May 24, 2018, Western Conference Finals Series G5.

When Barkley was commentating on the game, he had a long time in mind and was always struggling with whether to pretend to be sick and take time off.

But for such an important game as the Western Conference Finals, as TNT's signature commentator, if he misses the game, he will have to deduct his salary, and he will deduct a lot.

Barkley is very money-loving, he was known for worshipping money when he was a player, and he preferred money to championships, so the teams he chose for his career were teams that were willing to give him a higher salary, and the only salary cut in his entire career was when he joined the Rockets and the big dream Olajuwon and the glider Drexler formed a triumvirate to win the championship.

And even if it is a salary cut to join the Rockets, there are conditions, 99-00, in the last season of Barkley's career, the Rockets offered him a one-year $9 million contract, which can be regarded as compensation for his salary cut in previous years to join the Rockets.

For the sake of face or something, giving up a high commentary salary is still not worth it in Barkley's opinion.

So after some entanglement, he still licked his face and appeared in the commentary seat, and cheekily planned to abandon the bet of eating a big bowl of horse manure, after all, that thing would really kill people!

However, to his relief, he was given a ticket to a reprieve in a game where the Nuggets already had a match point in advance and were still playing at home.

In a desperate situation, the Warriors burst out with amazing combat power, stubbornly winning a game on the road, chasing the score to 3:2.

"It seems that the game is not over yet, now the score is 3:2, if the Warriors can win another game at their home court in the next game, the score of 3:3 will be really hard to say!"

Barkley has a good analysis. "So it looks like the Warriors still have a chance!"

The Nuggets home fans scolded angrily.

Because of the Warriors' victory, they used off-the-board tricks again.

No way, the name of the Golden State Wushu team is also well-known in the entire league.

In the past few years, Wang Chao and the Warriors have had a grudge for a long time, and during the regular season this season, Wang Chao was even whistled for a malicious foul for elbowing back.

This was the case during the regular season, and in the playoffs, the Warriors' rough moves were endless.

Green, Pachuria's methods needless to say, even Cousins directly gave Gobert a takedown in the game, which was quite fierce.

When you think about it, it's not surprising.

Cousins himself is an impulsive and irritable player, originally in time and space in the Kings for several seasons of the team's technical foul king, but in the Warriors, the team's environment and the more vicious Green, Bogut and others have covered up their edge.

Now seeing that the team is about to lose, and that he has been defeated by Gobert in a few games in a row, he has long been extremely angry.

Under the full firepower of the Golden State Wushu team, the Nuggets can only temporarily avoid the edge, and Wang Chao is unwilling to hurt one or two main players in the process of stumbling with the Warriors, resulting in deviations in the finals.

If the score between the two sides is 2:2 now, the battle of Tianwang Mountain, he will definitely not have the slightest avoidance, even if the bayonet is red, he will win the key battle, but now the score is 3:1, and in the case of having the absolute upper hand, it is okay to give it appropriately.

In this process, constantly putting pressure on the referees, guiding public opinion, and forcing the referees to blow the whistle more in the next game is the best way to deal with the Warriors' violent style of play.

Of course, Wang Chao can also choose to fight back like he did in the regular season, under his ruthless iron elbow talent, the Warriors have no one who can play at all, whether it is Green, Pachulia or Cousins, with Wang Chao's current strength, one elbow can kill them.

But this is a playoff game after all, and Wang Chao is still more worried that he will be blown for malicious fouls or even banned from the game because of his too malicious actions.

After all, he doesn't have a superstar whistle in the league now, and many people wish that he and the Nuggets would fail, whether it is the Warriors or the Nets and Cavaliers in the East, they are better than Wang Chao winning the ninth championship.

Now in the league, except for Wang Chao's die-hard fans, no one wants Wang Chao to continue to win the championship, including the league official also thinks like this, how can a dominant family have the excitement of separation?

However, Wang Chao's current energy is too great, he is not only a player, but also an influential capitalist with a value of more than 3 billion yuan.

Wang Chao's worth is more than more than half of the team owners in the league, and it is also a rather strange event in the NBA, and because of this, the league's attitude towards Wang Chao cannot be like other players.

Not many people know now that Wang Chao's worth is not 3 billion, but 30 billion, and looking at the entire NBA league, only Clippers owner Steve. Ballmer is richer than him, and no other team owner can compare.

Although the Nuggets, who did not fight the Warriors, lost the G5 game and the score was chased to 3:2, they did not give the Warriors another chance on the road two days later, and the reason for winning was not because of the referee's blow.

In this game, the Warriors continued to play a rough defensive move, with all kinds of malicious fouls emerging in an endless stream, and most of the referees would only give an ordinary defensive foul, and there was a situation that as long as one was not abolished, they would never blow a malicious foul.

But in this case, the Nuggets blossomed more on the outside, Wang Chao hit 8 three-pointers throughout the game, Murray made 5 of 10 three-pointers, and even Mitchell, who was not good at three-pointers, had a 3-of-7 performance.

The Nuggets, who are hot on the outside, can be said to beat their opponents with the offensive way that the Warriors do best.

The Warriors' home fans could only helplessly watch their team lose the game, and the overall score was 2:4 to stop the Western Conference finals.

However, at 3:1, most fans are already psychologically prepared to lose, so when this day really comes, it is not so difficult to accept, but the Warriors played so ugly in the game, and all kinds of dirty actions emerged in an endless stream and failed to drag the game into the tie-break, especially in the middle of the game, because of the fierce firepower of the Nuggets outside, the Warriors who had gradually been unable to support it broke the can and fell, Green directly fouled Wang Chao with a malicious foul, and the action was too obvious. So much so that the referee had to expel Green directly from the game.

Green's movements are quite big, but Wang Chao, who has the talent of steel and iron bones, has nothing to do at all, and he loses and loses, which is simply a loss.

In fact, if you want to talk about dirty actions, the Nuggets also have ruthless people, such as starting small forward PJ Tucker, who is essentially a player who moves no less than Green on the defensive end.

When the Warriors make an out-of-the-ordinary defensive move, the hot-tempered Tucker will immediately return it.

However, on the Warriors' home court, the whistle was clearly biased, and the result was that Tucker was fouled early with six fouls.

It's also a shame that Tucker himself has no role in the Nuggets' offensive end, and the Warriors don't have any outstanding forward players on the defensive end who need him to contribute, which is dispensable.

——

Either way, with the Nuggets knocking out the Warriors 4-2 to advance to the Finals, the battle on the Western side has officially come to an end.

The Buckley horse manure incident that many viewers had in their hearts did not happen in the end, and Barkley cheekily made the bet to the past.

This is also expected by Wang Chao, originally this bet was supposed to be in the 2022 Finals, Barkley took it out, at that time he bet that the Warriors would never win the championship, if the Warriors won the championship, he would eat a bowl of horse manure, but the Warriors really defeated the Celtics in the Finals to win the cup, and Barkley also did not fulfill his promise.

But in this way, Barkley will be much more honest in front of Wang Chao, after all, after suffering such a big loss, he probably won't dare to bet on Wang Chao casually.

While the West Finals decided the winner 4:2, the Eastern Conference Finals were tied 3:3, and the exciting tie-break was about to be ushered in.

As Wang Chao thought, the Cavaliers were indeed not so bad, although they lost to the Nets in the opening game, and then lost the second game, the beginning was 0:2, but after returning to their home court, the Cavaliers finally regained their strength, and under the leadership of James, they fought in two cities to a 2:2 draw, and then although they lost the battle of Tianwang Mountain, but at the home of the series G6, the Cavaliers stubbornly pulled back a city, and the score came to 3:3.

From the overall situation, the Nets won the game, and several of them were won by big scores, while the Cavaliers basically passed by a single-digit point difference, which shows that there is still a certain gap in the strength of the two teams.

The reason why the Cavaliers were able to play a tie-break with the Nets was all due to the explosion of James' small universe.

The 17-18 season of Thanos Zhan's combat effectiveness is obvious to all, the Cavaliers who led such a procrastination in history were able to counterattack all the way to the finals in the East, although the finals were swept out by the Warriors 4:0, but the performance of 51 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists in the opening game was also a defeat.

No matter how much James is criticized as a top superstar, there is no doubt about his individual ability.

It's just that when manpower is exhausted, no matter how strong a person's strength is, it is difficult to fight against a stronger team.

It is an indisputable fact that the Nets are stronger than the Cavaliers overall.

In the tie-break battle, James played 47 minutes, almost played the whole game, slashed 42 points, 11 rebounds and 9 assists quasi-triple-double data, but the Cavaliers pulled their hips with all the staff, and even Embiid also lost his level in this crucial game, with only 15 points on 5 of 14 shots.

On the other hand, on the Nets' side, Durant scored 37+6+4, which is not too much inferior to James, while Paul contributed 20+10 steadily, and Booker and Jokic also scored 18 and 16 points respectively.

Two fists were invincible to four hands, and James and the Cavaliers finally fell short, and they had no choice but to accept the result of stopping the East Finals.

The Nets reached the Finals for the third year in a row, but unlike the previous two years, this time they did not have Wang Chao, who joined the opposite Denver Nuggets.

Nuggets vs Nets.

This kind of finals matchup is a situation that no one expected before the start of the season.

Wang Chao's current team is against the previous team, and this alone can show Wang Chao's toughness, after all, whether it is the Nuggets or the Nets, the basic team is built under the leadership of Wang Chao, and almost all of it is his own credit.

Not to mention these two teams, even the Rockets have always been one of the strongest teams in the West in the past few years since Wang Chao left, even if the original championship-winning lineup has gone and can still enter the playoffs every year, it is terrifying!

Let's get back to the finals.

The opponent in the finals is the Nets, and in Wang Chao's view, it can be regarded as a more ideal opponent.

In terms of the quality of stars, the Nets are even slightly better than the Warriors, but if you compare the overall strength and tacit understanding and the rationality of the lineup, it is obvious that the Warriors are still superior.

As previously said, the Nets are a standard team with strong offense and weak defense, and there are too many players who need the ball, resulting in an uneven distribution of the ball, and Jokic can't play as well as he should.

This is reflected in the Eastern Conference playoffs when the Nets faced the Celtics and the Cavaliers, but the Nets won hard by relying on a super lineup and the individual ability of the stars, or in other words, the overall strength of the Eastern team this year is really not very good, including the Cavaliers The overall strength has also declined because of Irving's departure.

To sum up, Wang Chao feels that the Nets' strength is slightly weaker than the Warriors, and in the game against the Warriors, PJ Tucker will also be useful, not like in the Western Conference finals against the Warriors, playing even less time than Kuzmado on the bench.

His task is very simple, there is only one, that is, to target Durant and do everything possible to consume the opponent's physical energy.

In the original history, after Tucker joined the Bucks from the Rockets, he had a play with Durant during the Nets in the playoffs, and it was that meeting that made people more deeply realize the value of Tucker.

In the series, Tucker, who was in charge of defending Durant, used Durant's physical strength very well, and did even better than Antetokounmpo, the best defensive player.

Of course, Durant's performance in the entire series is still very explosive, and he is a super scorer who will never be restricted, even Wang Chao can't prevent the opponent from dying.

But Tucker's kraft candy-style defense and indomitable spirit of never admitting defeat allowed him to pester Durant throughout the game, which greatly consumed Durant's physical energy and made him play below normal in the final moments of the game due to physical fitness.

This is one of the main reasons why Wang Chao chose to sign PJ. Tucker at the beginning of this season.

Of course, Tucker's affordability is even more important.

Durant, at this time, didn't know that Wang Chao had prepared a big gift for him.

can meet Wang Chao in the finals, Durant can't ask for it.

The humiliation given to him by Wang Chao in last year's finals, the cautious Durant still remembers it vividly, and every time he thinks about it, he still can't help his chest rising and falling violently.

Because of Wang Chao's behavior, he joined the Nets and became the laughing stock of the whole league, obviously winning a championship, but instead of improving, his historical status has declined.

This makes Durant even more eager to beat Wang Chao on the court and prove himself to the world.

"Wang Chao, I will repay all the humiliation you gave me that day! As long as I beat you head-on in the finals, it is enough to prove that I am better than you! ”

Obviously, Durant misunderstood some things, for example, even if he really won Wang Chao in this finals, it does not prove that he is stronger than Wang Chao, which can only show that the Nets' current lineup is indeed the most luxurious in the league.

Who made the difference between the two people's honor accumulation so big?

Jordan is recognized as the league's recognized former basketball god, six NBA championships, but in his 15-year career, he has also suffered defeat in nine seasons, those players who have defeated Jordan in nine seasons, such as Larry, a top star who has led the team to sweep Jordan twice in the playoffs. Is Bird stronger than Jordan? The Pistons also beat the Bulls three times in the playoffs during their bad boy years, and no one said anything about Isaiah. Thomas is better than Jordan.

So Durant's idea is just wishful thinking, he doesn't win the Finals three or four times in a row, it is basically impossible to change the fans' opinions, and the finals of the two teams have not yet started. (End of chapter)