NBA: James wants to team up with me

Chapter 167 Eastern Conference Finals, Bulls vs. Heat

"With a big score of 4:2, the Bulls eliminated the Pistons and officially advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals."

"Strong dominance, Wang Chong averaged 6+40+8 in the 3-game series and shot 50% from the field, single-handedly breaking through the Pistons' iron-blooded defense."

"Suffering a disastrous defeat, can the Pistons' civilian team still succeed? Ben Wallace clearly expressed his dissatisfaction with the coach's tactical arrangements after the game. The team's conflicts have intensified. Where will Ben, whose contract expires in the offseason, go?"

The Bulls eliminated the Pistons, triggering various chain reactions. Some people were surprised by the strength of Wang Chong and the Bulls. Even the Pistons, the dominant force in the Eastern Conference that had reached the finals in the past two years, were no match.

Some people are paying attention to what kind of actions the Pistons will take in the offseason after the failure. Will they push the existing lineup to rebuild, renew Ben Wallace with a maximum salary, continue to retain the team's current lineup, or will they fail? Head coach Flip Saunders was kicked out,

But no matter what, stopping in the second round of the playoffs is definitely a failure for the Pistons.

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Before the Bulls and Pistons decide the outcome, their opponents in the Eastern Conference Finals have already achieved results.

The Miami Heat easily defeated the Nets 4:1 and entered the Eastern Conference Finals earlier than the Bulls.

After discovering that the Bulls actually defeated the Pistons and entered the Eastern Conference Finals, the entire Heat team and even the players were surprised.

Last season, the Heat entered the Eastern Conference Finals under the leadership of O'Neal. Their opponent in the Eastern Conference Finals was the Detroit Pistons. After seven games between the two teams, the Heat lost to the Pistons.

Although Wade's personal ability has further improved this season, O'Neal has also aged one year. Coupled with injuries, his dominance on the court has further declined. Therefore, if the Heat wants to face the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals, they are still not sure. Definitely win the opponent.

But if the opponent is replaced by the Bulls, it will be different.

There is still a big gap between Tyson Chandler's interior defense and Ben Wallace's. Especially when facing a large-tonnage interior monster like O'Neal, Chandler's small body simply cannot handle it.

In fact, Chandler is already considered a relatively strong type among centers, but this kind of thing requires comparison. Standing in front of O'Neal, Chandler, who is close to O'Neal in height, has obviously lost weight, so the two of them stand side by side. To be close to the width of O'Neal.

In addition, Wade is also a tricky player for the Bulls' perimeter defenders.

Raja Bell is good at defense, similar to players like Kobe Bryant who are good at shooting, because he has average physical fitness and relies on experience and skills to defend. Against players like Wade who have both strength and speed and rely on talent to play, they often I was helpless.

As for Monta Ellis, instead of counting on Ellis to defend Wade, it is better to consider how he will score when facing Wade, the best defensive second team opponent on the court.

On both offense and defense, Wade is a master of Ellis and can handle him easily. This has already happened during the regular season.

So the Bulls faced the Heat, not to mention the depth and strength of the two teams' lineups, the Bulls have been restrained in terms of style alone.

The Bulls' main tactical base is defense. They build a defense line around Tyson Chandler and outstanding defensive players such as Lagar Bell and Luol Deng to reduce the opponent's offensive efficiency. Then Wang Chong is responsible for the offensive end. Starting from the beginning, he led the Bulls to win the game.

The reason why the Pistons lost to the Bulls was because on the one hand they could not break through the Bulls' defensive system. In six games, the team did not score more than 90 points in one game. On the other hand, it was because they could not contain the team's scoring average of 40+ points per game. Wang Chong, his own defensive system collapsed, leading to the loss of the series.

Regardless of whether the Bulls can't guard either O'Neal or Wade, the team's defensive system will collapse. It is not impossible for Wang Chong alone to defeat his opponent, but at least he will have to score more than 60 points in a single game. You can only do it by scoring.

This is why Wang Chong is confident to have a try with the Pistons, but he doesn't think the team can beat the Heat.

The Eastern Conference Finals between the Bulls and Heat will begin on May 5.

For two teams that both ended their battles within 6 games, there was a relatively short preparation time. At least compared to the two sets of matchups in the Western Conference, the time was much more abundant, because the two sets of second-round matches in the Western Conference The duels all went to the tiebreaker.

Needless to say, there is no need to say much about the battle between cows and horses. As the third-best team in the league, the Mavericks are on par with the Spurs. The fierce battle between the two teams was extremely intense. The two sides first fought to a 2:2 tie, and then the Spurs won Tianwangshan. In the battle, they took the lead to win the match point 3:2, but the Mavericks were very tenacious to equalize the score in the sixth game and enter the tiebreaker.

As a result, the Mavericks still achieved the same comeback as they had in history. They took away the victory in the tiebreaker in San Antonio, the home of the Spurs, and eliminated the Spurs 4:3 to enter the Western Conference Finals.

The defending champion Spurs unexpectedly followed the Pistons' footsteps and also stopped in the second round. As a result, the two teams in last year's finals, the Spurs and the Pistons, were both eliminated and missed the conference finals, which was quite an upset.

On the other side, the showdown between the Suns and the Lakers was equally fierce, but the level was much weaker than that of the bull-horse battle.

The Suns are due to the fact that their main core player Stoudemire has been reimbursed for the season. The team is missing a general and its strength has declined seriously. The Lakers are really bad. After entering the playoffs, the Lakers look pretty good. The lineup did not perform well at all, and the game was entirely supported by Kobe.

It was okay when they faced the Nuggets in the first round, but when they met the Suns in the second round, the two teams launched an offensive battle. Although thanks to Kobe's super personal ability, the Lakers once led 3:1, forcing the Suns into a desperate situation.

But the Suns were not taken away in a wave like the Pistons. Instead, they tenaciously won the next two games and tied the score to 3:3. Then in the tiebreaker, the Lakers completely collapsed and were defeated. With a huge score difference of 121:90, they lost the game in shame and stopped in the second round.

In fact, with the current lineup of the Lakers, it is already a good achievement to reach the second round.

But the quality of results depends entirely on comparison.

The Lakers' results are indeed good, but when compared with the Bulls, the gap becomes immediately obvious.

Wang Chong led the Bulls and was able to defeat the Pistons and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals, but Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with a stronger lineup, but couldn't even get past the Suns, who were short of major generals.

Moreover, the data performance of the two is also significantly different.

During the regular season, Kobe Bryant averaged 35.5 points per game against Wang Chong. Although Wang Chong won the final scoring title, he clung to the scoring list, forcing Wang Chong to not dare to play in the last game. There is no slightest neglect.

But entering the playoffs, Kobe was unable to maintain the high scoring rate as in the regular season. After two rounds of playoffs, Kobe averaged 28.6 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists per game, and shot 49.7% from the field.

This data is actually very good, but again, this thing needs to be compared.

As opponents in the regular season, Kobe and Wang Chong were evenly matched, but in the playoffs, Wang Chong averaged 36 points per game, especially in the second round against the Pistons, who averaged 40+ points per game, single-handedly leading the team to win the game.

On the other hand, Kobe faced the Suns in the second round and averaged only 28 points per game. Although his field goal percentage was close to 50%, far exceeding the level during the regular season, you must know that the Suns and Pistons are two completely opposite teams. , the Pistons' defense is the best in the league, while the Suns are known for their offense and have extremely poor defense. During the regular season, the average points allowed per game was the third highest in the league.

Facing a team with such poor defensive ability, Kobe's scoring was not as high as in the regular season, and it was even worse than Wang Chong.

<divclass="contentadv">In this way, the question of which of the two has more outstanding scoring ability seems to have an answer, although Kobe fans and even Kobe himself refuse to admit this.

"Scoring ability is not a pure comparison of statistics. Wang Chong's higher score does not mean that his scoring ability is really better than Kobe. Although Wang Chong did play well this season, he is still far behind Kobe. There’s a big gap.”

Although Kobe fans are so stubborn and refuse to admit defeat, when asked by serious fans why they think Kobe has a better scoring ability than Wang Chong, they can't say one, two or three.

There is no way. Although Wang Chong debuted much later than Kobe, he won the scoring title before Kobe. Now he has to lead the team to the Eastern Conference Finals. What reason can be found for this?

Kobe fans who hesitated for a long time could only say that 4 is greater than 1.

"Kobe Bryant has four championships, but Wang Chong only has one, and he is still the third champion. Let's wait and see when he also has four championships and then compare with Kobe Bryant."

A very classic statement that can be used many times even in the future and will never go out of style.

No matter what, the showdown in the Western Conference finals became the Suns vs. the Mavericks. The script actually overlapped greatly with the Eastern Conference finals. The two former partners of the Mavericks' abandoned players Nash and Nowitzki will also face off on the same stage.

Both the Eastern and Western finals were exciting to watch and full of expectations, which greatly satisfied Stern's expectations.

This is the "wonderful matchup" he wants in the playoffs! ——

June 2006, 5, American Airlines Arena, Miami.

A large number of Heat fans filled the entire American Airlines Arena. Fans wearing white T-shirts representing the Heat's home colors turned the American Airlines Arena into a white ocean, and the noise continued like waves. Wave.

"This...is the conference finals?"

The Bulls players were all shocked when they saw the atmosphere was completely different from the previous games.

Of course, Wang Chong is excepted. During his two-year career with the Lakers, Wang Chong has long been accustomed to the atmosphere of the conference finals and even the finals. But except for him, it is the first time for the other main players of the Bulls to participate in such an important event as the conference finals. .

Although the value is far from comparable to the finals, there are trophies in the conference finals. The champions of the Eastern and Western Conferences will be awarded the conference finals trophy by the league, which shows that this is also a very valuable honor.

In the future, Chris Paul was nicknamed "Floor Man" by Chinese fans because he desperately wanted the floor in the Western Conference Finals but struggled to get it. It wasn't until Paul joined the Rockets and partnered with Harden to break into the Western Conference Finals that he finally got rid of this humiliating nickname.

"Don't be nervous, just go all out to bring out your own characteristics."

Wang Chong, who saw that his teammates were a little nervous, comforted them. "It will be the same when we return to our home court later. Your feelings will be completely different then."

At this time, two people came over from the Heat, one high and one low. They turned out to be the two core players of the team, O'Neal and Wade.

They came here to say hello to Wang Chong. After all, they both had a close relationship with Wang Chong. One was Wang Chong's big brother when he first joined the league, and the other was Wang Chong's big brother during his college days.

"Hey, kid, I didn't expect you to be so powerful now."

O'Neill came over and put his palm on Wang Chong's head in a familiar manner and rubbed it hard.

Black people really like to touch other people's heads. Even if Wang Chong is now 2 meters tall, and there is a very small height difference with O'Neal who is 11 meters tall, it does not prevent the other party from expressing intimacy in this way.

"You killed the Pistons, which is a big help to us. I must thank you, but thanks are thanks. We will not let anything go during the game, so you must be mentally prepared to lose."

Faced with O'Neal's verbal "threat", Wang Chong smiled and refused to be outdone. "Why, are you so afraid of the Pistons? Then we defeated the Pistons, isn't it more difficult to deal with them than them? It's you who have to be mentally prepared to lose."

O'Neal laughed loudly after hearing this. This kind of trash talk before the game will not affect the relationship between them, but is more like a joke.

Wade and Wang Chong did not have such an exaggerated conversation. The two just looked at each other, smiled and hugged each other. As college classmates, the relationship between Wang Chong and Wade was even better than O'Neal, who won the championship together.

But the quality of the relationship will not affect the game.

After a brief greeting, the game officially started.

As Wang Chong expected, the Bulls' lineup was indeed naturally suppressed by the Heat.

As soon as the game started, O'Neal on the Heat's side stared directly at Tyson Chandler and launched a fierce attack.

In the first two rounds of the playoffs, Chandler's opponents were Big Z and Big Ben. There was not much defensive pressure in the penalty area. He suddenly switched from these two centers to O'Neal. Although he was mentally prepared, he was still beaten by O'Neal. Blinded.

Although O'Neal was already 33 years old during this period, and due to his habit of neglecting training, his weight has increased significantly compared to the Lakers period, becoming bulkier and no longer the flexible fat man he was before.

But as long as he is in the penalty area, his dominance is still the best in the league.

As long as he can catch the ball in the paint, O'Neal sticks out his butt and squeezes twice inside, which will force Chandler to stagger back, making it impossible to guard against O'Neal.

Not only that, when Wade on the outside easily passed Bell with the ball and rushed into the penalty area, Chandler found that his best inside defense of the basket was not easy to use.

Wade is not Billups. Whether it is speed, strength, jumping or explosive power, he is astonishingly strong. He is not inferior to James, his opponent in the first round, and is even better in terms of speed.

The result was just as Wang Chong expected, in front of O'Neal and Wade, the Bulls' defensive system collapsed without any attack.

Fortunately, although the Bulls' defensive system collapsed, the offensive end was still able to hold on because of Wang Chong.