The NBA playoffs continue today with the New York Knicks playing at home against the Indiana Pacers.
The Knicks are a really interesting team, they have a short rotation, mainly because head coach Thibodeau doesn't trust the bench players, and he thinks he can just use the main players to maintain the intensity and play well. Under Thibodeau's leadership, the Knicks were indeed able to get through, but they also suffered from injuries.
At the beginning of the playoffs, the Knicks could barely scrape together an eight-man rotation, and now there are fewer and fewer players, and only a six-man rotation remains. After defeating the Pacers in the first two games of the series, the Knicks once lengthened the rotation, creating the illusion that the opponent "can't support the main players", and today they resumed the seven-man rotation and directly defeated the Pacers 121-91 to win the "Battle of Kings Mountain", just one step away from the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Knicks' only remaining qualified interior player is German Hartenstein, who also lived up to expectations, scoring 7 points, 17 rebounds and 5 assists in this game, including 12 frontcourt rebounds. You know, the whole Pacers team also picked up 5 frontcourt rebounds in the game, and Hartenstein blew up the whole Pacers team alone, which is really amazing.
Recalling in 2016 and 2017, Hartenstein was still competing with Zhou Qi for a position in the Houston Rockets. Now, Zhou Qi has returned to play in the CBA, while Hartenstein has been tossing and turning many teams, finally gaining a foothold in the NBA, and has become an absolute main player.
It can only be said that the choice is different, the result is different, and Hartenstein really wanted to play in the NBA and put a lot of thought into it, so he succeeded.