Nearly 30 years ago, before the legendary boxing champion Mike Tyson and Evan Holyfield's high-profile matchup, a reporter asked Tyson, who had just been released from prison, if he would be worried about Holyfield's rich offensive strategy. And the old boxer just smiled contemptuously: "Everyone has their own strategy, until they are beaten all over the ground to find their teeth." ”
Before the matchup with the Los Angeles Clippers began, the Dallas Mavericks also had their own game strategy. Their explosion in the second half of the season came from the physique and athleticism of the team's new signings, who jumped to the top of the league in defensive efficiency after Kidd added Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington to the starting lineup. And without Kawhi Leonard in this game, Dallas' defensive resources look more than enough to deal with the aging James Harden and the unserviceable Paul George. At the same time, the Clippers' interior line has never been their strong suit, but the Mavericks have Gafford and Derrick Lively, who have always been dominant on the interior for most of their games, both offensively and defensively.
These strengths make their new squad look completely different from before, they no longer rely on a fluctuating three-point shooting percentage, they don't rely on the team's perfect play on the offensive end, and they have more ways to win games. They walked into the crypto tennis hall with confidence.
Then after half-time, they started looking for teeth all over the ground.
The balance of power on the inside was completely unexpected, and in the first half, the Mavericks trailed the Clippers 8-24 in the penalty area. Zubac has been considered the Clippers' weak spot in the past two matchups with the Mavericks, but he completely dominated the Mavericks' interior in this game, scoring 20 points and 15 rebounds and making Gafford and Lively completely dumb throughout the game.
By the end of the game, Doncic had 33 points, Irving had 31 points, and the rest of the players combined for just 33 points, shooting 10-of-36 from the field. It was the same win the Mavericks had last time they visited Los Angeles, when Doncic scored 30 points, Irving scored 26 points and the rest of the Mavericks scored 32 points on 11-of-42 shooting as the Clippers won comfortably 107-88. Obviously, the Mavericks' new signings didn't bring the change they had imagined to the game.
After the game, all the Mavericks players and coaches revealed the same message: they weren't prepared for the Clippers' tough physical confrontation in the playoffs.
Kidd said after the game: "We expected them to have some physical confrontations when they came on the pitch, but we couldn't respond to those confrontations". Gafford admits that "their level of physicality always forces us to do what they want us to do," and even Doncic said that the team's improved performance in the second half was due to "the intensity of the confrontation on defense, that's it." The only player who doesn't think that way is Irving, who feels that the Clippers' matchup is not the main reason the Mavericks lose their rhythm of the game, and the real question is how the Mavericks will control their own physical confrontation.
'I don't think we were flat or not energetic on the pitch. I just feel like our mentality is out of order, and this is the first playoff game we've played together. When our mentality settled, we began to look like the Dallas Mavericks we were familiar with. It's just the first game of a long series and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the second game." ”
In all the different ideas about the playoffs, we tend to trust players who have scored a quasi-final in Game 7 of the Finals. Irving has seen a lot of wind and waves, so he can adjust quickly and score 20 straight points in the third quarter. The problem with the Mavericks is that his teammates don't look like this. Washington hasn't seen what a playoff game looks like at the Hornets, most of the playoff games Derrick Jones Jr. has played in garbage time, and Gafford has only played one series without suspense, and he has played a minor role. They don't understand the dangers of the playoffs, and when the initial game plan doesn't work, they immediately become helpless. And their opponents happen to have a lot of playoff experience.
Yes, the night has passed, and it's time for Harden fans to recite poems.
Zubac set the tone on the inside, and the dynamism of Westbrook and Mann on both ends of the game was crucial, with George scoring 11 points in the fourth quarter to finish the game, but the only one who really allowed the Clippers without Kawhi to win the game was Harden. There is a lot of gossip outside, and his next contract has not yet been settled. Harden knows full well that even though he has had some glorious past, he still needs to prove something in the playoffs.
In last year's series in which the 76ers lost to the Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals, Harden scored more than 40 points in two games. He didn't score as many points in yesterday's game, but 28 points and 8 assists were enough, and the Clippers had 49 points or assists from Harden. In the first half, he led the climax with consecutive three-point steps, and in the second half, he made steady decisions to easily defeat the enemy, and his gestures looked no different from the former Rockets. When Doncic and Washington seem angry because they can't stop him, he is as calm as a true master.
The same story happened in Milwaukee. Faced with an opponent who had lost to them four times in the regular season and was missing the team's number one star, the Pacers' pre-game optimism immediately turned to panic in the first 24 minutes of the game. Lillard's uppercut was so heavy that they couldn't remember their plan of action at all.
During the regular season, the Pacers told a great story to everyone. Led by Haliburton, a selfless, quick-witted, passing-first point guard, a team that was ranked bottom in the league in terms of salary before the start of the season played at one of the NBA's top offensive levels, playing fast, hard, and accurate enough to make it all the way to the finals of the Midseason Challenge. Towards the end of the season, they managed to finish in the top six in the East and didn't have to fight hard in the play-offs, which was undoubtedly a successful season for them. But few people realized that this was a team that wasn't ready to play the playoffs.
Myles Turner, one of the few veterans on the Pacers who has played in the playoffs, is well aware of the gap between the team and the really strong teams: "We did make the playoffs, but our team is so young that most people haven't experienced this level of play. In a game like this, you have to come on with a certain amount of intensity and attention to detail, which was clearly lacking in the first half. ”
The Pacers allowed the Bucks to 69 points in the first half, including Lillard's 35, while the offense was proud of their 42 points, including 3-of-18 three-pointers and seven turnovers. On the other side, not only Lillard, but also the iron triangle of Middleton, Lopez and Portis can bully the Pacers' rookies casually. The only person who put up an effective resistance was Siakam – what's the matter, who isn't a champion striker anymore?
Carlisle, Turner and even Haliburton's interviews after the final whistle suggest that the Pacers will chalk up their struggles to "mental issues" rather than "strength issues." It all started with Haliburton, an All-Star who averaged 20.1 points and 10.9 assists per game in the regular season and looked locked up by 35-year-old Patrick Beverley, who finished with just nine points and eight assists on just seven shots. His full-game possession rate was just 11.1 percent, a season low. That's not normal for him, who has been used 25.0 percent, 27.8 percent, 25.9 percent, 21.7 percent, and 21.7 percent of his five meetings against the Bucks this season.
This is a common problem for the first brother. On the one hand, you are worried that you are performing so badly that people misunderstand your strength, and on the other hand, you are not willing to act too rashly to make a bad impression on everyone. Once you do it with real knives and guns, and the process is not as smooth as you expected, you can't stop changing your mentality, and the result is a collapse.
If the Pacers want to stretch the series a little longer, Haliburton will have to find a balance between aggressiveness and creativity. An important part of the Bucks' defensive plan is to force Haliburton not to get the ball, and if he isn't aggressive enough to find a way to deal with those physical confrontations, it will only push the Pacers into a worse situation.
The only team to win yesterday was the Oklahoma City Thunder. Relying on a perfect performance in the final 32 seconds, they defended their home court 94-92. The scene was quite thrilling, and it was completely unrecognizable that it was a group of Western No. 1 vs. Western No. 8 matches.
This is not all that surprising. With an average age of 23.4, the Thunder are the youngest division top seed in NBA history. Only six Thunder players previously had playoff experience: Gordon Hayward, Bismarck Biyombo, Mike Muscala, Shay Kyrgios-Alexander, Lou Dort, and Isaiah Joe. They played just 2,623 minutes in 134 playoff games combined. In comparison, C.J. McCollum and Jonas Valanciunas have combined for 1,047 more playoff minutes than the Thunder as a team, and their total number of games is only 17 fewer than the Thunder.
No one questioned the strength of the Thunder, who put in a spectacular regular season that bordered on a dominant level, after playing in the league's top five offensive and defensive efficiency. But everyone doubts that they will not be able to fully show their strength in the playoff matchup - who would have thought that Valanciunas would not be targeted by the Thunder's five small opponents, but would have killed all four sides of the Thunder inside? Who would have thought that MVP candidate SGA would be so embarrassed by Trey Murphy?
The Thunder need to be wary of this game, as they and the Pacers are already in different building cycles. They're no longer a team in the future, and while they still have enough assets to create endless possibilities with a young core, plenty of salary space and plenty of draft picks, as the No. 1 team in the West, if they lose to the Pelicans without Zion Williamson in the first round, people will inevitably question their quality.
In 2022, when the Mavericks unexpectedly reached the Western Conference Finals in their first season in Kidd's tenure, they lost the first game of each series. That's one of the charms of the playoffs. Gone are the randomness that has always accompanied each team in the regular season, and the matchups here are more strategic than chess. If the young buddies make timely adjustments with the help of their coaches, they have every chance to make a comeback and tip the balance of the series in their favor again.
But at least on the first day of the playoffs, the veterans of the past — no matter how inefficient, sluggish, and laborious they seemed during the regular season — gained the upper hand at the start of the series through their experience and precipitation, teaching the youngsters who don't know anything about the world: Young people, the world is ours and yours, and the future will always be yours, but today is ours.
Rookies, welcome to the playoffs.