On May 5, the NBA's east and west sides ushered in two focus battles, Harden's 76ers eventually lost to the Heat, trailing 0:2 on aggregate, while Paul's Suns defeated the Lone Rangers to lead 2-0 on aggregate. Harden did not have a strong sense of winning in the game, and only scored 20 points in the whole game, and after scoring 16 points in the last game, he still did not help the team to win. On the Suns side, the home victory over the Lone Ranger by 20 points not only led the overall score but also played a very good performance for the whole team. This also inevitably makes fans compare Harden and Paul, two former Rocket teammates, who are now very different in their performance on the field and the reputation off the court.
After the Suns won the Lone Ranger at home today, they quietly set a record that fans praised. Although the Suns trailed the Lone Ranger by 2 points at the end of the half, and Paul was not in very good shape at halftime and only scored 8 points, but in the second half, Booker and Paul joined forces to reverse the score in the third quarter. The Suns continued to win 100 percent as long as they could get ahead of their opponents at the end of the third quarter, and after the game, the Suns' record reached 52 wins and 0 losses, and the overall performance of the players on the team was even better, and each position was able to match the Lone Ranger.
In the fourth quarter of the game, the Suns played a 40:26 wave of scoring offensive attacks, determining the score advantage in one fell swoop, and the 20 victories over the Lone Rangers showed the difference in strength between the Suns and the Lone Rangers. Paul stood up again in the fourth quarter of the game, and even his good brother James tweeted: CP3! Paul scored 14 points on 6-of-7 in the fourth quarter. In the first round of the playoffs, Paul staged a wonderful personal offensive show in the fourth quarter. In this game, the Lone Ranger side still lost, Doncic is still the most stable scorer in the whole team, the highest scorer in the whole game of 35 points, but the other players on the team only scored in double figures, and Doncic won 1 win and 9 losses in the game against Paul.
The Suns Scorer scored 30 points and shot three 3-pointers in 62 seconds in the final quarter to extend the Suns' dominance. Paul scored 28 points and he set multiple records. Paul has scored 82 points in the fourth quarter of the playoffs, the league first, he and Harden in this year's playoffs in stark contrast, once Paul playoff mode is turned on, Sao Paulo will come, but Harden has not been able to get rid of the sluggish performance, the team's young Player Maxi's performance is more convincing to fans. During the Rockets period, Harden and Paul came to the Western Conference Finals, but after Paul was injured, the Rockets' overall score advantage turned to ashes, and harden's performance in the team was also a cliff-like decline.
Now the probability of paul's Suns advancing is as high as 92%, and harden's 76ers will be particularly small as long as they lose the next game, and may face the end of being swept, Embiid's absence is too big for them. In this season's championship competition, Paul and Booker are still likely to achieve the Suns to reach the finals for two consecutive years, and this season's Suns lineup is more tacit, the player injury situation is better, and the Suns are looking forward to the next performance.