The CBA regular season has 10 rounds left, but Guangdong is blocked out of the top four, and at the beginning of the season, few people can predict that the 11 champions' Kangzhuang Road will have more of these bumps, and thorns will suddenly arise under the throne.
In fact, Guangdong fell out of the top four at the end of the regular season is not a decade of encounters, the most recent is the 29th round of the 17-18 season, Lu Yue a battle, Yi Jianlian cut 40 points and 14 rebounds, but failed to prevent Guangdong from being killed by The Shandong double led by Ding Yanyuhang. After that world war, Shandong, Jiangsu and Guangdong all won 20 and lost 9, and Guangdong ranked 5th because of its defeat to Shandong and Jiangsu of Maxon Brooks.
It was a season before the three consecutive championships, and Guangdong then won eight consecutive games, ranking third in the league, but lost to Liaoning in the final round of the regular season and failed to rush to the second place in the league. In the semi-final Liao-Guangdong battle, Guangdong, which lost its home advantage, returned home with 0-2, and was eventually eliminated 1-4.
During the three consecutive championships, Guangdong retained the regular season throne for three consecutive years.
Today, Guangdong is 20 wins and 8 losses, 5 wins behind Liaoning at the top of the list, to recover the gap in 10 games, Guangdong to complete 10 consecutive wins is a great miracle, but to let Liaoning lose 6 games in 10 games, it is obviously unrealistic. For Guangdong, taking a step forward and smoothly entering the top four is the most realistic thing.
At present, before Guangdong are Zhejiang and Guangsha, which have won 22 and lost 6, and Shanghai, which has won 23 and lost 5, all of them are elite soldiers and strong generals, and their combat strength is abundant. However, Guangdong's last 10 games do not need to be tough with them, and all the opponents the team faces are lower than Guangdong, namely Guangzhou with 18 wins and 10 losses, Shandong with 15 wins and 13 losses, Beikong with 14 wins and 14 losses, Xinjiang with 12 wins and 16 losses, and Ningbo at the bottom.
The third stage of Guangdong is bound to sit on the mountain and watch the tiger fight, and the civil war of the first four teams is about to break out. Liaoning has to accept the challenge of Shanghai and Zhejiang a total of 4 games, for Guangdong, if Liaoning wins, it will certainly make the top position unshakable, but it is undoubtedly helping Guangdong to enter the top four.
Guangdong's top four opponents, Shanghai reached second place with the league's first-place average of points per game, but their challenge has only just begun. In the last 10 games, Shanghai will play two games against Liaoning, two anxious card battles with Guangsha, and two offensive battles with the running bomb brigade Shanxi, and if you are not careful, Shanghai's ranking will become very tense.
In the four strong civil wars, the most arduous was Zhejiang.
In the last 10 battles, Zhejiang will have 4 qualifying battles with the top-ranked Guangsha and Liaoning, not only that, they will also have to fight with the running and bombing brigade Shanxi and the giant killer Jilin for 4 more. The difficulty of this schedule is the most difficult of the third stage of the strong team, and just like Shanghai's Jimmer Fredette can not return, the big foreign assistant Who was going to return to the team, Morris Endo, has already blown, and the new foreign assistant Eric Green is still running.
The top four fight each other, and Guangsha also has to fight with Shanghai and Zhejiang. Guangsha's new foreign assistant Jalil Okafor has not yet officially registered, but he has appeared in the team training photos taken by Guangsha, the former American national youth talent inside line, Duke University NCAA champion, NBA 2015 draft list, although it is not easy to make a living in the NBA, but after all, only 26 years old, the inside line is skilled, his joining may trigger a violent earthquake in the league's strong team pattern.
All in all, Guangdong's competitive situation in the third stage is very good, and the civil war between the top four will inevitably have the team fall out of the team, and then it is the opportunity for Guangdong to return to the top four. Of course, Guangdong must do a good job of itself, facing Shandong, which was eliminated last season, Guangzhou, which has soared this season, and Beikong and Xinjiang, which are motivated by the playoff competition, Guangdong must play its own rhythm.
Guangdong has struggled this season precisely because of problems in terms of personnel rotation and interior protection. Yi Jianlian's comeback just hit the weak state of Guangdong's outside line, not only failed to let Guangdong continue the strength of the three consecutive championships, but gave birth to a sense of hero twilight and lonely fighting. Averaging 16.6 points and 8.4 rebounds per game, the UAE League after the big injury has done well enough, but the trouble is that he only plays 23.6 minutes per game, and the rest of the half, guangdong rely on whom?
The weakness of the attack is mainly reflected in two aspects, one is to lose the thunderous fast-paced momentum of the past, the number of rounds of the team this season is only ranked 10th in the league, the fast attack score has dropped to the 8th in the league, the fast attack shooting rate is only 13th in the league, and the score of mistakes is ranked 15th. Combined, Guangdong's rapid attacks caused by outside pressure and defensive rebounds have decreased sharply, and they have been forced to play a large number of positional attacks.
Because of this, Guangdong, which is eager to be fast, has 18.4 mistakes per game.
This is the second aspect, Guangdong, who is seeking speed, does not have enough offensive manpower on the outside line, and the overall attack is suppressed, but it has to be accelerated, which eventually leads to a variety of inexplicable mistakes in handling the ball, and the average number of errors per game is 5th in the league. Even if Guangdong strives to keep its shooting percentage in the league second, and even raises the poor three-point points at the beginning of the season to the fourth place in the league, a large number of mistakes have accumulated to make Guangdong's game momentum fall off a cliff.
Especially in the face of strong teams, these two points are particularly obvious, Yi Jianlian's old Ji Futuo is difficult to defeat the time ruthlessly, and the whole team is always caught in the whirlpool of mistakes. The offense lost too quickly and was forced into a bitter battle in the position, and Guangdong Projection was repeatedly tested, averaging 25 three-point shots per game to rank 6th in the league and 9.4 to the bottom 7th.
Things have changed a little differently since the arrival of foreign aid Richard Ledo, who started with three doubles and three consecutive games close to a quasi-triple-double to replenish the outside. Ledo is 198cm tall, and although he's not very efficient at ending the offense now, he's doing well in terms of dominating the ball and rebounding, which is exactly what Guangdong needs.
Ledo and Sony Weems have only played together for Guangdong once, and Du's director in this window is probably more about studying the timing and order of the two appearances, and which lineups are configured for each. The good news is that in the third stage, the opponent is relatively not so strong, Guangdong may be able to do some lineup tests, the bad news is that by the end of the run-in, the pair of foreign players may not be able to play with the real opponents of the playoffs.
The schedule is relatively easy, and the two foreign aides are complete, but Guangdong cannot be assured.
Last season's Finals MVP Hu Mingxuan was affected by allergies this season and his form fluctuated, averaging 12.8 points, 3.7 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 0.7 steals per game in the first stage. It seems that the data is not bad, compared to the first stage of last season, 17 points, 3.3 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.7 steals, and 64% three-point shooting, the league's first performance, that is, hitting the south wall.
In the second stage, after treatment, Xiao Hu's body gradually recovered, and he also found the state of ending the attack on the court, once approaching 65% of the true shooting rate, and raised the overall bad shooting rate of 34.5% in the first stage to more than 40%. However, he then fell into the "mat door" and suffered a shoulder injury, which once again caused controversy on and off the court.
After the lack of Ma Shang, the three major defenders in Guangdong have been fatigued, and the main controller Zhao Rui is absent due to family affairs and injuries in the second stage, which is also a major reason why the team eventually fell to the 5th place in the league. Fortunately, Xu Jie stepped forward, he averaged 12.9 points, 2.9 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.1 steals per game this season, but the loss was his previous excellent assist-to-error ratio, while the shooting percentage declined.
Not only the defensive line, Zhou Peng and Ren Junfei on the front line also appeared extremely tired on the field, Su Wei and Zeng Fanri on the inside line were more and more confused, and the overall state of Guangdong was extremely depressed. Previously, when everyone was soldiered five times, Role players such as Wang Shaokai seemed to have an aura, but now under adversity, they have also lost their radiance.
Guangdong urgently needs to find the calmness of the defending champion, a kind of confidence that "you hit yours and I hit mine".
Everything is back to the personnel, the third stage, Guangdong finally has a stable double foreign aid, Zhao Rui is expected to return, plus new signings Tang Jie, as well as two young players who performed well in the second stage, Xu Xin and Zhang Mingchi, as well as Liu Quanbiao, who came back before, although Zhang Hao and Zhang Haojia's injuries are regrettable, but the whole team seems to have more room for rotation.
The defending champion's weapons are still speed and defense, the outside lethality is the key to the success or failure of the team, and the protection and impact of the front and inside on the penalty area is the foundation of the team. In the first two stages, the consumption of Guangdong veterans was excessive, which was completely different from the previous three years of winning the championship, but fortunately, the long window period helped the veterans recover. Nowadays, Zhao Rui and others are needed to exert their strength in the backcourt, and the double foreign aid will come up with threats in terms of attacking with the ball.
The third stage came to Foshan, Guangdong is also half a home game, and the problem of returning to the final four in the regular season should not be big. But Guangdong can not be taken lightly, Guo Shiqiang's Guidance of Guangzhou this season both inside and outside, Shandong is attracting reinforcements, North Control and Xinjiang are strong inside. Although Guangdong fans always joke that reaching the playoffs is the goal, guangdong, where the main lineup of the three consecutive championships is still there, has always been staring at the throne, and if you want to run there, the third stage will not be able to withstand huge ups and downs.
Sitting on the mountain and watching the tiger fight must also have the ability to clean up the situation, the fisherman Can't be caught by the sandpiper, and the champion's heart should be revealed.