On May 7, Beijing time, the Liaoning men's basketball team suffered Waterloo away from home and lost to the Guangdong men's basketball team 82-98, and the series score was pulled to 1-2, and the situation became precarious. In this crucial battle, the performance of high-profile young striker Zhang Zhenlin was worrying, and his statistics and on-field performance have dropped significantly, becoming the focus of heated discussions after the game.
After the game, Mai Suifeng, a well-known basketball media person, took to social media to deeply analyze the reasons for Zhang Zhenlin's poor state, pointing to the "pain points" of his technical defects. Mak believes that Cheung's ability to combine the ball, i.e. his ability to control dribbles, in high-intensity confrontations is the main source of his performance struggle. To put it simply, his control and adaptability when breaking through with the ball are not "hardcore" enough.
Zhang's physical qualities are top-notch among his peers, with speed and strength, which made him rely too much on these talents as a young man, scoring through explosive power and strong physical advantages in the first step, while ignoring the delicate ball-handling skills and ball handling skills. As a teenager, he might have been able to shake off defenders with just a simple acceleration, but that didn't work at an adult level. Once the opponent blocks his breakthrough path and asks him to slow down and find other ways to attack, Zhang Zhenlin will look helpless, his mentality will also be affected, and his performance will naturally become more and more unsatisfactory.
Especially on the international stage, in the game against the Philippines, Zhang Zhenlin chose to shoot mid-range jumpers instead of hitting the basket many times, which attracted widespread doubts. But Mai Suifeng gave a more in-depth interpretation: this may be a helpless choice made by Zhang Zhenlin under high pressure based on self-ability assessment. He understands his shortcomings in breaking through with the ball, and is worried that he will lose his chance due to a mistake in ball control at a critical moment, so he chooses a relatively "safe" mid-range shooting strategy.
Back on the CBA stage, although Zhang Zhenlin occasionally has a bright performance, such as the wonderful game in the Guangzhou Dragon Lions, he relied on air cuts, fast breaks and three-point shots to show his scoring methods, but this also reflects from the side that he still avoids the problem of attacking with the ball. His performance was based more on team-mates and individual off-ball runs than on creating scoring opportunities.
In the first game of the series, Zhang Zhenlin scored 34 points, but this was not because he solved the problem of holding the ball overnight, but because the opponent Guangdong team's adjustment in the interior defense gave him room to break through. However, as the game deepened, the Guangdong team strengthened the protection of the inside line, especially the return of Zhou Qi, which made Zhang Zhenlin's breakthrough route tightly sealed, and even when he was facing opponents who seemed to be inferior to him, he also looked quite difficult, all of which exposed his lack of offensive ability with the ball.
Mai Suifeng's analysis is not a harsh criticism of Zhang Zhenlin personally, but points out a phenomenon that is common among young Chinese forwards: they swept thousands of troops with their physical talent in their youth, but in the "high-end game" of the professional arena, the lack of solid offensive ability with the ball has become a bottleneck restricting their further development. The experience of Gao Shang, Zeng Fanbo and others is also a similar lesson, they also had unlimited glory in the youth team, but after entering the senior team, due to the lack of dribbling breakthrough ability, they could only take a back seat and become a fixed-point shooter or a fast-break terminal, and the ceiling of growth was within reach.