On May 2, the Rockets suffered another defeat on the road, falling behind 0:2 in total, which is equivalent to stepping on the edge of the cliff with half a foot, and the next game back to their home court is almost irreversible.

But the gap in strength cannot be solved by hard work alone.

In the first two away games, the Rockets lost the game by a large score, and the entire game was almost unilaterally pressed and beaten throughout the whole game.

After two games, there are very few players on the Rockets team who still have the fighting spirit.

Everyone knows that it is almost impossible to defeat the Nuggets under the command of Wang Chao.

When a team doesn't even have the will to fight, it's harder to win.

As a result, two days later, on May 4, the Rockets returned to their home court and tried to fight to the death, only to lose even worse.

At 113:92, the Nuggets won by 21 points at the Rockets' home court, and they already held a lead of more than 20 at halftime.

On the Rockets' side, Leonard alone shot more than 45% from the field and was the only one who scored more than 15 points.

The feeling of being alone and wanting to turn the tide but unable to do anything made Leonard feel very bad.

As soon as the game ended, he walked to the players' tunnel with a black face to express his dissatisfaction in this way.

At the post-game press conference, Leonard also directly sprayed, unceremoniously accusing his teammates of lacking fighting spirit, choosing to give up early, and saying that such a professional attitude will never win the championship.

Leonard's agitation is completely understandable.

As the most potential and most promising player around Wang Chao, Leonard was once considered Wang Chao's successor and is destined to dominate the league's superstar in the future.

Especially after Wang Chao left the Rockets, many people had high hopes for Leonard, who stayed in the Rockets, hoping that he could lead the Rockets to continue to win championships and create brilliance.

But a few years have passed in the blink of an eye, and the Rockets have not even been able to enter the Western Conference again, let alone playing in the finals.

Leonard's own performance is impeccable, every time it is in the regular season or the playoffs, he is the best and most stable one, but it is easy to play the country, it is difficult to defend the country, Wang Chao laid the great country at the beginning, and it was squandered by the Rockets management in just a few years.

Butler, Middleton and other outside players have left, and the interior has missed Jokic and Gobert.

As a result, Leonard's only star who can rely on so far is a blue-collar player like Whiteside.

Not to mention Leonard, even if Wang Chao is in the current Rocket team, he will have to operate for at least two or three years before he has a chance to compete for the championship.

Leonard does not have the ability of Wang Chao, but he has the ambition to replace Wang Chao, which makes him quite tormented in the past few years in the Rockets, and he is a little eager to win the championship to prove his idea.

But complaining about teammates in front of the public, no matter what time it is, is not a rational choice, nor is it a way to solve problems, which will only further exacerbate the conflict.

After the angry Leonard complained to the media, although the team's head coach played a round court to try to save it, the morale of the Rockets had collapsed, and there was no way to recover it.

This also led to the series G4, which was still a backwater-like game.

The Rockets have no fighting spirit, not even Leonard, they don't have any idea of winning, they just want to end the game as soon as possible, get relief, and start preparing for the new season.

At the end of this season, the Rockets are expected to usher in a rebuild, with those who should go and those who should stay.

For example, Whiteside, who has an annual salary of 25 million but does a second-rate blue-collar job, the Rockets will send him away at all costs, and other role players may find it difficult to stay on the team if they have a long contract period.

As for the core of the team, Kawai. Leonard, the Rockets management must want to stay at all costs, after all, Leonard is currently only 27 years old, not yet in the prime of his career, with his current level of efficient performance even against Wang Chao's defense, there is no problem at all to be the main core of a championship-winning team.

It's just that the Rockets want to keep Leonard, and it's not certain whether Leonard will choose to stay.

Once the Rockets choose to rebuild, it is unknown when they will be able to compete for the championship again, and no one knows whether Leonard is willing to accompany the Rockets all the time to grow, but at least with Leonard's ambiguous attitude towards the public media, it is unlikely.

Therefore, the Rockets management has prepared for the worst, and once Leonard chooses to submit a trade request, they need to find the most suitable next home as quickly as possible to exchange Leonard for more benefits and chips.

——

4:0。

Like the Lakers in the first round, the Rockets are also completely powerless in front of the Nuggets, who have a perfect roster structure, and the only fig leaf for the entire team is Leonard.

In four games, Leonard averaged 27.8 points, 7.6 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game, shooting 45% from the field.

On the other hand, on the Nuggets side, Wang Chao contributed an average of 28+10+9 quasi-triple-double data per game in 4 games, from a data perspective, a slight decline compared with the regular season, but this is not Wang Chao's problem, the main reason is that the Rockets are too weak, three of the four games have entered garbage time in advance, and Wang Chao has no interest in scoring points in garbage time, so it has led to the decline of personal data.

It turns out that if you want to see the full force surpass, it is not enough for the Nuggets to have a weak lineup, but also to be strong enough for the opponent.

After the Nuggets swept the Rockets and successfully advanced to the Western Conference finals, only the winner of the other group, that is, the winner of the Warriors vs Spurs, had a chance to force the strongest Wang Chao.

The Warriors and Spurs have been fierce rivals in the playoffs for the past few seasons, and to be exact, only the Spurs can cause some trouble for the Warriors in the West, but the Spurs have never beaten the Warriors in a playoff series.

There is no way to do this, the gap between the lineups of the two sides is still too big.

The Warriors have MVP-level superstar Curry, three All-Star players of Thompson, Cousins, and Green, as well as Iguodala, Livingston, and West.

On the Spurs' side, the roster is weakening every year as the veterans get older.

Duncan retired, Parker Ginobili took a back seat, and even with the duo of Butler and Howard at the core, the team's overall ceiling was still limited.

At the end of the day, Butler, while strong, is not a top superstar like James, Durant, Antetokounmpo or even Leonard in the 18-19 season, who can contribute more than 30+ points per game throughout the playoffs and lead the team to victory by himself.

Even in the future, when the Heat led the team to the Finals twice, it is no exception, which is an objective fact.

Butler is still like that, let alone Howard.

In this small-ball era, Howard's role on the court will only get smaller and smaller, especially when his athleticism has deteriorated, and his defense of the basket under the basket has become a big gap compared to Gobert.

This led to a Warriors vs Spurs match, which ended in a 4-2 elimination of the Spurs by the Warriors.

Butler and Howard can contribute 25+5+5 and 17+12 data respectively in these 6 games, and their performance can only be said to be decent, but in the face of the Warriors with an exaggerated number of stars, the performance of the duo is obviously not enough to compete with the opponent.

In this way, the matchup in the Western Conference Finals is Nuggets vs Warriors.

On the Eastern side, the Cavaliers easily swept the Raptors, who had the second record in the East, 4:0, no matter how good the Raptors' regular season record was, when they met the Cavaliers, it was completely like a piece of paper, and it was torn apart with a light force.

The game between the Nets and the Celtics was a little stalemate.

Although the Nets lineup left by Wang Chao is also exaggerated, compared with the Warriors, there are obvious shortcomings, that is, the offense is strong and the defense is weak.

After all, the Warriors have excellent defensive players such as Green, Thompson, and Iguodala, and even Cousins, with his own tonnage, is not weak in protecting the basket in the restricted area, and the average points conceded per game are more due to the relatively high offensive rhythm and number of rounds.

The Nets are different, as soon as Wang Chao leaves, there will be no player in the team who can take the lead on the defensive end.

In fact, when the Nets won the championship last season, Wang Chao's contribution on the defensive end had faintly overshadowed the contribution on the offensive end, after all, there were so many offensive points in the team, and Wang Chao didn't need to bother on the offensive end, which directly led to Wang Chao's average score of 27.1 points per game in the regular season in the 16-17 season becoming the lowest scoring season since the 07-0 season.

At this stage, the Nets have absolutely no problem with offensive firepower.

There is the organizing master Paul who responds to the organization, there is the stand-up single benchmark Durant who ensures stable offensive scoring, and the occasional supernatural play of a rising player like Booker, and even the interior has Jokic, a kaleidoscope of offensive existence, almost no shortcomings.

The Celtics, as one of the best defensive teams this season, faced the Nets in the second round, and the defense was completely unable to contain the Nets on the defensive end, and the defense was torn apart.

However, fortunately, the Nets' defense had big problems, so it also allowed the Green Army to seize the opportunity in the game and win 2 games.

Although Irving's ability to lead the team has always been criticized, one thing has to be admitted, that is, when the team has the minimum minimum strength, Irving, as a miracle soldier, can really play a decisive role on the court at some times!

Just like the G3 game, the Nets have won two games at home, came to the Celtics' home court with a score of 2:0, and also led the game for nearly three quarters on the road, and they are about to win the third game, rewriting the score to 3:0.

In this desperate situation, Irving broke out with a super scoring ability, scoring 21 points in a single quarter of the fourth quarter of the game, leading the Green Army to reverse the game, stubbornly pull back a city, and then in G4 another city, the total score was pulled back to a 2:2 draw.

Such a score really scared the Knicks fans, but fortunately, the quality of the Nets' stars was hard enough.

In the battle of G5 Tianwang Mountain, Durant scored 42 points and 6 rebounds all over the court and led the Nets to win the game, and then G6 in the home game of the Green Army, Durant and Booker both scored 30+ to help the Nets go to the next city and end the game 4:2.

Despite their reluctance, Celtic, like the Spurs, lost in terms of the number and quality of their stars, and left the game with hatred.

The result is the Eastern and Western Finals, which, as most media predicted, is a dream matchup between the Nuggets vs Warriors and the Nets vs Cavaliers.

Fans across the league are excited, after all, the above four teams are themselves the top four teams in the championship odds, among which at the beginning of the season, the first place in the championship odds was the Nets, who had just acquired Paul through a trade, and then the Warriors who successfully retained the original lineup, and the Cavaliers because of Irving's departure, the odds of winning the championship plummeted.

As for the Nuggets, they were not even as good as the Spurs in the championship odds list at that time, ranking outside the top five in the league, no way, who made the Nuggets look like Wang Chao was a player who could play at that time?

No one could have imagined that the Nuggets would actually have the first regular season record and the only team with 60+ wins that season.

Not only Wang Chaoqiang, but Gobert, Mitchell, Murray, Rose and others have performed remarkably.

By the end of the regular season, the odds to win the championship have changed dramatically.

The Nuggets later came to the top in first place, the Nets because of their shortcomings on the defensive end, the number of optimistic people plummeted, and they could only rank third, and the Warriors, who played as stable as ever, were still in second place, and the Cavaliers were the same as most people expected, neither Thomas Jr. nor Wade could show enough strength in the season, Wade was traded back to the Heat through communication in the middle of the season, and Thomas Jr. was gradually reduced to a bench player because the defensive end was too black hole and the offensive end was not efficient.

The above list of odds to win the championship basically shows the general prediction of the victory and defeat of the east-west showdown.

Nuggets vs Warriors, everyone is more optimistic about the Nuggets, if nothing else, it is enough to bet on Wang Chao alone.

As for the Nets vs Cavaliers, there are more fans who tend to win the Nets with a more luxurious lineup.

On May 14, under the watchful eye, the Eastern Conference Finals were the first to start.

The opening game of the Eastern Conference finals was quite surprising, and the Nets won at home, and won very easily, 108-83, beating the Cavaliers by 25 points.

On the Nets side, Durant scored 23 points, Paul scored 20 points and 6 assists, Booker scored 21 points, and the three scored more than 20+, and the offensive firepower was full of firepower.

On the other hand, the Cavaliers, facing the Nets' level of defense, only scored 83 points in the game, except for James, who got 25 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists, no one scored a double-double, and Embiid, the interior pillar who was expected to be highly, only scored 15 points and 7 rebounds on 5-of-16 shooting.

The one-sided situation is staggering.

After all, even if fans are more optimistic about the Nets, they generally feel that this should be a series with an extremely intense battle process, rather than this one-sided hanging. (End of chapter)