Bucks VS Pacers
The Pacers are very abstract races.
The first and second quarters are a bit like the Clippers and Mavericks next door, the veterans are at ease, and the recruits are at a loss. Lillard scored 35 points in the first half, which is completely a remake of the classic Lillard, please make up for it yourself. On the other hand, the Pacers generals, you can only shout "What are you doing~", they do have some degree of "path dependence", and after the Bucks made some changes, the Pacers did not turn a corner. This is not reflected in the young people, the veteran TJ McConnell's two breakthrough mistakes in the first half to the crowd, the style of painting is very weird.
It's also a reflection of the Bucks' change. According to the habit of the two teams playing each other in the past, the Bucks' retreat will not be so fast, and there will be no many people tightening the middle to block the breakthrough. On the other hand, the Pacers' mood of wanting to push the speed has not changed, and with the fact that they have lost a lot of chasing three-pointers, the Pacers' conversion offense is not as efficient as the positional battle.
In the first half, the Pacers had a lot of rounds that they didn't know what they were playing. Siakam found Lillard and then returned the ball to Nembhard, and the next story was not that Sika dropped low and asked for the ball, but that Nembhard turned his head and back to play Middleton, who was one size older than him, and when he attacked, there were 12 seconds left before 24 seconds.
Harry's disappearance was, of course, one of the reasons for the Pacers' confusion.
Haliburton had 9 points + 8 assists and 7 shots in the game, and his presence was thin, continuing the slump in the second half of the regular season. The Bucks will guard a mismatch while Portis is on the floor, Portis vs. Turner, and Big Lo vs. Siakam. Harry hadn't attacked much, and he hadn't grabbed a lot of the more less mobile basket protector Da Luo. And some balls come out before they change the formation, and the teammates who receive the ball will naturally not have a good effect on their own knife mountain.
The Pacers' defense of Lillard is also hard to say. Nembhard struggled to defend Lillard, and the interior defense Lillard blocked and dismantled, without pinching or delaying, giving Lillard enough distance for him to pull three points and for him to accelerate his sprint. McConnell defended Lillard in the connecting section, and his height was not as good as Lillard's, and Lillard simply threw it above his head, ignoring interference.
It wasn't until the end of the second quarter that the Pacers turned the corner, and Harry found Sika to play some pick-and-rolls, and the team pinched Lillard. The tide gradually turned, but just as hope was about to be seen, Middleton triggered the Wenyuan bloodline, Beasley dominated the bottom corner, Beverley took Harry, and the Bucks closed the game.
The youngsters have had a stressful start to the playoffs, and as the Pacers adjust their offensive and defensive focus, perhaps their performance will improve in the rest of the game. But objectively speaking, even if the Bucks don't have letters, this round series is not that simple. Some of my ideas in the preview must have been superficial, and I didn't look at the existing configuration on both sides in detail, but only discussed it from the perspective of "the team as a whole". There are two situations that have definitely changed when the two teams played each other in the regular season.
The first is that Haliburton is different. At that time, Haliburton was still an all-powerful magician, and in the second half of the season, Haliburton rushed into battle with an injury, and his performance had plummeted. The Bucks can switch defenses when he finds Turner to block (Harry doesn't even punish Portis), give him a weak sidehand when he picks up, and try to suppress his influence.
In this game, in addition to the 35 points in the half, the full game also scored 35 points, and the outbreak was actually Siakam, who scored 36 points efficiently. No matter which of the bucks defends him, Sika eats it all. That probably resonates with the Pacers' continued strength in the second half of the regular season.
The problem is that what the Bucks are really afraid of is not the hard solution of the front, but the demolition of the basket protector Lopez, and the Pacers will have to rely on Haliburton's blocking to achieve this. A punch of the same force, with different angles, will have different effects on the opponent.
The second is that the puzzle pieces on both sides are different, and the intensity of the playoff rotation and the play of young players are different from the regular season. The Bucks got Beverley as the starter before, and in this game, the Bucks bench mainly used Beasley, Crowder, and Connaughton, and AJ Green only gave 5 and a half points, which was not the same as the rotation lineup with Payne at that time.
Carlisle, in turn, used 11 people, not counting Isaiah Jackson, who played only 2 minutes, also had 10 people. Jalen Smith, Toppin, Shepard, the guys were all scared. Jalen was making mistakes every round he was there, and he didn't look very smart. Topping was outrageously crooked, jumping on the timer one by one. Shepard dared to shoot but couldn't shoot, and also sent a three-point foul. McDermott played less than seven minutes, and the Pacers lost by 17 points in those seven minutes. This time, Lillard's coordination error with his teammates was delayed, leaving Lillard in the custody of five people.
This time, Rivers also put on a lineup of Lillard, Beasley, AJ Green, Connaughton, Portis, etc., which is about to be robbed, and the Pacers really exploded the Bucks rebounds in this period. But the three-point iron in the empty position during this period also allowed the Bucks to get through the difficulty. In another connecting section, Portis, Midou, Crowder, and Beverley, these veterans, taught the Pacers a hard lesson, and their silky coordination quite has a sense of whether you are an uncle or your uncle.
I have to admit that Rivers has a little something, and the playoff experience is indeed more abundant for the Bucks.
Overall, I think there's a lot of room for adjustment behind the Pacers, and the Alphabetless Bucks definitely have the quality to win.
This game also continues to confirm one thing – the series is specific, and you can't ignore it when it comes to every link. If you think about it casually and break it down to look at the details, you will see completely different content.
Thunder VS Pelicans
The Thunder won a hand of the first star of the SGA series.
That's pretty much it.
It would be very monotonous to take Valanciunas out of this series. There are two basket-carrying singles players on each side, with a variety of puzzles with fast feet and long arm spans, or slender or stocky, to crack the exaggerated defensive rotation on the opposite side when the space is flawed. In the absence of an unexpected explosion of the puzzle crosshair, it may be a low score in every game. Then SGA relied on the lower limit ability of the 31-point essence of the human race to help Thunder pass the level.
It's the different painting style of Big Varan from everyone else that makes this series a bit of a game. The preview said that the Thunder will have to make Willie Green suspicious and cut the use time of Big Wallan, so that the weakness of the Pelicans' lack of frontcourt rotation will be exposed, and when everyone is playing small ball, the Thunder, who are deeply involved in this track, are more proficient after all.
But the G1 Thunder didn't do it. The Pelicans' way to protect Big Wallan's defense is for weak-side defenders to rotate early to make up for Wallan's unreachable outside three-pointers. Even so, Chet and Jaylin have had many big open opportunities that Varland didn't guard, but these two have made a total of 4 three-pointers, including 2 in the period after Varan went down.
Of course, in a low-score game, 1~2 empty three-pointers may change the result. Without Jaylin's three-pointer in the corner in the fourth quarter against Varland and Chet's three-pointer at the top of the arc against Varland in the fourth quarter — although Varland pounced, it was too slow and both balls were about equal to open space — the Thunder couldn't win. Willie Green also unintentionally used Nance Jr. in the key ball stage, while Dagneault used Carson Wallace instead of Giddey, trying to improve the rotation speed while trying to improve the space and defense, and the idea can be described as the same, neither of them want to play basketball with extreme characteristics and too obvious flaws.
Even so, after this fight, I don't think Willie Green will have any reflection on using Varan for 29 minutes. Varan had 20 rebounds and 9 front boards, and he was obviously crushed by Chet's weight, and overall, he made up for the three-point supply. If he does not eliminate this X factor, the Thunder will not be able to occupy the strategic initiative.
In a previous article ("How Far Away from Champions as a Benchmark") analyzed the Thunder, the bigger annoyance of the Thunder in the playoffs was their offense than the defensive flaws that did not have a heavy interior lineup. And the Thunder's playoff opener basically confirmed this concern. I won't expand on it here, but I'll talk about it later.
Green Army VS Heat
The Heat's starting match loss was expected. Spo tried to make up for it with team defense, and to be honest, he did his best. The Celtics are almost all-shooters with amazing grasp, and Tatum also played well this time, finding the weak-side shooter with a few horizontal passes. It didn't take much effort for the Green Army to create a lot of three-point opportunities, with 22 of 49 from beyond the three-point line, the lowest 40% shooting rate of the whole team outside of Tatum, and Hauser 4-of-4 in the second quarter, digging another three feet into the opening hole that the Heat had just filled. At this point, the game is actually over.
The Heat want to prevent the effect, but it's useless to try their best, and the Green Army is not so accurate.
As for the other end of the court, the Heat have little to offer. Hux is certainly competitive, and the plate that can be pry is only that big. Butler and Rozier's two main attackers don't play, Hiro doesn't play the game, and no matter how Spo lays out, no one develops the offense in vain. Relying on Reba to beat Boshen to maintain the attack, to be honest, the effect depends entirely on whether Boshen wants to take a shower after the game.
There's nothing to watch in this round. The attention that followed was probably all the controversial actions on the court and the quarrel after the game.