The Way of the Center

Why is the Thunder in everyone's impression only potential stocks, rather than a real strong team. Even if they have beaten the Lakers and the Spurs, even if they are now seventh in the West, no one will treat the Thunder as a real strong team.

In addition to the lack of thickness of the bench, Durant and Westbrook's extremely unstable performance is the biggest reason for people to hold this view.

Durant has ranked third in the scoring list this season, and is frequently able to score more than 40 points in a game. But this kind of performance is difficult to continue. Although he shines in the audience more often, sometimes Durant can only barely get 20 points with free throws, which is extremely inefficient.

And Westbrook, another young perimeter of the Thunder, is not stable enough. He is often unstoppable and can even overtake Durant in scoring. His impact is terrible, and his outside shooting level has improved a lot compared to college.

But sometimes this still immature guard has a heinously low shooting rate, and when he is different from Durant, Westbrook has a low mission rate and will still make tireless shots. Maybe Anjie and Durant wiped his **** all the time, so he didn't realize the importance of this matter.

However, today, with the Thunder playing momentum in the first quarter, Durant and Westbrook, the two young men, have at the same time committed the old problem of not being stable enough!

At the beginning of the second quarter, Westbrook first used a very ornamental acceleration to break through and get into the interior. However, under the interference of Hayes, Westbrook's forced layup failed to hit. .

While the Thunder fans were expecting team leader Durant to stand up and lead by example, he wasted an open three-pointer.

Both of them just shot the ball for the first time, and even Van Gundy didn't think it would have any impact.

But in the next few offenses, Westbrook and Durant continued to fight for iron. Had it not been for Anjie and Sefolosha to hit a few goals, the score might have been opened by the Rockets. You must know that Ariza's state is still hot in the second quarter. After scoring 10 points in the first quarter, he now has another 7 points in the account! And the second quarter is far from over!

"What's going on!? Can't you be more patient?" Van Gundy deployed a lot of tactics against Westbrook and Durant during the timeout, hoping that they would get an absolute chance to make another move. He suddenly remembered that the reason why he didn't like to use rookies was because of this?

Although Durant and Westbrook are much better than other newcomers, they are still newcomers, and they are not mature and stable.

Even An Jie, who has always been calm, fluctuated in the last game?

But even so, Van Gundy had only An Jie to choose.

"I want you to make every effort to create a gap for Kevin and Russell, but if they can't get a chance or get a chance but repeatedly miss the shot, then hand the ball to Ann singles!" At the last moment, Van Gundy handed Anjie. Singles were communicated to their players as a backup plan.

It is an indisputable fact that three-pointers, kills and consecutive hits from outside players can help the team quickly establish an advantage. Compared with the two-point and time-consuming offense of the inside player, the outside player's scoring rate is indeed faster, which is also a trend caused by the faster and faster pace of the league.

If placed ten years ago, Van Gundy would definitely make Anjie the core of the offense, and he would spend the entire game with his opponent one goal after another until victory.

But now, even the conservative he is more dependent on outside players, which is why Van Gundy still wants Westbrook and Durant to try, and inside singles are just a backup plan.

However, this timeout did not seem to have achieved any effect. As Ariza played more and more smoothly on the offensive end, Durant was more anxious to respond.

This anxiety caused his hit rate to plummet. Ariza's defense is hard to say, but Durant himself wasted too many opportunities.

Although Westbrook is very uncomfortable defending Brooks, he is also very difficult to achieve offensively.

The game went through three minutes between the Thunder's two perimeter strikes and Ariza's goal. Ariza can score, the most terrifying thing is that he still scored three points.

So far, Ariza has made 2 of 3 three-pointers, and the Thunder are 10 points behind the Rockets!

From a strong lead in the first quarter to a sudden fall in the second quarter, the Thunder players and fans are like a roller coaster ride, from the top to the underestimation in just a moment.

"What am I talking about is Kenny? How come the Thunder can't play the first quarter in the second quarter? This is the Thunder, they have always been overrated!" Barkley originally thought the Thunder would take advantage of the victory in the second quarter. Unexpectedly, their two sharpest blades were both frustrated. The only thing to worry about now is that Anjie's performance in the last game was not good.

Although Anjie played very positively in the first quarter, he still had to give way to Durant and Westbrook in the second quarter. And he has been following the tactics today, and he didn't ask for the ball in singles as before.

It can be said that, with the exception of the deduction at the beginning, Anjie is almost the same as invisible on the offensive end.

And now, Van Gundy had to put his tactics on Anjie. Maybe he should have done this long ago.

10 points, pause, redeploy. Adelman on the Rockets side can already vaguely foresee the changes that the Thunder will make later, but after looking at the players around him, if the Thunder really does that, he can't do much.

After the timeout, Krstic was replaced by Ibaka, which means that the inside line will be drawn very empty, and Adelman is also a little uneasy.

When the Thunder attacked, Westbrook was still in possession of the ball, and Angel was still standing in the high post. Is it possible that Adelman was wrong?

As soon as his foot stepped on the three-point line, Westbrook passed the ball without hesitation, and Angel, who was standing at the mid-range position on the backboard slope, got the ball.

At the same time, the other four of the Thunder began to run, all of which looked the same as before.

Durant opened his hand for the ball, Ariza's nerves were tense. An Jie raised the ball above his head and seemed to pass a high ball.

suddenly! An Jie's shoulders sank, he arched his right leg, and rushed forward! Hayes, who thought An Jie was going to pass the ball, let his guard down, An Jie suddenly hit him by surprise!

Sure enough, it was inside singles!

Hayes' speed was naturally much faster than that of the tall An Jie, and he quickly turned around to catch up in front of An Jie, hoping to interrupt An Jie's breakthrough.

An Jie stepped into the free throw line for two steps, but suddenly stopped. He directly lifted the ball with one hand and tossed it gently. The 1.98-meter Hayes could only watch the basketball fly over his fingertips. Then came the tumbling sound of the Nets.

Short throws between marching, hollow into the net. When the big man used tossing, he looked very unprofessional. But don't care whether the action is good or not, the goal is the last word!

Adelman held his forehead, knowing that the Rockets’ 10-point advantage would soon be insufficient.

"Angel’s throw! The ball was too sudden. Hayes probably was thinking about which hand Angel would use later. As a result, Angel would easily score two points with just one shot. If I If I remember correctly, this is the first time I have seen Anjie use throwing shots in a formal game. It seems that after a summer of hard work, the Asian Championship MVP still has many moves that have not been revealed." CCTV commentary Very surprised, they did not expect that Anjie would score with a technique that had never been used before.

"Finally, Coach Van Gundy was finally willing to let Ann play in singles! He should have done so long ago! If I say that Coach Van Gundy's rigid problem has to be changed, if he makes changes earlier, the Rockets will never be ahead of them. Very much!" And ESPN's Mike Brin is more concerned about Van Gundy's decision-making.

No one is perfect. Van Gundy did lead the Thunder to good results, but he also has many shortcomings. Now it's up to Anjie's performance to make up for Van Gundy's shortcomings.

After Anjie scored, Ariza immediately responded on the offensive end. Durant is really out of shape today, and it's hard to be satisfied on both ends of the offense and defense.

When the Thunder attacked again, Anjie stopped putting "smoke bombs" in the high post. He fell directly to the low post, leaned on Hayes and opened his big hand, making it clear that I was going to play inside singles!

With a height of 2.19 meters and a wingspan of 2.34 meters, An Jie has such a hand, Hayes is completely covered behind him, and there is no chance of stealing at all.

And Ibaka, who just came on the field, fished Scola out of the restricted area. Only Anjie and Hayes were inside. This was a duel of disparity in strength!

An Jie needs a deep position because he doesn't want to waste more energy and time. Now the team needs to score the most, then he will use the best efficiency to score for the team!

Westbrook made a high pass, and Brooks, who was 1.83 meters tall, couldn't stop the pass at all.

After receiving the ball, An Jie leaned hard and easily stepped into the penalty area.

There was no fake action, facing Hayes Angel who was much shorter than himself, he turned and hooked, and the basketball was reflected into the net after hitting the rebound.

An Jie scored two more points without any muddle. Hayes stretched out his hands to Adelman helplessly, he had tried his best.

"Luis, you and Chuck change positions!" Adelman immediately made a temporary adjustment on the sidelines, hoping that Scola could withstand Anjie's offensive pace.

They are also very clever, and they also like to play with their opponents with superb footwork. In some respects, Scola and Anjie’s playing styles are really similar.

However, as a pure traditional center, Anjie is better than Scola.

An Jie first used a turn to make himself face frame, and Scola thought that An Jie was going to shoot directly.

When Anjie raised the basketball over his head, he suddenly turned around again, and at the same time, he sat down in the penalty area with force~www.NovelMTL.com~ and forced Scola away, jumping in place under the basket and hanging the frame with both hands.

Both soft and hard, the Argentine's defense also failed.

Anjie is still scoring very efficiently, but Ariza's shooting percentage has gradually declined due to physical exertion.

Slowly, the Thunder narrowed the score. When the second quarter was about to end in 2 minutes, the Thunder were only 3 points behind the Rockets!

At this time, in order to preserve his strength, Van Gundy took down all the Thunder's three young masters. He believes that the defense of Ibaka and Morris in the last two minutes can ensure that the Thunder can bite the score.

However, facing the Rockets' weak inside defense, Morris and Ibaka also overfulfilled the task.

Not only did they do a good job defensively, they also caused a lot of trouble for the Rockets offensively. The tacit understanding between Morris and Ibaka is getting better and better, and the combination of the two of them often makes the Rockets' inside defense collapse.

When the half-time game ended, the Thunder not only bit the score, but also surpassed it by 2 points!

Ibaka scored 6 points on 3 of 3 shots in just 2 minutes, and Morris also made two strong hits at the basket, continuing Anjie's good momentum in the paint.

50 to 48, the Rockets once played an offensive climax under the leadership of Ariza. However, An Jie suppressed the Rockets' momentum by himself.

An Jie has been fully opened, sweeping away the poor state of the last game.

He scored 16 points on 7 of 10 shots and Anjie scored a lot of points in one half, and most of the points came from the singles period in the second quarter. In this case, if Westbrook and Durant were resurrected, Adelman would really be helpless.

The four-game losing streak of the Thunder seems to have to make a big fuss in the Toyota Center before they are willing to give up! (To be continued.)

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