Chapter 1182 1181. Carelessness Leads to Loss of Jingzhou

Liu Mang and McGrady looked at each other, Liu Mang's eyes were full of desire, but McGrady turned his head away...

When I needed you, you kept silent...

Liu Mang now felt the context of this lyric, it turned out to be the current situation!

8 of 26 shots, Liu Mang played too badly, except for 6 of 15 three-pointers, which was not bad, with a three-point hit rate of 40%, other aspects were very bad.

Played too much!

Liu Mang and his teammates played for fun until the middle of the third quarter. When Coach Kruger called a timeout, Liu Mang and others realized that they were so far behind!

The Hawks had 73 wins, and the Pacers only had 39 wins, a difference of 34 wins. The Hawks said that they would pay attention to every opponent in the playoffs, but at the beginning of the game, they let themselves go and played for fun. In the third quarter, they were beaten by the opponent 20 to 6!

Coach Kruger called a timeout. When he wanted to make the players nervous and tighten the rhythm, he couldn't do it.

There was no sense of urgency, no defensive pressure, and the offensive end was not bad, but not good either. They only scored 22 points in the third quarter, and 16 points were scored in the second half when they were more serious in attacking.

The Pacers fought harder and harder, and sometimes played better when they were ahead. They even played the long-lost Artest and O'Neal's high and low post coordination.

After three quarters, the Hawks were 67 to 88, 21 points behind the Pacers!

Coach Kruger was furious!

The pre-match training was so serious that Liu Mang and McGrady went to talk to him about tactical changes. That's why Coach Kruger was still sitting on the mountain when his team's offense was bad and defense was unstoppable in the first half. He thought that the opponent was so strong that he could easily overtake in the second half.

Who knew that the opponent would take the lead in the second half. The opponent scored 20 to 6 and widened the score gap at once.

The Hawks were beaten by the Pacers by 39 points in the third quarter!

Artest scored 13 points and 4 assists in a single quarter, and played very well in the first half of the third quarter, leading the Pacers to play a defensive explosion in the first half.

In the fourth quarter, the furious coach Kruger pressed Liu Mang on the bench. Although it was McGrady who turned on the waver mode, there had to be someone to take the blame, and Liu Mang was regarded as the scapegoat. After the three quarters, Coach Kruger pointed at Liu Mang, who had thrown 26 shots in the three quarters and only made 8 shots to get 25 points.

As for McGrady who made 4 of 14 shots...

Generally speaking, the commander will choose to punish the comrade who has the best relationship with him to warn others.

If the NBA is a battlefield, the relationship between the head coach and the player is like the relationship between comrades. From a company perspective, it is a colleague relationship. If it is more, it is a mentor-apprentice relationship, and it will not be considered a superior-subordinate relationship.

Rasheed Wallace, who made 1 of 7 shots today, and 4 of 14 shots, also made a mistake. The two of them together did not score as high as Liu Mang, but Liu Mang was the one who was sprayed by Coach Kruger.

The Pacers have already started to gain momentum, with three first-class stars, and Artest, a guy who is very tough on both offense and defense. It is too difficult for the Hawks to turn the tables!

Just like the second round of the series between the Lakers and the Rockets in 2009 in the original time and space, the Rockets only had Artest, who was 30 years old and had passed his prime, but they transformed in an instant, entered the second round, and fought a bloody seven games with the Lakers, the champions of the season who obviously underestimated their opponents. Moreover, when the Rockets lost McGrady from the beginning and Yao Ming in the fifth game of the second round, Artest led the team to a tiebreaker.

Artest is a player who can transform a team. He is not the strongest on the offensive end, and perhaps not the strongest on the defensive end. He has obvious shortcomings, but as long as the team is willing to work together, he can create miracles!

In the fourth quarter, Coach Kruger simply put Liu Mang on the bench, let McGrady and Jason Terry fight for a wave, and then kept being fierce to Liu Mang, so that others could feel his anger.

Jason Terry and McGrady fought for a quarter, but still failed to narrow the gap too much.

Liu Mang was a little scared by Coach Kruger's yelling. With 4 minutes left in the fourth quarter and 81 to 102 trailing by 21 points and entering garbage time, he looked at McGrady who was replaced for help. McGrady pretended to know nothing and went to discuss today's problems with Stockton.

McGrady was very calm and knew that he had caused trouble today, but since he had someone to take the blame, McGrady turned into an ostrich...

Liu Mang looked at Jason Terry, who played 30 minutes and scored 15 points with 6 of 15 shots, Rasheed Wallace, who played 29 minutes and scored 5 points with 1 of 8 shots, and McGrady, who played 33 minutes and scored 18 points with 6 of 17 shots...

These three guys who usually called him good brothers so affectionately, all sold him out at the critical moment!

The Hawks replaced their main players and declared surrender. With 4 minutes left and a 21-point difference, it was not that they could not catch up. The key was that the opponent's morale was boosted. The Hawks scored a goal, and the opponent tried their best to hit their heads and arms to score two points in return.

109 to 91, when the Pacers blew the final whistle, the three stars of the Pacers who stayed on the court during garbage time were so excited that they cheered and celebrated as if they had won the championship!

Artest with 33 points, 3 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks, Jermaine O'Neal with 22 points and 11 rebounds, Stephen Jackson who was defended by Liu Mang and shot 3 of 9 in the first three quarters, and shot 2 of 6 in the fourth quarter by McGrady, and scored 11 points with only 5 of 15 in the whole game but fought hard to grab 10 rebounds. The three of them seemed to have returned to two years ago and hugged each other to celebrate.

They actually beat the Hawks!

Before the series started, they themselves did not expect to beat the Hawks, and they won the Hawks in the first game of the playoffs!

They don't care what will happen in the future, and the three of them put aside their usual grudges against each other for the time being. Now they have won!

Beat the Hawks with 73 wins, and beat the defending champion Hawks who won two consecutive championships!

…

After the game, the Hawks locker room refused to be interviewed, and Coach Kruger scolded Liu Mang in the locker room.

This situation has almost never happened. Even Jason Terry, who was the second-best player in the team when Liu Mang joined the team, has never seen Coach Kruger scold Liu Mang like this. Everyone in the Hawks knows that he played really badly today.

After scolding Liu Mang miserably, Coach Kruger finally vented his frustration and left the locker room, which was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop, leaving behind a group of players staring at each other.

Seeing that Coach Kruger had indeed left, Liu Mang, who had been miserable before, immediately perked up and walked towards McGrady, Jason Terry, and Rasheed Wallace, the three teammates who performed worse than him today.

The three of them were in a mess, and McGrady hid behind Rasheed Wallace: "Ace, what are you doing! Don't come over here!"

Suddenly, Rasheed Wallace pulled McGrady from behind him to the front, using McGrady as a shield: "Ace, do whatever you want, Jason, we haven't taken a shower together for a long time, let's go take a shower..."

Jason Terry immediately ran away with Rasheed Wallace, leaving McGrady huddled in the corner of the locker room.

McGrady looked at Liu Mang with a ferocious face, and didn't expect that he would have this day...

...

Outside the locker room, Stockton asked Coach Kruger: "Long, is it too much to scold? What if Ace has a problem with his mentality?"

"That kid has a problem with his mentality? No, don't give him a little pressure. He completely treats the playoffs as a playground. He has not lost a series except the Eastern Conference Finals, and he doesn't take the opponents in the first two rounds of the series seriously at all." Coach Kruger said it was okay.

"Yeah, Ace seems to have never lost the first game of a series. What a terrible guy." Stockton then remembered how terrifying Liu Mang's dominance in the playoffs was before this game.

"We can't be careless anymore. We have lost the home advantage. We must win the game the day after tomorrow. It will be bad if we fall behind by two games..."

Coach Kruger and Stockton were not so worried about losing this game.

The main reason for the loss was that from the beginning of the game, McGrady and Liu Mang started to play with their teammates, making the usually cautious role players play.

So much so that in the second half, they couldn't pick up the rhythm and play more compactly.

But Coach Kruger had no doubts about winning the series.

Scolding Liu Mang was mainly to let those role players see that he was angry.

For Liu Mang, he just scolded him. For others, he didn't need to scold them. He just put them on ice. When playing against the Pacers, the Hawks put a few substitutes on ice who were not active and still won.

The main thing is to focus!

The Pacers were beaten by 18 points in the first game, and they couldn't make any shots and had no cohesion on defense.

It's better to have problems early than to have them at the last minute, and the Hawks coaching staff can see it.

As a coach, they see a lot more than the players. Except for being blocked by the Nets in the Eastern Conference Finals for two years, the Hawks beat all the other Eastern Conference playoff opponents. The Hawks were too relaxed, especially after winning two consecutive championships and getting 73 wins, and they didn't take their opponents seriously at all.

The Hawks gradually developed the "aristocratic disease" of the Lakers. This mentality is not bad. The team should have the pride of a strong team, but they must be nervous.

The Lakers have a paranoid person like Kobe who even scolds his teammates, so there is no need to worry about this, but the Hawks don't have someone like Kobe who scolds everything, so the coaching staff needs to handle these things.

…

In the locker room, Liu Mang and McGrady, who had been playing around for a while, took a shower together and went home early without accepting any interviews. McGrady first went to Liu Mang's house to have a good discussion with him about today's game.

Losing the first game of the playoffs was too embarrassing!