This striker is a bit of a monster

Chapter 232 Eastern Semifinals, 'Mirror Showdown'

With the end of the tie-break between the Charlotte Bobcats and the Detroit Pistons, the first round of the NBA playoffs in the 07-08 season also ended. All teams will compete with their opponents in the semifinals.

And the rest are still in the eight teams on the journey.

The happiest is not necessarily the accidental elimination of the Detroit Pistons Charlotte Bobcats, perhaps it should be their opponent - the Orlando Magic.

You know, while the Charlotte Bobcats gnawed the most difficult bone, they also jumped their teeth-they lost core guard Brandon Roy and inside substitute Chris Webber.

In contrast, the Orlando Magic, after beating the Toronto Raptors 4-1 in the series, the Orlando Magic ushered in a full 8-day break.

Yes, their prayers or wishes were successful.

The Charlotte Bobcats, seventh in the East, stumbled and stood in front of them.

'I want to say Long live Zhou Lin'.

When Dwight Howard and Sharad Lewis were interviewed by media reporters, they did not hide their joy from the bottom of their hearts, and they did not hesitate to praise Zhou Lin, the leader of the Charlotte Bobcats.

Of course, this kind of praise is a self-evident irony to a certain extent. The Charlotte Bobcats are the weaker opponents they consider, and they can be defeated more easily.

Yes, the current Orlando Magic team, after the trade, is strong and strong, and the monsters have grown up. Lewis was recruited from Seattle, and all the members are in place. There are even Marcin Gortat and JJ Ray at the end of the bench. Dick, Trevor Ariza and other future strength players.

On TNT's roundtable, the upcoming series between the Magic and the Bobcats was defined as a 'mirror war'.

Whether in terms of viewing or topicality, it is second only to the clash between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Phoenix Suns on the west side.

By the way, the Los Angeles Lakers, who have home court advantage, were taken away by the away Phoenix Suns on May 5th.

O'Neal returned to Staples to play in the playoffs. Although he was no longer as brave as before, he still scored a double-double of 17+10.

Kobe Bryant, who was at his peak, only scored 28 points under the double death entanglement of Gerald Wallace and Raja Bell.

Steve Nash had 16 assists to help the Suns bloom everywhere, and finally won the first victory of the Western Conference semifinals 112-108.

But the duel between the Suns and the Lakers was something that even Zhou Lin, a prophet, couldn't predict. What if the Phoenix Suns won?
Back to the matchup between the Orlando Magic and the Charlotte Bobcats.

It is not without reason that the duel between the two teams was commented by the US media as a "mirror war".

From a point of view.

Emeka Okafor was also a talented insider who was as famous as Dwight Howard back then, and even beat the "young" Warcraft in his rookie year to become the best rookie player that year.

Of course, the current Dwight Howard, as the last top high school student in history, has unlimited potential, and his stamina has exploded rapidly in the past few years.

The 06-07 season and the 07-08 season were consecutively selected as All-Stars.

And last summer, he renewed his contract with the Magic in advance with a five-year contract of 5 million.

This season, he also won the rebounding title with an average of 14.2 rebounds per game.

In the first round of the series against the Toronto Raptors, Dwight Howard scored a terrifying 22.6 points, 18.2 rebounds and 3.8 blocks. It can be said that one person supported Orlando's inside line, showing terrifying combat effectiveness on both offense and defense.

Okafor, who had a stronger immediate combat power at the time, except for defeating Dwight Howard in the first season, with the rapid growth of Warcraft, Emeka Okafor has been completely at a disadvantage.

But in this round of the series against the Detroit Pistons, the average of 12.7 points, 9.8 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game does not mean that Okafor is really bad. After all, the opponent is the veteran Detroit Pistons inside group, so we can still look forward to them duel between.

And the most mirror image is the duel between Zhou Lin and Xidu Turkoglu.

When Zhou Lin participated in the draft in 2006, one of the templates given by ESPN was Turkoglu. Of course, many domestic netizens thought this was a shameful choice. Zhou Lin’s correct template should be a magician Johnson.

But what I have to admit is that the technical characteristics of the two overlap in many places, such as passing ability and shooting ability.

Of course, two years flies by.

If it can no longer be mentioned, no one will think that Zhou Lin's template is Turkoglu, but Magic Johnson, LeBron James, or Tracy McGrady, a superstar.

Although this year's Turkoglu is the most improved player with the improvement of the Magic's record and the soaring personal data. In Stan Van Gundy's system, he has become one of the core ball-handling cores, averaging the highest in his career. 19.5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5 assists.

It's just that compared with Zhou Lin, his regular season data soared to 21.2 points, 7.6 rebounds and 5.7 assists.

In the playoffs, the data went further, playing 6 games with the Pistons, averaging 26 points, 9 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game.

This is completely league superstar-level data.

Moreover, the 29-year-old Turkoglu is basically at the peak of his career, while the 21-year-old Zhou Lin is still on his way up.

The transcendence of the template has already happened, and it is also destined to be greatly surpassed.

Of course, the positions of Zhou Lin and Turkoglu are different. Since the trade away of Sean Marion, Zhou Lin has been regarded as the cornerstone of the team, and Turkoglu, no matter how good he plays, is only in the Acting as Dwight Howard's second-in-command, he has never been seen as a player who can become the absolute core of the team.

And from the perspective of playing style, Zhou Lin's offensive skills and comprehensiveness have also crushed Turkoglu.

From another perspective, from the perspective of physical fitness, whether it is confrontation or speed bounce, Zhou Lin's physical condition can be called the ceiling of the yellow race, comparable to top-level black players.

Turkoglu, the Turk, is just an ordinary white player. Although he is good at hand, he can't jump high or run fast after all, which is what the saying goes.

In this group of duels, Zhou Lin's advantage is probably equivalent to Dwight Howard's matchup advantage against Emeka Okafor.

Of course, as long as Stan Van Gundy's brain is not twitching, there is a high probability that the two will not face each other directly, at least he will not let Turkoglu defend Zhou Lin.

And Sharad Lewis and Mike Dunleavy, one black and one white, are tall projectile swingers at positions 3 and 4, and they can barely be regarded as mirror images.

Looking at the statistics of the regular season, even Mike Dunleavy with 20.2 points is slightly better than the 05 All-Star player Sharad Lewis with 18.2 points.

However, in the playoffs, except for G7's explosive 7 three-pointers scoring 27 points, Mike Dunleavy was lackluster in the other six games. The regular season has also shrunk severely.

In this group of duels, Sharad Lewis also had a small victory over Mike Dunleavy.

In the other core position of point guard, Jamal Nelson and Raymond Felton are both stocky impact guards. The taller Raymond Felton has better defense and passing than Jamaal Nelson. Mal Nelson is better, but Nelson's shooting ability is better than Felton's. This season, Nelson's three-point shooting rate reached a season high of 42%. In the first round against the Toronto Raptors, he shot 50% of his three-pointers. In contrast, Raymond Felton only made 28% of his three-pointers in the regular season, and his three-pointers in the playoffs dropped to an ugly 26%...

Therefore, the duel between the two is probably a [-]-[-] situation, let's see how they play.

Just looking at the lineup, this is a series in which every position can be matched.

If you look for a problem, for the Charlotte Bobcats, the problem is still the same, lack of inside.

How to limit Dwight Howard, the big core inside the Magic?
If the confrontation between the two teams was held two years ago, perhaps no one would worry. The gap between the second place Emeka Okafor and the No. [-] pick Dwight Howard is not that big, at most four or six.

But now Warcraft has entered the first golden peak of his career, and is known as the next No. [-] center in the league. In fact, the current Pistons have no good substitutes for the center position. It was he who supported both offense and defense alone, and he was enough to contend with the entire Pistons inside group. As for Okafor, he also seemed a little weak in the face of the old Pistons inside group.

Whether Okafor can withstand the onslaught of Warcraft is a huge question.

There is also the deterrence of Warcraft Howard inside.

Dwight Howard, who averaged 3.8 blocks per game in the last round, will give Zhou Lin so many opportunities when he guards the basket?

And these questions will all be solved in Orlando on May 5.

Orlando Amway Arena, Orlando fans finally ushered in the second round of the playoffs after 8 days.

As long as they pass the Charlotte Bobcats, they will once again break into the Eastern Conference Finals.

"Before the Game [-], I was really worried that you wouldn't be able to come to Orlando. Good job, young man."

During the warm-up before the game, Sharad Lewis took the initiative to find Zhou Lin to exchange pleasantries.

"Don't think we're easy to win."

Zhou Lin smiled and said: "Actually, you have to be careful, I know, we moved the stone you were afraid of, but isn't this a kind of cowardice?"

Sharad Lewis wanted to say some arrogant trash talk in front of Zhou Lin, but Zhou Lin choked on it.

He began to dislike this arrogant young player a little bit.

"But this is the cruelty of the game. What you have to admit is that our lineup is better, and you are the crippled lineup."

"We even eliminated the 59-win Detroit Pistons. Do you think we should be afraid of you?"

Although the team's lineup is not neat, Zhou Lin feels that the Charlotte Bobcats are in good shape at the moment, defeating the Orlando Magic and entering the Eastern Conference Finals is also the position and direction that Zhou Lin thinks they can attack.

"Okay, we'll see."

Lewis returned angrily.

A new round of challenges is imminent.

The Charlotte Bobcats changed their lineup as follows: Raymond Felton, Mike Dunleavy, Boris Diaw, Zhou Lin, Emeka Okafor.

Nazr Mohammad, who had been playing the starting lineup before, was put on the bench, while Boris Diaw, the surprise player from the previous game, was put into the starting lineup.

The Orlando Magic still implemented the starting lineup of the previous round.

Number one: Jamal Nelson.

No. 04: Keith Bogans (Old Bobcats player, played for the Bobcats in 05-05 and 06-[-]).

Number three: Hedo Turkoglu.

Number four: Sharad Lewis.

Fifth position: Dwight Howard.

In the jump ball stage, Dwight Howard helped the team get the first ball and kicked off the game.

Under Zhou Lin's detection, Dwight Howard's bounce is a historical S+, and he is also one of the five S+ players in the current league, and the only one in the center position.

Of course, even if Zhou Lin didn't use the system detection, just disassembled the physical measurement data, Dwight Howard's vertical bounce reached 97 cm, only 1 cm shorter than the basketball god Michael Jordan, and it was about 103 cm when he entered the league, but at that time Howard is only an 18-year-old kid, and there is still a lot of room for growth. Now at his peak, he can jump over 105cm from a cliff.

The most important thing is that Howard is a 2.11-meter inside player. Apart from the rumors that Kevin Garnett can touch the top of the backboard at his peak, the current Dwight Howard must be the closest in the NBA. The man on the top of the backboard.

After falling into position, Dwight Howard immediately squeezed away Emeka Okafor's dexterous hook and scored the first goal of the game.

Those who say that Dwight Howard plays purely with his body can stand up.

Can a rough guy who plays purely with his body become a single-change James or a double-team center?

Dwight Howard has been commented on simply because he plays with his body, more because his physical talent is so good.

In addition, in the later stage, with the advent of the small ball era, traditional centers generally dropped in value, which made everyone subconsciously think that Dwight Howard is a player who plays purely with his body.

Of course, there are also subjective reasons. In the system created by Stan Van Gundy for Howard, Howard does not need to have a strong individual singles ability. It is also excusable.

The current Dwight Howard's hook technique is still very soft.

On the Magic side, Sharad Lewis was allowed to defend Zhou Lin alone, instead of Kottegrew. After all, Turkoglu's speed would definitely not be able to catch up with Zhou Lin.

But after experiencing the oppressive defense of the Detroit Pistons, Zhou Lin seemed to feel a lot easier facing the Magic's defense.

After a feint, cut to the left, a half-step below the free-throw line, and a half-block basket, scored for the Charlotte Bobcats.

(End of this chapter)