The Rest, Only Noise

"LJ, when was the most humiliating moment in your career, was it losing 58 points in a single game in the playoffs?"

"No." Larry Johnson will answer this question in the future, "We would have lost more in the playoffs, but for some reason, the Knicks want to limit the loss to a specific number."

Controlling points in the playoffs, and controlling the opponent's loss, usually only occurs on the team participating in the betting.

But the Knicks didn't, and couldn't, because sports betting was made illegal in New York state in 1993.

The Knicks' massive slaughter of the Hornets has elevated the discussion of another matter.

That's the question of who is the MVP of this season's regular season.

For the vast majority of this season, there is no suspense about the MVP.

Jordan! Jordan! Jordan!

Looks like it can only be Jordan.

If Jordan is elected MVP, then he will realize the second consecutive title of the award, and at the same time, it is also the third MVP trophy in his personal career.

However, after the rematch with the Knicks, the Blazers' tactical system was dismantled by Louis, and the drawbacks of the five-star lineup were discovered by the league.

The Blazers started losing frequently.

They went from being first in the league with a clear advantage to being third in the league.

During this period, Jordan didn't drag the team out of the quagmire with unparalleled individual ability like an MVP.

In the words of Pat Riley: "Can Michael do it? (referring to leading the team forward), of course! He's the best player of this generation, and he can lead us to 80 wins if he wants to. , this is not an exaggeration. But Michael knows that he is not the end. We have a lot of talented players, so Michael does not need to take everything alone, just find a solution to the problem, all difficulties are will be broken."

It's nice to say, but the Blazers didn't solve the problem until the end of the regular season.

Riley, obsessed, vowed to fix the Blazers' inability to guard against fake pick-and-rolls.

The switch-loving Blazers quickly discovered that their starting lineup couldn't have too many defensive holes if they were going to fix it.

Aside from the various butterfly effects that Louie's own operations have provoked, what has his rise brought to this alliance?

The most intuitive point: the league has realized the cross-generational development of defensive concepts.

Whether it was the pocket play in the early 1980s, which forced a large number of 1980s stars to develop a "at least shootable" three-point threat, or the "choking defense" implemented in New York in the late 1980s, Riley was inspired to lead to The rise of the Blazers and sparked the league to follow suit.

The consequence of these things is that contemporary basketball coaches have a similar perception of defense as modern basketball coaches:

Man-to-man is the last resort;

Flexible local defense is the central strategy;

It is best to mobilize the strength of the entire team to hide defensive deficiencies, or to mobilize the strength of the entire team to maximize the collective defense effect.

Double-teaming, assisting defense and back-up defense, these are the defensive options that existed since the birth of basketball, and then Louis brought switching and high-speed rotation.

And, he corrects a generation of coaches' notions: if you have to give the opponent a dislocation to ensure that they are basically in the right position, then why not?

Beginning with Louis, the concept of giving the opponent a dislocation on the defensive end and gaining defensive flexibility at the expense of defensive quality has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

It was Louie's defensive revolution that put the Blazers in a difficult situation.

Because Louie's fake pick-and-roll was just an introduction.

The deep logic that the Blazers can’t prevent this is that their starting lineup has a fatal hidden danger in defense, and the offensive firepower that can be called the No. 1 in history on paper is difficult to exert. Therefore, once the weak spot is caught and hit hard, the offensive end will not be able to. If you respond, it will crash.

Louie inspired other coaches to start targeting the Blazers along the lines of Louie.

That's why the Blazers kept losing in the closing stages.

They can indeed rudely solve this problem.

Riley is also very clear that if the problem is not solved, then even if it reaches the finals again, there is no absolute certainty of defeating the Knicks.

So they played all the way, at the cost of Jordan losing his MVP qualification, at the cost of losing home-court advantage in the Finals (unless Heat and Neal were upset), and one thing was determined: with the same starting lineup, the Blazers problem cannot be solved.

In other words, the only way to solve this is to change the starting lineup.

However, Thomas, Jordan, Barkley, Nance, Sabonis, who to replace?

Thomas is here to hug his thighs, but he's a winner with the Celtics. At the same time, he is the only player on the team who has the experience of leading a team to win a championship as a core player.

Even if it is a beggar, he can be regarded as standing to ask for the meal.

In order to win the championship, he has given up fame and fortune, making him a substitute is impossible, and he is not the one with the biggest defensive problem for the Blazers.

Jordan can skip it.

Barkley - The initiator of the Blazers' starting defensive loopholes, it can be said that other teams see him on the court with bright eyes.

Because Barkley in the third position is like a **** in heat, which will attract the covetousness of countless male dogs.

Riley's football strategy allowed Barkley to lose weight successfully, but even if Barkley is thin, his defense is not good.

This is purely a human issue.

He won't be good defensively at any position, but playing at the 3 exacerbates the problem of poor defense.

So the Blazers want to let him off the bench?

In Louie's previous life, Barkley snatched Jordan's MVP in 1993.

Barkley in this timeline, who was trained by Riley so he couldn't see the fat, will only be stronger than Louis's previous life.

It can be said that, aside from defense, Barkley's hard power should be regarded as the top three in the league. Even when you factor in defense, it's a top-five league in the league.

Only Jordan, Sampson, Olajuwon and Wilson are better than him.

Discussing whether such a player is a possible replacement is like discussing whether the author of this book will update chapter ten or twenty tomorrow.

So, Nance? He and Jordan are the only two players selected for the Blazers' defense. Replacing him is like Zhang San accidentally breaking his left hand and breaking his right hand in order to look balanced.

That being said, Nance is indeed the only player in the Blazers' starting lineup with room to adjust.

Because Sabonis doesn't have to think about it at all. Before joining the Blazers, he did not have a name or money, and only had one requirement: to guarantee a starter.

He knows he's about to be teamed up with a bunch of superstars and won't get the kind of tactical status he has in Europe. He is ready to attack Jordan and them, but as the first player in European basketball history, he believes that he can keep up with his teammates and play individual characteristics, but the premise is that he must have enough playing time.

Therefore, before joining the Blazers, his only requirement was to add a mandatory starter clause to his rookie contract and a stipulation that he must play more than 25 minutes per game (injury, of course, another matter).

Sabonis should be the first Lithuanian in history to have an American sign unfair terms.

To sum up, the Blazers' starters can hardly be replaced.

Because Jordan lost the qualification to compete for MVP, the competition for MVP in the regular season became inexplicably fierce.

Ahead of the official MVP selection, the last MVP mock prediction of the season was made by NBC.

They invited several media people who were eligible to vote this year, as well as a large number of NBA practitioners to vote.

The voting results are not surprising. Olajuwon, who led the team to the fourth record in the league and averaged 27 points, 12 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 blocks per game, became the MVP of the last MVP simulation prediction.

Several major elements of MVP, basic data, team record, story, various X factors.

Jordan, who was already a sure thing, is gone, and the Knicks' Wilson and Ewing both have poor records, and the data do not have obvious advantages.

The top-ranked Heat seem to have the best chance, but it's hard to say whether the team's star is Dumars~www.readwn.com~, Petrovic, or Hank Gaithers.

Dumars is too low-key, Gaithers has no star, Petrovic is a foreigner, and you can't even say he is the first two of the Heat.

Under the constraints of these factors, it has become confusing who this season's MVP will be.

The trend of the other rounds of semi-finals gradually became clear.

The Heat did not give the Celtics another chance and eliminated them 4-1.

Bird, who had already announced this year as the Last Dance, announced his retirement the night after the Celtics were eliminated.

In his 14-year career, it took Bird only 8 years to go from great white hope to the greatest of all time.

His all-time best is not without controversy, but, with five championships, four MVPs, four Finals MVPs, he won them all during the most competitive era in NBA history.

Although some people still say that his stats are not as good as Chamberlain, and the championship is not as good as Russell, he is already the best in most people's hearts.

In the West, the Trail Blazers and Clippers both used six games to advance to the Western Conference finals.

As the season draws to a close, the NBA's ultimate Final Four has surfaced.

East: Knicks

V.S

Heat

West: Trail Blazers

V.S

Clippers

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