super small forward

Chapter 39. 39. The Spurs
This is so special!

Liu Ren was about to curse. After he made a three-pointer in the opening game, the Spurs immediately changed their formation. Leonard pressed hard to defend him, and the other four shrank inside.

It's so decisive and straightforward, as if it didn't consider the Lakers' other outside shots to kill them, and decisively made a change.

In this way, the Lakers were locked inside, and Liu Ren on the outside was played by Leonard's dog-skin-like defense.

It was the first time for Liu Ren to encounter this level of defense, and he felt a little irritable. After getting the ball, he ignored the defensive wave and shot.

Not as lucky as the first ball, Liu Ren hit the iron frequently in the next few difficult shots.

In this way, the Lakers just fell into Popovich's trick. Liu Ren's outside shot was not only a personal disaster, but the entire offensive system of the Lakers collapsed.

The reason why the starting lineup of the Lakers was able to overwhelm the Clippers and Warriors in the first two games was because of their guarantee of offensive rebounds. Liu Ren, Gasol, and Green dominated the rebounds. Bazemore and Wesley Johnson are all perimeter players with excellent height and wingspan. This five-man group can be described as a rebounding team.

And in this rebounding five, Liu Ren is the one with the strongest rebounding ability!Liu Ren didn't even notice this. He is the team's second rebounder, and the first is naturally Baibian who has accepted the mysterious power of the East.

When Liu Ren pulled to the outside to shoot wildly, it was not enough for Green alone to grab the rebound. Liu Ren always suspected that Green said that he was [-] meters, and he thought this guy was at most [-] meters.

Although Green has great potential, he is only a second-year player, and he didn't please the old Spurs.

Conversely, the Spurs' offense was so smooth, it seemed that everyone except Splitter was a sharp shooter. They shot the Nets from the outside and quickly sent the Lakers to a timeout.

This can be called a dark 5 minutes. The Lakers only relied on Gasol's forced shots and fouls in the interior to score two points, and all other shots were ironed!

5分钟的时间里湖人被马刺打了个19比2，湖人开局5比19大比分落后！
During the timeout, D'Antoni emphasized not to force shots, but to cooperate more, and kept drawing the running route on the tactical board.

But after returning from the timeout, the Lakers' offense still did not improve. This tactic is not something you can run if you want. D'Antoni's overall layout is more than 01:30 points worse than Popovich. The opponent is eating hard, and the Lakers' lineup has no advantage over the Spurs. On the contrary, it has exposed a problem with their starting structure.

The Spurs are sticking to the inside and not letting Green and Gasol's coping abilities be brought into play. Liu Ren let Leonard stalk him. Although this consumes a lot of Leonard's energy, he can't make any moves on the offensive end. , but the Spurs are the most lacking in scorers. They always give people the illusion that Matt Bonner, who is guarding the drinking fountain at the end of their bench, can score 20 or 30 points on the court.

But this just shows the balance of the Spurs. They almost take the concept of balance to the extreme.

The tactics can't run, and D'Antoni's seven-second forced fast break strategy can't be launched. In the end, Liu Ren or Gasol can only play singles.

In desperation, D'Antoni could only start the rotation in advance, with Gasol and Whiteside partnering inside, and Liu Ren, Nick Young, and Farmar forming the outside.

In the Lakers' post-game evaluation, the biggest failure was this substitution.

Although both Gasol and Whiteside are agile centers, no matter how agile they are, he is still a center. Compared with the current power forwards, he is called a slow one!

The Spurs replaced Diaw, Leonard, Danny Green, Joseph, and Mills with five small lineups, and began to switch back and run.

It’s not that D’Antoni shouldn’t replace Whiteside to protect the inside and play more inside, but he shouldn’t replace Green. If Gasol is replaced and Green is replaced, the mobility of this lineup will be greatly improved. Improvement, after the Spurs deliberately speeded up, they only saw Gasol and Whiteside running back and forth. The Spurs just didn't let the game fall into a positional battle, and didn't let Gasol and Whiteside's height advantage be brought into play.

It's playing as if Popovich is a fast-break nerd and D'Antoni is an old-school coach with a conservative rotation!

Another wave of black time, the Lakers were widened to 3 points by the Spurs in just 30 minutes!
At halftime, the Lakers were 42 to 75, a full 33 points behind!
In the third quarter, the Lakers finally broke out. After Liu Ren came on the court, he attacked the basket continuously and scored 13 to 2. He scored 11 points alone, but the score was too far behind. The Spurs recovered and stabilized their position. The point difference is kept at 20 points.

This point difference has been maintained until the end of the game. In the end, the Lakers lost 97 to 120 to the Spurs.

After the game, the media reported that they believed that the loss of this game was due to the coach!
It is said that D'Antoni is a coach who brought a new concept to the NBA, but his new idea has stayed at 9 years ago and has not improved.

Popovich was previously regarded as a staid old-school coach, but now people know that he is a chef who cooks with whatever ingredients! Before 08, Duncan was still the number one power forward in history who could force the inside of the league, so Popovich desperately defended.

The Spurs have aged collectively in the past few years from 08 to 10, so Popovich began to build a new system. In the 10-11 season, he began to cooperate with brisk offense and strong mobility, and after giving up the old-fashioned pressure-paced defense, the Spurs re-emphasized He was reborn and became the most powerful contender for the championship for several consecutive years.

As for the playoffs in 11, it was purely an accident that Randolph found them to play, and he blacked them out.

And D'Antoni, after playing career masterpieces in the two seasons of 04-06, has been catching fast breaks. It is still the same way after 9 years, and it is still the same way in the Lakers. Now the Lakers have several players with excellent defensive awareness in the lineup, otherwise the defense would be terrible.

The average player will definitely doubt his life if he is abused for more than 20 points, or when his opponent is resting.

Fortunately, Liu Ren knew that the opponent was ridiculously strong. This year's Spurs can almost be compared with the Bulls with 72 wins if they only talk about the regular season.

"Hey, friends, why are you so downcast!" Liu Ren saw his teammates bowing their heads without speaking, so he naturally knew what their mentality was like.

They just beat the Clippers and Warriors in a row. They thought they were a strong team, and then they were slapped in the face by the Spurs. They began to wonder if they had stepped on luck in the first two games. How could the teams be so far behind in the playoffs?
(End of this chapter)