After the "match-fixing" turmoil, the CBA returned to the playoffs themselves.
On the evening of April 18, in the quarterfinals of the CBA playoffs, the two giants of Guangdong men's basketball and Liaoning men's basketball team sat home to face the Guangsha men's basketball team and the Beijing men's basketball team.
After four quarters of competition, Liaoning finally defeated Beijing 97-84, and the series led 1-0 to get the match point. Guangdong beat Guangsha 109-96, also taking the match point of the series, which happened to be a 13-point difference.
Judging from the two meetings that night, the highest level of the CBA may still be Liaoyue.
Guangdong 10 people rotate all the people to be soldiers
At the beginning of the season, the Guangsha men's basketball team, which was the runner-up last season, did not perform satisfactorily due to injury. With Hu Jinqiu's return from injury and foreign aid in place, Guangsha gradually regained its state. After resuming home and away games in the third stage of the regular season, Guangsha "upgraded and fought monsters" all the way from the edge of the playoffs, and finally ended with a wave of 9 consecutive wins, and finally ranked 7th in the regular season.
Short rotation and dead use of main players have always been criticized by the outside world. Because the first two stages lagged behind, in order to impact the playoffs, Guangsha had to let the main players play longer on the court in the third stage. After the third stage and play-offs, the main players of Guangsha consumed a lot of physical energy.
At this critical moment, Guangsha's main striker Zhu Junlong suffered a back injury during training and did not go to Dongguan with the team at all. The 24-year-old Zhu Junlong is the top soldier at both ends of the team's offensive and defensive ends, and is affectionately known by fans as the "fourth youngest" after the "three young men of Guangsha", and his absence has made the depth of Guangsha's already thin squad worse.
In this battle, Guangdong gave full play to the advantages in the depth of the lineup. Guangdong team of 5 players scored double-doubles, 10 players played more than 10 minutes, of which only "black and white short" Zhao Rui, Hu Mingxuan and Xu Jie played more than 30 minutes. On the other hand, looking at Guangsha, their lineup is too shallow. In order to fill Zhu Junlong's position, head coach Wang Bo had to put Zhao Jiaren, who played the team's sixth man in the third stage of the regular season, back into the starting lineup. In this match, Zhao Jiaren played 46 minutes, Sun Minghui played 43 minutes, Hu Jinqiu also played nearly 39 minutes, and Kyle Wilzhe played 28 minutes. Together with License, Zhao Yanhao, Wells, and Xu Zhonghao, Guangsha is full of 7 people rotation.
In addition to Guangsha's own disadvantages, Guangdong's defense of opponents is also very targeted. Guidance Du Feng clearly knew that Sun Minghui was the only offensive initiation point in the Guangsha team, and as long as he pinched Sun Minghui, Guangsha's attack would not survive. Guangsha could only rely on the outbreak of foreign aid Wilzhe to barely maintain the suspense of the game. In the second quarter of the game, the fiery Wilger hit four three-pointers in a single quarter and scored 14 points alone, becoming a powerful weapon for the team to bite the score.
Guangsha showed great tenacity in the second half. In the third quarter of the game, Hamilton scored a dunk, Yi Jianlian scored a three-pointer, Hu Jinqiu and Wei Zheli scored 7 points on a sudden outside shot, Zhao Jiaren hit a three-point shot, and Guangsha stopped Guangdong with a wave of 10-0 small climax. After a timeout, Hu Jinqiu hit two free throws, and Wilzhe scored four points in a row, and Guangsha narrowed the gap to two points. But what can't stand up to Guangdong is indeed that the family base is thick enough. After the timeout, Yi Jianlian hit a three-point shot to stabilize the situation, after which Marchand Brooks hit two consecutive three-pointers to open the gap again. At the end of the third quarter, Guangdong led Guangsha by 9 points 85-76.
Now Yi Jianlian can only play about 20 minutes, the explosiveness is not as good as before, dozens of games in the regular season make people have to sigh that the years are not spared, but in the playoffs, Yi Jianlian is Guangdong's sea god needle. Played 22 minutes, 15 points and 8 rebounds, and hit a three-point shot in the final moments of the first half, although Yi Jianlian is no longer the brave he used to be, but he can contribute every time.
After the game, Zhejiang East Sunshine head coach Wang Bo said: "It was a tough game, when the team suffered injuries and there was a shortage of personnel, everyone was fighting hard. There was a time when the score was very close, we chased only 2 points, but in the end we had a physical problem and hoped that the team would not give up and play better in the next game. ”
The Jingliao tug-of-war, the defending champion is even better
Slow pace and fighting defense are Beijing Shougang's consistent style of play. Even Liaoning, the defending champion who ranks in the league's top three in offensive efficiency this season, scored more than 100 points against Shougang in the playoffs.
The grievances between Beijing and Liao must be treasured by Chinese fans, and there is no need to mention that the three meetings between the two teams in the regular season were also hand-to-hand combat and quagmire wrestling. Maybe it's something engraved in Shougang's DNA. Even if Xie Libin has left class, Shougang will not completely change his appearance just because he changes the head coach.
With Liaoning in the top four of the league and a by-start round, they haven't played an official match for about two weeks, and it's hard to accurately predict their match status. The eight-in-four, three-game win-2 format means that losing one game means that you are on the edge of the cliff, and Liaoning is also facing a lot of pressure at home. Coupled with Han Dejun's inability to play due to injury, Liaoning's internal line was in a hurry.
But the Liaoning generals did it, and they snatched a victory with a desperate mentality. This mentality is reflected in the fight for rebounds. The Liaoning team grabbed 53 rebounds, 10 more than Shougang. In terms of offensive rebounds, Liaoning has 18 and Shougang has 11, which means that Liaoning has 7 more offensive opportunities than Shougang. Liaoning took advantage of these seven secondary offensive opportunities to score as many as 18 points.
There was such a scene in the game: Zhao Jiwei missed a three-point shot, and Cong Mingchen fought for an offensive rebound. Then his jump shot deflected again, and Moreland got another offensive rebound. Immediately followed by Zhao Jiwei's frontcourt rebound, Moreland and Guo Allen's fall to grab the ball, Cong Mingchen grabbed another rebound. This scene appeared in the first half of the game from 6 minutes 20 seconds to 5 minutes and 40 seconds, and this short period of more than one minute is the epitome of this battle in Liaoning.
Moreland contributed 14 points, 23 rebounds and 3 blocks to support the defending champion's interior line. On the defensive end, Moreland limited Shougang's interior core, T.J. Lif, to 1-of-12 shooting.
Zhang Zhenlin, Zhao Jiwei, Guo Allen, all devoted. Zhang Zhenlin's violent buckles again and again ignited not only the enthusiasm of Liaoning fans, but also the fighting spirit of all players on and off the field in Liaoning.
'We played well, everyone was fully committed, the morale was high.' Liaoning head coach Yang Ming praised the team's performance, "We had two weeks off, we had injuries and aging problems, and the team's form fluctuated significantly at the end of the regular season. Beijing is a strong team, after the change of coach, it played very dynamically, countered three points, and had a good sense of teamwork. Although we are at the top of the rankings, our overall form is not as good as our opponents. ”
Yang Ming's remarks were not pretentious. Shougang has better squad depth and better outside shooting, but Liaoning has always faced the problem of lack of physical fitness.
In the third quarter, Shougang completely took Liaoning's high block and could not be removed, and the point difference was further stretched. Beijing was on the bag, Zhao Jiwei and Guo Allen, two national defenders, shot the ball in time, and the point difference was once stretched to more than 20 points. However, Beijing used the thickness of personnel and the defensive base to close the point difference for a while. And the Liaoning side only dares to trust the starting five plus foreign aid Ferg, and they are all fighting with Shougang in one breath. In the fourth quarter, neither team scored any athletic goals for five minutes, and Moreland could not move his legs to help defend at one point. At the key moment, it was Moreland who grabbed the offensive rebound and scored under the basket, and then Allen Guo assisted Zhang Zhenlin for three points, completely killing the game.
The intensity of confrontation shown by the four teams of Guangdong, Liaoning, Beijing and Guangsha did not have any discomfort even in this year's finals, but unfortunately the format of the eight-in-four series is 3 sets and 2 wins.
A week ago, due to the "black minute" in the third game of the Shanghai-Jiangsu series, the whole society criticized the CBA league. This incident also caused Chinese basketball and CBA leagues to fall into a huge social trust crisis of "fake matches". Even if the basketball association uses the thunder means and public opinion is calmed, the negative impact of this matter on Chinese basketball may be difficult to eliminate for a while.
However, this night, when the scene of the two matches was overcrowded, the fans continued to return to the game site to cheer for the home team; When it was seen that the CBA was back on the hot search not because of scandals but because of the wonderful moments in the game and Allen Guo's milestones, the basketball game returned to the sport itself.
At this moment, the joy that sports brings is pure.