With Chris Paul's fourth quarter, the Suns, who have a league-first record in the regular season, resisted their opponents' counterattacks in the first round of the playoffs, thus narrowly winning 110-99. The Suns did not win this game easily, but through this victory the Suns still mastered the "promotion code", and the team was eliminated only once in the history of the same situation.
Paul's dominance of 7 of the eight shots in the fourth quarter and 19 points in a single quarter did mask some of the problems that the Suns exposed in this game, the most notable of which was that the Suns lost 20 rebounds and allowed the Pelicans to grab 25 frontcourt rebounds! Rebounding control has always been the lifeblood of basketball games, and how can the sun, which aspires to be a championship, expose such a huge rebounding hole in this season's playoff G1, how can it not be worrying?
However, the Suns were able to win with such an obvious rebounding disadvantage or proved their strength, the Suns limited the opponent's shooting rate to 37.9%, allowing the Pelicans to attack the core CJ McCollum and Ingram to shoot a total of 42 shots to prove the Suns' strong defensive ability, which is a must-have temperament for the championship team. Not to mention, the two teams' regular season records are 28 wins apart, and there is no doubt that the Suns eliminated the Pelicans.
Judging from the team history experience, it is only a matter of time before the Pelicans are eliminated by the Suns. The Suns have won Series G1 11 times in their previous history with home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, only in 1983 when they faced the Nuggets which time they were eliminated, the promotion rate reached 90.9%! Since then, in the last 40 years, the Suns have all advanced in the first round, including 5 sweeps!
In the long history of the NBA, there have only been 5 "Black Eight Miracles", and only 3 times since the first round of the "Seven Games and Four Wins" schedule has been adopted. Looking back at the series in NBA history that staged the "Black Eight Miracles", the teams that counterattacked basically had obvious advantages in the style of the ball, but now we don't see in the young Pelicans that they can bring too much threat to the Suns.
The Suns won the G1 in the first round of the playoffs in the first round of the team's history with home advantage in the promotion rate of 90.9%, only once eliminated experience, the Pelicans are unlikely to stage a counterattack, avoid being swept is the Pelicans' more realistic goal.