Play with your brain

Chapter 414 Popovich's Gambling

On May 5, at the AT&T Center Arena in San Antonio, the fifth game of the Ox and Horse Wars was staged as scheduled.

"TONY! GO! TONY! GO! . . . " San Antonio was calling out to their own heroes.

Parker came again, using a cover, the French temporarily got rid of Lao Hu's entanglement, and then made a small step, Nowitzki's delay work failed.

Lao Hu can only choose to recover the basket, because the opponent is too fast, Lao Hu can only shorten the distance to make up for the defensive problem.

Squeak!Just caught up, but Parker has already completed the shot. The Frenchman used his best small drop shot, which is fast and arcs high. There is no way for Laohu to defend against this ball.

Swish!Two points! 45 to 53, with 57 seconds left in the second quarter, the Spurs led the Mavericks by 8 points at home.

Beep!Under such circumstances, Carlisle had no choice but to call a timeout.

"Defense! Pay attention to the defense, don't let the Frenchman pass easily, don't give him space, let him have nowhere to go from the beginning!..." Although there was not much time in the first half, Carlisle was still there Emphasizing defense, he was loudly reminding his players not to give Parker a chance.

In this game, Parker performed very well. It should be said that it is because of the French that the Mavericks are now so far behind.

"We must go in the next offense. Nowitzki, you are the first choice, but if you encounter double-teams, you must separate out. I believe your vision can do this..." The old look Carlisle still doesn't have many options in the offense.

Lao Hu is listening and thinking at the same time, he always feels that the current Mavericks are not too bad.

The reason is simple. Although it seems to be lagging behind, in fact, not many lag behind, and none of them reach double digits.And the most important thing now is that the Spurs' style of play is completely contrary to the tactics they implemented before.

The Spurs have always been a team team. Although they have a GDP trio, there is no particular point that stands out. Overall, this is definitely a model team for modern team basketball.

But today is different. Parker's performance was radiant. Throughout the first half, although Lao Hu didn't know the specific statistics, Parker scored at least 20 points. Of course, he also took a lot of shots. In the first half, at least There were fifteen or so shots.

In the words of Teacher Zhang, this is unreasonable!

This situation is almost the same as the third game between the two sides, except that the Spurs took the lead, but it feels different to Lao Hu.

In fact, there is another big reason for the Spurs' lead, that is, Ginobili is also full of energy, which is the biggest difference from the third game.In that game, Lao Hu could clearly feel that Duncan and Ginobili both played back at the beginning, but this time the two strong points in GDP have already exerted their strength in advance.

Of course, in terms of statistics, Parker is too shining, and Ginobili's three-pointer is easy to be ignored.

It's just that Lao Hu doesn't know, his feeling is already quite accurate, and he is almost about to figure out Popovich's tactics.

That's right, Popovich made adjustments. He gave up his original tactical play in this game, but made a gamble.

It was a gamble, and a bold one at that.

Because Bowen has been suspended, this is a great damage to the Spurs' defense. Without Bowen's connection, the Spurs' defense has become fragile, especially the perimeter defense.

The problem facing Popovich now is that the perimeter defense has deteriorated, and the opponent is a team with strong perimeter firepower, so what should Popovich do?Temporarily practice defense?Strengthen your perimeter defense?Turn Parker into Peyton?
Obviously, those are things that cannot be done at all, and the Spurs' outside line is currently short of major generals, so Popovich came up with a very bold method, which is to use offense instead of defense!

There is a classic saying in football that the best defense is an offense.

And Popovich is doing the same now. He wants to use offense to make up for the weakness of defense. He wants to use offense to keep his opponents exhausted and have no time to attack his own defense.

To be honest, football and basketball are not the same, but Popovich seems to have only this way now, otherwise, with a big score of 3 to 1 behind, he just needs to hand in his gun and surrender.

Popovich absolutely doesn't want to be out like this, so he has to take a gamble, a gamble!
"DE-FENCE! DE-FENCE!..." The timeout ends, the game starts again, and the San Antonios continue to cheer their team on.

Popovich's idea is actually well-founded, that is, defense often consumes a lot of energy, but the same is true for offense.

Lao Hu was dribbling the ball at the top of the arc, and he suddenly made a fake breakthrough. At this moment, he lowered his center of gravity and protruded his left foot, but his right hand did not change direction, and the basketball was in his hand stayed for a while.This is a fake move that seems to be left and right, of course, it looks like this at present.

It is Ginobili who is defending the old Hu. Obviously, Parker still suffers too much in defending the old Hu. At this time, let's go to the Argentine, but Ginobili has few ways to deal with this kind of CROSSOVER action. Although He has learned a lot of tricks now, but he doesn't dare to use them at all now. Ginobili has no choice but to retreat.

This is the right choice, because Ginobili can't judge the opponent's next move.

Squeak, bang...

Seeing the opponent's retreat, Lao Hu took another step forward with his right foot, and then directly changed direction ahead of time, at an extremely fast speed, leaving Ginobili behind him.

It was easy for the Spurs to rush in, because they still have no problems with their inside defense. Although it is more dangerous to come over all the time to fill in, it will consume a lot of energy, but this job must be done. .

Whoosh, as soon as he saw a double team coming up, Lao Hu didn't care about anything, and directly distributed the ball to Nowitzki on the outside. At this time, the German happened to be open!

Swish!Three-point hit, very simple, very stable.

"Shhhhhhh..." The fans were unhappy, this three-pointer directly ruined the good mood of the Spurs fans.

48 to 53, the Mavericks' offense is very simple, but very efficient, just a simple breakthrough point, but no one can come up to interfere with Nowitzki's shooting.

There was still time in the game, and the play took a total of 12 seconds, and the Spurs immediately launched their perimeter offensive.

Still Parker, he still simply used the pick-and-roll and made a simple breakthrough, but this time he encountered the double-teaming of Lao Hu and Lao Li.

Parker's ball was very smart, this time his pass passed through Lao Li and passed to the old Thomas at the basket.

Old Thomas is an old baller. He has a very thorough understanding of the Spurs' current tactics, so he hit the ball to the outside again before the opponent's defense came up.

Ginobili is also unambiguous, he shoots the ball when he catches the ball, the Argentine's level beyond the three-point line is definitely not worse than that full of spiritual breakthroughs.

Swish!Also won!
"Oh ho ho ho!..." Unexpectedly, in the last minute, both sides scored three-pointers.

But before they were happy, Lao Hu came again!
After dribbling the ball with a bang, Lao Hu took up the posture just now, but this time his changes were different. While Ginobili retreated, Lao Hu directly stepped back.

With two bangs, the basketball changed its position under the crotch, and at this time Lao Hu had opened up a relatively large space with the Argentine.

not good!Ginobili seemed to feel something, and he immediately took a step to prevent the opponent from shooting.

Bang, squeak!

Lao Hu took advantage of this opportunity to advance again.

It was a simple forward and backward movement, which seemed nothing special, but Ginobili said that he couldn't keep up, and now he could only follow the Chinese.

Here it is again, still assisting in defense, Lao Hu also made his choice, still passing the ball!
Nowitzki, this guy is at the point just now, 45 degrees to the right outside the three-point line. His hits are still okay here, didn't he just score one?

Parker came up, no matter what, the same loss cannot be suffered twice in a row, Parker must use his small body to guard against this big guy!
Although Nowitzki has an absolute advantage, the German still chose to pass the ball.

At the bottom corner, Terry has been waiting for a long time. When he saw Parker disappearing from his face, he was ready, and the ball really came.

Swish!Another three-point hit!
51 to 56, the point difference between the two sides came to 5 points again, and at this time there was not much time left in the second quarter, and the Spurs then entered the second half with a 5-point lead.

It's quite satisfactory. They are only 5 points behind their opponents in the away game. This gap is still acceptable, and the score is not low. This rhythm has an advantage for the Mavericks.

The Spurs could have been satisfied, because they were leading after all, but Popovich's face on the sidelines was not very good, because the result he expected did not appear.

Popovich is gambling, but he is not a gambler himself. He hopes that his team can get a relatively large lead in the first half. In this way, at least his team can take a breath. At that time, the Spurs can return to their original state.

Generally speaking, the biggest problem now is that both sides are playing too fast, and this is obviously not the rhythm of the Spurs.Their players are too old, and more often they hope to control the rhythm of the game and play a regular positional battle.

But now it seems that there is a possibility of losing control, and there is no way, because Popovich just let the two guards play the main offense, and it is really difficult to slow down this style of play.

　Both the Grizzlies and the Nuggets counterattacked today, well, the Nuggets are not considered a counterattack, huh, huh.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)