In the second game of the Timberwolves vs. the Suns, Edwards scored 15 points, Towns scored 12 points, and Naz Reed scored 5 points, and the three combined for 7 of 24 shooting - the Suns should have won, right?
However, the Timberwolves' leading perimeter defender, McDaniels, scored 25 points.
Take advantage of the opponent's mistakes to score, Suns 2, Timberwolves 31.
The defender's.
The Suns held up the first two quarters before Grayson Allen went down with an ankle injury. In the next 21 minutes, the Suns scored 40 points and lost.
Allen scored just three points in the game, but he and Nukic were the Suns' hardest working players. Squeeze through cover, fill in positions, change guards, rotate. The Timberwolves knew they could do whatever they wanted under the Suns basket by coaxing Nukic out of the box, and Allen switched to Gobert more than once to try to compete with him for rebounds.
In the second quarter, Conley found cover and threw a ball at Nukic, Nukic shook his head, and the next round, Allen was blocked, and Nukic pounced on the three-point line: this style of play is bound to not last.
Finally, when Allen was injured and Nukic ran out of energy, the Suns were slowly crushed by the Timberwolves' muscles.
Coach Vogel said after the game that when the Timberwolves score whatever they want, the Suns struggle to organize the offense — I think it's a bit of a pretext: the Suns' offensive organization is like that's the case all season......
In the last game, Edwards chased Durant in the third quarter, which was a tribute to his idol, and today McDaniels scored 25 points, 5 of the 10 balls were shot over Durant's head.
— but it's not that Maidan's single-eating ability is above Durant, it's more like the Timberwolves' passing, playing the weaknesses of the Suns' offensive and defensive organization.
Find cover to cut out and get rid of Durant, shoot, make up.
Catch the ball on the wing and break through and shoot while Durant is on the fence.
Receiving the ball on the wing, he broke through the baseline and shot when Durant was too high.
Catch the ball on the wing and drive to the layup when Durant is too high.
Receiving the ball on the wing, he shot into the bottom corner when Durant was switching to Gobert and didn't have time to fill the position.
The Suns did make the Downs and Edwards uncomfortable, but the Maidan got it right, a perfect 3D.
Defensively, he shot 29 percent from the field against the Suns in this series, and on the offensive end, seven out of 10 shots were assists from teammates.
Durant hit a difficult baseline stop-and-float jumper, shot a 2+1 on his back, turned around after hitting a shot, rode and shot arrows in front of Gobert, retreated and shot under the siege of Maidan and Gobert's sandwich biscuits, and turned around in front of Madan to win, each more handsome than the other - but 18 points on 6-of-15 shooting, 4 of which were single-eaten.
It's an old topic: In the deadlock of the playoffs, it is up to the superstars to eat alone. Durant in 2017 and 2018, Leonard in 2019, all benefited from this.
This is where the Suns' excellence lies: after all, Durant and Booker are sure enough about emptying and eating.
But the premise is that it relies on a smooth system to operate, score and hold each other, and then rely on superstars to win alone.
The Timberwolves can rely on defense + counterattack, so that the Suns can only chisel hard, and they rely on passing + weak-side raids, relying on enough passes to feed Maidan and make him comfortable for 25 points.
The strong picks of Durant and Booker can solve the problem at critical moments, but the Timberwolves do not let the Suns enter critical moments.
Gobert had 19 points and 10 interference shots from eight screens, and Edwards had eight assists on 3-of-12 shooting.
Towns said proudly that everyone on the team was willing to sacrifice for the better of the team — he had 12 points and eight rebounds on seven shots, and interfered with seven shots, including stealing the ball when switching to Booker, and countered three consecutive passes to give the Timberwolves an 8-0 lead in the opening game.
The Timberwolves often fail offensively, but on both ends of the floor, everyone knows what they need to do.
Booker had a very clever little game today: he nudged the Maidan, which made the Madan angry and ate the technical foul. It's true that I've been in contact with Paul for a few years.
In Paul's final season with the Suns, Booker was already a better offensive creator, but he wasn't a coach-level handler on the court after all.
Durant and Beal, who are also not good at this.
So when the Timberwolves aces were suppressed, there was defense and organization, while the Suns still relied on singles.
The Timberwolves' highest scoring outside of Maidan in this game was the 36-year-old Conley. In the fourth quarter, he was +12, the highest in all Timberwolves. Especially the slow and leisurely attack on the ground to assist the basket straight to the basket, and have a good grasp of the Suns defense.
"The old-school commander is still a little useful!"
The second game of the Clippers vs Dallas can answer an old question:
"That's how basketball was in the early 21st century, do you like it?"
96-93. Both sides combined for 35 assists. Luka + Irving shot 19 of 44, and Leonard + George + Harden combined for 20 of 45. The elders were important, Zubac shook the box, and Gafford and Haddawi Jr. were injured.
The two sides cut every pass (Pippen and KG said they knew each other) and attacked the ball every time they switched air gaps (Tony Allen and Tzu Se Ping favourites). In the fourth quarter, all the aces suffocated each other to death, so the role players — PJ Washington and Zubac — got their due, and in the end, Klebe's three-pointers and rebounds decided the game.
From the late 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century, this was the case.
Leonard shot 7-of-17 from the field, especially 1-of-4 from the fourth quarter, which is understandable: he is not known for his fluid integration into the team, and he hasn't played for three weeks. The Clippers tried to eat into his rhythm. But that's not the main reason for the Clippers' sluggish offense.
Today, Zubac continued to have a strong presence in the penalty area, except for suffering from a foul at the beginning. Gafford went down after an injury in the opening period, but Kidd used Levry and Klebe in hand-to-hand combat in the box to dominate Dallas' defense today.
"Do you use a big lineup? Then I will continue to have a big lineup, all fight for the body, and no one will think about it!"
Leffley has said before that Dallas's defense is to change a lot of defense, and whenever the change of defense is misplaced, he will apply pressure and send the opponent to the penalty area.
The purpose of this approach: to take away the opposing three-pointer. Today, the Clippers made 8 of 30 three-pointers.
Of course, there is a price to pay: Zubac's 5 frontcourt rebounds today are basically from "Leivry/Klebe went to make up for it"; Wei Shao has 3 frontcourt rebounds, two are "Irving is going to make up", and one is "Irving watched the ball and didn't notice Wei Shao's weak side inward cut".
But Dallas didn't make the Clippers cool after all.
Today, Levri is the unsung hero. The Clippers were entangled with Luka, and one cover couldn't block the gap, so Levry repeatedly "screened Luka to cut to catch the ball and pick up the second screen", allowing Luka to play. Luka's scoring in the first half was closely related to Leivri's swimming block, until the Clippers changed defenses, and Luka began to push a lot of dragons in the second half.
Harden was cunning after all and saw what he had to do, so Coach Lue also let him play the longest 42 minutes on the team - Harden is the Clippers' on-court coach.
In the fourth quarter, when Harden took advantage of Dallas's miscommunication and George's cross-cut to take away the two, he slyly scored from a distance, and then made four assists, all of which dotted the gap in Dallas:
- Hang the pass to Zubac and bully Levri around.
- Flank flank, Powell shot from distance.
- Respond to the free throw line and give the weak side a long shot.
- Throw-ins finds the Dallas defense too high.
Dallas' defense is aggressive enough, and Harden points to the backdoor that is left behind by being too aggressive.
The Clippers made eight three-pointers and Harden scored two and three assists. Dallas's change of defense + strong side pinch shot can't be out of space after all, but the Clippers can only be clicked by him.
Dallas's fourth-quarter wonder PJ Washington, to put it bluntly, "sent Luka's pass to the basket".
And the key role is played by Krebe.
The Clippers were 73-70 over, and Luka → Krebe's long-range shot → Washington tied it at 73, and Klebe was a transit point here.
Luca then fired a long-range shot of his own, 76-73.
When Zubac chased the deficit to a three-point deficit again, Klebe fired from distance on the flank, and Klebe was the finishing point.
After turning back to Klebe defending under the basket and jumping to fill the position, he still had time to reach out in the air and take out Zubac's dunk - Zubac brushed the frontcourt rebounds happily for a long time, and was finally stolen by Klebe monkeys.
and after Irving's free throw miss, Klebe locked up the game's frontcourt rebound.
"Why does Kidd always use Klebe?" is probably the answer.
Lavry and Gafford don't have three-pointers, Jones and Washington don't have the height, plus Klebe has probably the most sober brain on the team.
At the beginning of the 21st century, many teams used such a diligent interior line. It was a time when Mageloyle could be an All-Star, Dampier could get a big salary and be taunted by the sharks — although Dampier did make it difficult for the sharks in the 2006 Finals.
The small-ball lineup makes the game smooth and gorgeous, and the giants are easy to turn the game into a bad game, so every rebound, every three-pointer is precious. Hand-to-hand combat, defense, mud, the role of the elders is no longer just to protect the basket or pull the space, but also to do something else - such as Klebe's genius of turning around in the air to slap Zubac's dunk in the air after filling in today.
Coach Kidd isn't very good at leading offense, but he's always had a defensive dream. At the Bucks, that dream was thwarted by Larry Sanders' injury, though Giannis rose anyway. The Dallas team that reached the Western Conference Finals two years ago was only in the middle of the league in offense, supported by Luca, but the Dallas team's defense, relying on the wild X-wheel rotation at the time, was sixth in the league.
Today, Dallas won by defending and wrestling with the Clippers in the mud and hand-to-hand combat.
Luka had 32 points and 9 assists on 26 shooting today, but his best performance was on the defensive end:
When he was called by the Clippers, he stood still and didn't become the Clippers' ATM. As the ace of the team, he participated in this mud battle and also won. Klebe is the key to winning as a blue-collar worker, and Luka's attitude on the defensive end is also blue-collar enough.
In the end, the blue-collar spirit wins.
Kidd: "I remember the 2000 Western Conference semifinals, when the Suns were eliminated by the Lakers, it was 65-87. It wasn't easy to get a point at that time. ”
Lu: "I remember, a year later, didn't I also run after the AI's ass?"
Kidd: "Brother, it wasn't easy for us to defend when we were players! Now we can't let these boys fight hard to defend and suffer a little, otherwise they will be worthy of us at that time!"
Lu: "Not really!"