Bryant is very likely to become the second Jordan and create a lot of considerable wealth for the league.

The Magic team on the court didn't know at this time that Stern had actually planned the script.

But not long after the start of the game, Wang Chao was keenly aware of some clues.

The referee's whistle in this game is strange, obviously in Orlando, the home of the Magic, but the whistle is obviously more biased towards the Lakers, although on the surface, the number of blows by the two teams is basically the same, but as long as you know a little bit about the ball, you know that it is the same 5 fouls, and the situation is very different.

Just like the Magic team was not halfway through the first quarter of the game, Howard was saddled with two fouls and had to be replaced by the head coach early to avoid the edge.

As a traverser, Wang Chao, who knew some of the unspoken rules of the alliance, immediately realized that I was afraid that the alliance had decided who the champion of the finals was.

Of course, even Stern, the president of the league with a good eye in the sky, cannot directly influence the game, but for the key games of two teams with close strength, the favoritism of the referee's whistle can play a decisive role in the direction of the situation!

For this reason, Wang Chao specially tested it and called his teammates to play the elevator door tactics once, and sure enough, the referee's whistle sounded immediately, and the Magic team moved to block and dismantle the violation.

"It's a bit of a bad situation......"

Wang Chao could guess Stern's thoughts.

Kobe Bryant has always been the league's main high-quality star during this time period, and he can't be said to be similar to Jordan, but can only say that he has the same style of play, his almost paranoid desire for victory, and the world's so-called 6 billion fan base, all of which are Kobe's capital.

Stern made the right decision to push Bryant to become the No. 1 player in the league during this period.

But from the perspective of being "abandoned", such an outcome is impossible for anyone to accept.

And as I said before, even if the league intends to praise anyone, it doesn't dare to be too blatant, after all, if the fairness of sports competition is destroyed, the entire NBA league will completely collapse, so the league can only operate the strength of the referee's whistle, and this degree of influence can be completely reversed if you have enough strength or luck!

"Champion in the house? Why don't I believe in this evil? I'd like to snatch this championship and see it! ”

The league wants Kobe Bryant to win? Am I okay with that?

Due to Howard's early departure, the Magic team began to gradually lose the upper hand on the court, and the point difference was gradually widened.

Seeing this situation, the Magic home fans couldn't help but get nervous.

At the beginning of the second quarter of the game, Wang Chao hit three points outside the three-point line, and then continued to break through with the ball to create damage, and also assisted his teammates to hit three points outside the three-point line.

In the blink of an eye, he not only caught up with the point difference, but even established a slight score advantage.

The Lakers were a little blindsided by Wang Chao's outburst and had to call a timeout to adjust.

But after the timeout, Wang Chao's offense was still sharp, even if the Lakers wrapped Wang Chao, he could find an open teammate at the critical moment and pass the ball to the opponent.

"How did this guy do it? He didn't even look at the players on the pitch just now, but he instantly found his teammates in the blind spot and completed the pass in the rapid movement with the ball. Fisher, the Lakers' main point guard, was puzzled. Has he seen the big picture to the same level as Steve (Nash) and Jason (Kidd)? ”

Of course, Wang Chao doesn't have such a good passing vision, which is entirely due to bullet time.

In this most critical battle of life and death, Wang Chao will naturally not be stingy with the use of bullet time, even if this thing is used too many times, the sequelae of excessive mental power consumption will be very uncomfortable, but compared with winning the championship, it is simply not worth mentioning.

In the second quarter of the game, Wang Chao almost single-handedly supported the Magic's offense, and teamed up with Howard in the third quarter to continue to stabilize the game.

Until the end of the third quarter, the two teams were still extremely close, and at 78:76, the Magic trailed by two points at home.

However, such results have not come without a price.

During the third quarter of the game, Wang Chao has begun to feel a slight headache and mental malaise because of the excessive use of bullet time, and the poor state has also affected his performance in the third quarter of the game, with only 5 points in the whole quarter.

(End of chapter)