The most important thing this week happened on Monday, when Klay - King of G6 - Yacht Owner - Foreign Brand Spokesperson - Basketball Court Prayer Word Table Meaning Spokesperson - Thompson made a comeback. Everyone is very excited, and it is always a good thing that athletes on the basketball court can come back from injury and run to the court to demonstrate crookedly, which somewhat hints at a positive meaning:
The good life will come back, whether it's two minutes or two and a half years.
Dream Green, who could not play due to injury, insisted on standing and completing the opening jump ball, and then fouled the court. The meaning of chasing dreams is simple, Clay's comeback means that the core trio that built the warriors of the past dynasty has finally reunited after the collapse of the sand in 2019, and he needs to use a little sense of ceremony to tell the world about this.
Commenting on this year's booming Grizzlies, Clay also said: "They played well. But we... We changed history. ”
This is the correct self-perception. Clay not only became the kicker of the real small ball era with his three-point and no-ball ability, but his and Dream's ability to change defenses on the defensive end further consolidated the foundation of this era. It was Curry who built the building on the basis of the ball with three points, and it was Durant who framed the building with gold.
This has been mentioned in many articles celebrating Curry's all-time three-pointers, how the Warriors changed the face of the league, how the three-point shooting percentage curve steepened from 2014, and how the purely restricted-zone offensive heavy center gradually disappeared from the era and all-Star voting lists.
Another thing that is easy to overlook but may feel ritualistic when revisited years later: The one clay chose to come back against the Cavaliers.
It's no secret that the Cavaliers have crammed three 7-foot players Aaron, Mobley and Markkanen into the starting lineup this season. At the start of the lineup, it looked like a gamble and a coaching inertia for head coach JB Jr., who had played 2.08-meter Casby as a point guard when the Grizzlies were in charge, and who had sidelined Nance Jr., Drummond and Love Jr. when he took over the Cavaliers two years ago.
JB Jr.'s dedication to his ideas brought tears to his eyes, he was not as simple as posing a three scary in the starting lineup, and Loafer sitting on the bench could keep the entire Cavaliers' lineup maintain the rotation of three big men on the court.
The pandemic and injuries can't stop the execution of this infinite tactic up front, and if Love can't play, they still have big forward Dean Wade on top, and if they lose one more inside line, they can pull Ed Davis out. In any case, Little JB wants to put three big ones on the field, there is really no way, two guarantees.
Even Lamar Stevens, who recently topped the starting number two, played as a big forward in college.
I don't know why JB Jr. likes big so much, but one thing is for sure, this year his three big lineups have been successful, and some data can be used as proof:
● The 7th youngest team in the league. The only team younger and more momentum than them is the Grizzlies.
● 4th in the league with a 100 rounds goal difference. Second only to the Warriors, Jazz and Suns.
● Defensive efficiency 3rd in the league. Second only to the Warriors and the Suns. In terms of defensive efficiency in the penalty area, there is no doubt that the league is no longer the first, even in terms of limiting the opponent's three-point shooting rate, they can also rank fifth in the league.
● Offensive rebounding percentage is 9th in the league and shooting efficiency is 8th in the league, and the latter is achieved when the team's three-point shooting percentage and shooting percentage are in the middle of the league.
The most important statistic is that the Cavaliers are currently 23 wins and 18 losses, and the number of wins has exceeded that of last year. Halfway through the season, the Cavaliers are still the 6th in the East, the playoffs are in a good situation, and more importantly, the team's scoring king in the past few years, Sexton, has been reimbursed for the season, and Rubio, a substitute point guard who has played a very bright role this year, has also fallen, but they have not fallen because of one, and the real reason for the team's success from one side is indeed a large lineup. There is no doubt that we should give more praise to the team's coaching staff and management, and even though there is a lot to praise for Mobley's personal traits, it is the management who is responsible for bringing him to Cleveland.
Even though the Cavaliers' final outcome of the season hasn't been fully presented, it's clear that the current report card is enough to satisfy owner Gilbert, who gave Jr. coach and general manager Altman a long-term contract extension two days ago. In fact, in the three years since LeBron left in 18 years, the Cavaliers have never won more than 22, and before the start of this season, the betting house's prediction of the Cavaliers' winning position is even worse, only about 17 games, you can fully appreciate how surprises the Cavaliers' current performance has brought to the boss.
Now we know what kind of team the Cavaliers are, and we know what kind of team the Warriors are. So, whether coincidentally or intentionally, the first ball of the Splash Brothers' fit against the Cavaliers is likely to be an anchoring event.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle, Klay swept away 17 points in 20 minutes, and even though Curry still didn't regain his grip, the Warriors still managed to win the Cavaliers at home, leading by 41 minutes, and at most 21 points.
There are two scenes in this game that are more representative: one is the failure of Mobley's consecutive low-back back to Tuscano Anderson in the opening game, and the other is clay's turtle speed change directly past the change of defense is Aaron's back-of-the-block Stevens.
This is representative of the Cavaliers' bottlenecks at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends of the season. This season, the Cavaliers' offensive performance is mediocre, and the offensive efficiency can only be ranked in the middle of the league, mainly for two reasons, although they use the three major frontcourts as a tactical basis, they do not rely on the interior back on the offensive end, whether it is Allen's zombie dream footsteps or Mobley's 97 kg level of skinny backplay will not be a reasonable offensive choice for the team, and the other two main interior rotations Markkanen and Luck have increased their three-point shooting ratio to about 60%, yes, There is no doubt that their offensive end only exists as the space interior, including Wade.
So the Cavaliers' main offensive means is still the fixed point projection after the ball is passed, this idea is not too much of a problem, Mobley's ability to shoot the ball is an important reason for their arrangement, the problem is that the Cavaliers' fixed point is really inaccurate, just past Rondo has been the team's highest three-point shooting rate of the player, the team's three-point shooting rate of more than 40% of the main rotation is only Lefu alone, it is not enough.
On the other hand, the shooting choice based on fixed-point projection requires better quality passing balls, and it is not enough to rely on One Inside and One Outside Mobley and The Two-Powered Guard Garland, so the Cavaliers have invited Rondo after losing Rubio to comb through the urgent desire of the team organization at a glance, in fact, another big reason for the Cavaliers' offensive weakness is that they are keen on passing, but the quality is limited, and the third highest turnover rate in the team league is the best proof. Of course, from another perspective, they currently have a team-wide assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.68, which is slightly lower than the league's average assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.7, but if you are the kind of person who can't tolerate The 1.82 assist-to-turnover ratio in Weizhong, then you should have higher expectations for the Cavaliers' statistic.
On the defensive end, the Cavaliers have done well enough that Klay's slow break through of Allen's violent slam doesn't belittle their ability to protect the rim. But one thing is suspicious, they've been too balanced in terms of rim protection and defensive three-pointers, and even in terms of defensive conversion offense, they are among the league's top level, which are the most easily targeted points in the usual big lineups.
Budenholzer explained his own behavior when he insisted on using a giant Lopez to protect the frame: "No one defense can take care of all types of offense, and I chose to bet that they would not shoot three points."
The Cavaliers' defense, both inside and out, may have come from the flexibility, foot range and fitness of their two big men, Allen and Mobley, but it's somewhat surprising that Markkanen and Love didn't drag their feet when defending on the flanks. With the current small number of games, after the Cavaliers go further, whether their super frontcourt will continue is still a question, about this, and what to do when they really meet a superstar in the playoffs to solve everything, we can wait, and I will tell you when the problems appear.
The reality in front of us at the moment is that a Warrior who did not chase his dreams easily won the Cavaliers, the team that is good at using small lineups and three-pointers is still at the top of the league, the Warriors do not mention, the Big Men of the Suns seem to be just simple tool people at the moment, the Bulls' Vucevic also has enough spatial ability, and then we see that the person who plays the most big forwards on this team is DeRozan...
This is the era when the Warriors laid the foundation, but there are still some small-ball style teams in history before them. George Carr's Nuggets, Nelson Sr.'s Warriors and Mavericks, D'Antoni's Suns, they've made a lot of kinds of attempts, such as whether we can expand the court with speed, whether we can play 7 seconds on an offense, whether we can shoot more shots from outside the three-point line?
In the end, everyone found that these attempts were likely to succeed, so what was lacking was perhaps a little balance under the amplification of the afterthought, or something that could also be called luck.
The Heat may be the first modern team to succeed with speed, undifferentiated rotational defense and small lineups. The Warriors are also not the first team in history to rely on three-pointers to achieve ultimate success, in 94 and 95, Olajuwon led the Rockets to win two consecutive championships, the big dream is of course the historical inner line, but in those two years their system was to arrange shooters around Olajuwon, and then shoot the highest percentage of three-pointers in the league, shooting at least 3% more than the second place in both seasons.
The Warriors were the first small-ball team to succeed with the three-pointer label, and their choice to use the Dream Single C game on the stage of the 2015 Finals actually almost hung up, but they met a Cavaliers who were almost only LeBron, especially considering the experience of their 2016 finals being overturned by the Cavaliers and the West Finals being led 3-1 by the Thunder, the start of the small-ball era was not as easy as imagined. So Durant's addition is really too appropriate, the Warriors actually have two small multi-functional interior lines, and for a while you can think that Durant is the league's number one center, which is a genius combination that can be met and cannot be sought. But the way the Warrior Dynasty itself was constructed did not hinder their positioning in the history and era.
In the current era of magic balls with clear offensive distribution, defense is actually reduced to two types, one is the protective frame, and the other is the ability to change the defense on the line. Warriors take the initiative to reduce their height to protect the inside line, first of all, it is naturally the ability to chase dreams and carry backs, and secondly, the Warriors' ability to change defenses on the outside line and the ability to move their feet determine that they can quickly achieve the ability to quickly achieve local packing and dispersion.
This defensive ability makes the interior line less efficient in scoring on their heads, and on their own offensive end, the Warriors can punish the big outside line. Before this year, the blow penalty scale, the large interior line was almost a point problem when defending the top outside line.
But since this year, the scale has varied slightly. Non-active confrontations after large interior changes can mostly escape a whistle, at least now it is more difficult for ball handlers to cheat fouls by active contact. Even if the big interior line is still fundamentally unable to lock the outside line, even a successful defense of 1 second is enough to give teammates breathing space to rearrange the defense that has been disrupted, including changing defenses, assisting defenses and rotating.
This may be the fundamental reason why the three Cavaliers have been able to take care of both internal and external defense this year.
But standing at this historical juncture, we still don't know how far this big lineup of prototype Cavaliers can go in the future. Almost 6 years ago, experts and commentators judged by the previous failure experience of the Nuggets, Suns and Mavericks that shooting could not win the championship.
In the end, the Warriors' success completely reversed the rhetoric, and now it has gone to the other extreme: the big lineup can't win the championship.
Who knows, maybe this Cavaliers won't have too much luck, they won't get a qualitative leap like Mark Jackson developed in 2014, they may soon have to let go of some key players because of salary space problems, they may also suffer some injuries, and the injuries of big men are often more difficult to recover than small ones...
In the face of too many possibilities, this cavaliers may eventually have to work with Jokic and Embiid to use some talented new age big men, combined with small changes in rules, to pry the corners of the times. It's just that we can't see it at the moment of history, this may be the so-called limitations of history, such as Cao Mengde, who first met Sima Zhongda, but felt that this person "has heroic ambitions" and "wolf Gu's appearance", and where can he think of so many stories behind him.