On May 15, Beijing time, the 2023-2024 CBA finals officially began, and the Liaoning men's basketball team sat at home to face the Xinjiang team, which was the first time the two teams met in the finals, and Liaoning and Xinjiang were also the top two teams in the regular season this season, so the game process will be very exciting!
In the semifinals, the Liaoning men's basketball team reversed the Guangdong team 3-2 and reached the finals for the eighth time in the past 10 years! Among them, in the 2017-2018 season, Liao Basket won the first CBA championship in team history, and in this finals, Liao Basket will attack the fourth and first three consecutive championships in team history!
Xinjiang men's basketball team eliminated Zhejiang Chouzhou 3-1 in the semifinals, entered the playoffs for the third time in the past 8 seasons, and returned to the finals stage after 5 years, and the Xinjiang men's basketball team won the first CBA championship in team history in the 2016-2017 season, and this season will attack the two championships in team history!
In the regular season this season, Liao Basket defeated the Xinjiang team twice, but the finals are completely new stages, both sides have a chance, and who can win depends on how the players play on the spot. Judging from the lineup, there is a high probability that Guo Allen will not be able to play on the Liao basketball side, and Zhao Rui, the core guard of the Xinjiang team, is also absent due to injury. In this case, Liao Basket has a certain advantage, after all, the Liao Basket guard line and Zhao Jiwei, who has performed very well overall this season.
In the interior position, the two sides are evenly matched, the Xinjiang team Li Yanzhe and Wu Guanxi are both at the top of the league, and Han Dejun and Moreland on the Liao basketball side also have certain characteristics; In the forward position, the Xinjiang team has the regular season MVP Abdul Salamu, and if Qi Lin's three points are shot, no one can stop them.
In addition, Fu Hao's performance in the series with Guangdong is very eye-catching, and it is not difficult to see that in the comparison of the two teams, Liao Basket has a slight advantage on the guard line, and the overall strength is evenly matched.
However, on the day of the 15th, when Liao Basketball head coach Yang Ming was interviewed by reporters, he revealed a blockbuster news, that is, Li Xiaoxu, who was injured in Liaoyue G3, will enter the squad for this game, and at the same time, the well-known basketball media person "Where am I lying, director" also confirmed the news, Li Xiaoxu has recovered and will play in the finals G1 game.
Li Xiaoxu's dedication will make Liao Basket more comfortable in personnel selection, some fans may say that in the two games that Liao Yue G4 and G5 Li Xiaoxu missed due to injury, Liu Yanyu, who replaced him, played very well, after Li Xiaoxu's return, Liu Yanyu's playing time will definitely be reduced, and how to choose will become a problem.
This problem is actually very easy to solve, Liu Yanyu is a role player after all, her outstanding performance in the series with Guangdong is completely due to the fact that several young sweet potato players in the Guangdong team are not strong, and they don't pay enough attention to Liu Yanyu, so from a tactical point of view, when it comes to the stage of the finals, Yang Ming should not reuse Liu Yanyu until he has to do so, but Liu Yanyu can become a regular rotation player in the finals with his excellent performance in the Guangdong series.
So Yang Ming will definitely choose to reuse Li Xiaoxu, the 35-year-old veteran is in his 19th season in the CBA (2016-2017 and 2020-2021 missed due to injury), and the number of CBA appearances has reached 702, ranking second among all players in CBA history, second only to Zhou Peng's 740 games.
At the same time, Li Xiaoxu is currently the most experienced in the finals among all the active players in Liao Basketball, counting 9 times this time, Han Dejun and Zhao Jiwei are both 8 times. On the stage of the finals, experience is the most important, as Qiu Biao, the head coach of the Xinjiang team, said in an interview, many players of the Xinjiang team have not played in the semifinals, let alone the finals, so the experience of the finals is undoubtedly Li Xiaoxu's biggest advantage.
In addition, Li Xiaoxu's biggest feature is that he has a very strong sense of rebounding, and the total number of rebounds has reached 5156, ranking third in CBA history, second only to Yi Jianlian and Han Dejun.
This season, Li Xiaoxu played 50 games in the regular season, only missed two games, and played an average of 27 minutes per game, a new high in the past 4 seasons, with an average of 7.4 rebounds per game that is higher than the score, and it is enough to see from this data how strong Li Xiaoxu's ability to rush to grab rebounds is! To sum up, as an epic player in the Liao Basketball team, Li Xiaoxu can return to G1 in the finals, which is undoubtedly too helpful to Liao Basket.
Looking forward to the Liaojiang War, the scene will be very exciting, but the biggest difference with the Liaoyue War, the players on both sides will definitely not have a bath-style defense, and the Liaojiang War will definitely dedicate a pure basketball feast to the fans!