As the NBA playoffs continue to advance, the trend of advancing to the first round of the Eastern and Western Series is gradually becoming clear, and the defending champion Nuggets have reversed the Lakers in two consecutive games, and there is a high probability that they will reach the semifinals with a sweeping rhythm, and teams such as the Thunder and Timberwolves will basically enter the next round as expected. The Eastern Celtics played the Heat without Butler in the first round, and there was no suspense for the Knicks and Cavaliers to open the series early, and it was only a matter of time before they advanced.
And after several days of fierce battles, the most surprising is the Western Timberwolves and Suns matchup. At present, the Timberwolves have beaten the Suns twice, establishing a 2-0 lead, and are only one step away from holding the match point. To be honest, the fact that the solar energy fell into such a passive situation was something that the author never expected, because they met the Timberwolves three times in the regular season, not to mention winning all of them, and beat the Timberwolves by 47 points in three games, whether it is Durant, Beal, Booker's Big Three singles, or the team basketball of Allen and Gordon and others, the Timberwolves really have no way to take the Suns.
But entering the playoffs, it seems that everything has been turned upside down, Durant and Booker, who were extremely ferocious in the regular season, faced the Timberwolves' high-pressure defense and hit a wall one after another, and the team also experienced a 25-point defeat, swallowed a 12-point rout, lost 37 points in two games, and the Big Three were blown up by Edwards alone, and even in the prediction of the American media "BP", the probability of the Suns advancing is only 9.8%, which also means that if this development continues, it is only a matter of time before the Timberwolves step on the Suns to advance to the semifinals.
In fact, fans who have watched the Suns game this season know that they did not hesitate to trade Paul for 3 in the offseason to form the Big Three with Paul as the core trade, which was wrong from the beginning, because they lost not just a veteran, they lost the core engine of a tandem team's offensive system. Now, although Beal has transformed into a point guard, he is not from a professional background after all, so whenever the Suns game is in a scorching state, there is no player on the court who can reasonably sort out the offense, and there are only Durant, Beal and Booker who are fighting their own camps. In the high-level statistics of the regular season, although the Big Three have high offensive efficiency, their net points and net efficiency values in the final quarter are at the bottom of the league, and the efficiency of both offensive and defensive ends is only about 25th in the league.
In addition, in the hands of head coach Vogel, he spent a year and did not find the manual of the Big Three, the team was chaotic on the offensive end, and there was no mature system on the defensive end, or whether it was Durant, Booker or Beal, they were not defensive players at all, the Big Three only knew singles on the court, role players could not be integrated into the team's tactical system, and what was waiting for the Suns was not to lose.
Therefore, in the face of the Timberwolves led by Edwards and Towns, the Suns' Big Three can be said to be outrageously soft, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as the first pseudo-giant lineup this season. Moreover, after the team suffered a series of losses, the team's morale has been seriously affected, Beal openly quarreled with head coach Vogel in the game, Booker dumped his teammates after the game and did not understand team cooperation, the Big Three only know how to stand up and play singles, such a Big Three, I can only say that the series has lost suspense, the Suns are out of the game is only a matter of time, and the 13-for-3 deal in the offseason will eventually end in failure.