Chapter 1492 1491. Nash's Envy

Gasol played the highest intensity defense in the NBA for a few minutes, and was so tired that he collapsed on the chair and gasped like a dead dog.

In terms of consumption, Gasol's consumption is estimated to be several times that of O'Neal. It is not an easy job to hold up O'Neal, even for the 36-year-old O'Neal.

If it was O'Neal who was two or three years younger and had better physical fitness, O'Neal would win as long as he could wear down Gasol, but O'Neal was 36 years old... The head coach of the Suns did not dare to let O'Neal continue to wear down Gasol. O'Neal's playing time could not exceed 30 minutes. This was the arrangement of the team doctor who the whole team trusted.

9 to 4, O'Neal was worn down, and Liu Mang did not dare to relax.

The Suns' positional warfare was restricted, but the Suns' running and gunning was coming!

Even the Spurs at their peak in 2005 could only fight the Suns with offense, and the Hawks had never really defended the Suns. Next, a bloody offensive battle will begin!

For Liu Mang, the advantage is that today their Hawks team took the lead in controlling the situation on the court, and everything was going according to their previous tactical plan!

…

After the timeout, the game continued.

The Hawks replaced Gasol with Kwame Brown, and McGrady was also replaced. He will lead the second lineup with Jason Terry in a while.

In terms of running ability, Mason, whose physical condition is still at the end of his peak, is really better than the 28-year-old McGrady. After all, he relies on this to make a living.

Rondo, Liu Mang, Mason, Marion, Kwame Brown's lineup came on the court.

On the Suns side, Nash, Raja Bell, Jason Richardson, Josh Smith, and Dio's lineup came on the court.

The Suns attacked, and they started running and playing as Van Gundy expected when he arranged the defense.

After running, although the Suns' defense became worse, the offensive firepower was much stronger!

The Hawks used the high-speed rotation of Liu Mang, Rondo, Mason, and Marion to switch defense, and tried to pick and roll the Suns' pick-and-roll offense initiated by Nash and Josh Smith.

Dio didn't dare to go out, and stayed in the interior, with Kwame Brown guarding.

Dio averaged 13+6+6 last season and won the Most Improved Award. Last season, when O'Neal came, he also averaged 10+4+5, but this season he has become a ball. The biggest impact of getting fat is shooting, and the change in weight has a huge impact on shooters.

However, Dio can also play a role in restraining Kwame Brown's defense in the interior, after all, he is a pseudo center.

Raja Bell, a sharpshooter who has made more than 40% of his three-point shooting rate and 2.6 three-pointers per game in the past two seasons, made a three-pointer after the first run after the timeout!

7 to 9, the score difference suddenly returned from 5 points to 2 points.

For a team like the Suns that runs and plays, a 5-point difference is nothing at all, their three outside shooters are too accurate.

When the Hawks attacked, Rondo began to use Liu Mang's containment to create opportunities for his teammates.

Liu Mang's strong containment gave the Hawks' outside shooters many opportunities.

On the other hand, Liu Mang reduced outside shooting at the beginning and helped his teammates shoot three-pointers more, but he got more one-on-one singles opportunities in the second quarter!

A three-point shooter has the advantages of a three-point shooter, but if a three-point shooter takes 15 three-point shots and only hits 5, it is obviously far worse than a three-point player who only hits 1 out of 3.

If a shooter hits 5 out of 15, people will be sure that you didn't perform well today.

This is the experience Liu Mang gained from watching Curry in several finals games in his "previous life". The Warriors were overturned in the 2016 finals, which was directly related to Curry's 15, 13 and 14 three-pointers in the last three games. He shot more from the outside, so his teammates naturally shot less. Barnes, Thompson and Green had the chance to shoot after Curry couldn't throw in the last three games, but at that time, the cold three-pointer feeling had spread to the entire Warriors team.

And the five shooters with a 33% hit rate only made one shot, and the opponent had to defend. Everyone had a relatively good one-on-one shooting opportunity. With Curry's three-point ability, one-on-one three-point shooting is definitely much more accurate than overconfidently shooting against two people.

Liu Mang's plan this season is to use himself as a threat point more and let the whole team attack. If there is no Rondo, he plans to pass the ball more, but with Rondo, he will be more relaxed and just run with the opponent according to the established tactics.

After Raja Bell made a three-pointer, Mason received a pass from Liu Mang after receiving a pass from Rondo and scored two points with a dunk.

Dio's switching defense ability is indeed not as good as last season. After Kwame Brown helped Mason block the switching defense of Raja Bell, Dio could only watch Mason dunk.

Seeing that Mason was almost 31 years old and could still dunk at the same time, the fans at the scene cheered. Mason is indeed a representative of wasting talent, but his playing style is really very attractive to fans.

Liu Mang is more comprehensive than Curry, so he uses himself to attract firepower not only to attract firepower from the outside, but also to attract defense at medium and short distances. Rondo, the core of the organization, has more options.

And Liu Mang's "offensive transit station" feature can give him the ability to pass the ball in transit like McGrady and Gasol, which is very good for assisting Rondo in organizing the offense!

However, Dio's role was beyond the expectations of the Hawks. His second pass was better than Liu Mang!

After all, Liu Mang relied on his characteristic prediction and his accurate passing. Dio is really good at this. In addition, he has enough weight after getting fat, so he can pass the ball to Kwame Brown. It is estimated that the Suns did not expect Dio's performance, and the offensive end played better than expected.

The two teams started to bombard each other. After the first quarter, Liu Mang got 4 points and 4 assists, while Rondo, the offensive organizer of the Hawks, only got 1 assist, but had 6 points and 2 rebounds!

From the data, Liu Mang seemed to be the player who organized the offense.

However, Steve Nash, the core of the Suns, felt that he was competing with a second-year young man!

Rondo surprised Nash last season. Nash knew that Rondo had a bright future, but he did not expect that only a year later, the Hawks would safely hand over the burden of leading the starting lineup to a second-year player!

After seeing the other team's coaching staff finish arranging tactics during the intermission, Jason Terry, McGrady, Grant Hill, O'Neal, Brad Miller, five long-established veteran stars, actually surrounded Rondo and listened to what Rondo said...

Nash thought about how he played for four years before he got the starting position, and played for eight years before he became the core of the team... Comparison is frustrating!

Nash believes that when he was a rookie, except for defense and rebounding, he was much better than Rondo in other aspects.

Nash shook his head and put aside those unpleasant memories: "I will be 34 years old soon, and there is no point in recalling those things. The game is important..."

After the first quarter, the Hawks led by 4 points with 31 to 27. The problem of the Suns was that they only scored 4 points in 4 minutes at the beginning, and they were very aggressive later but could not catch up because the Hawks were also very aggressive.

For Nash, it was good that they were very aggressive in the first quarter, so that the Hawks' main players except McGrady had to run for 8 minutes and had to go down to rest. Liu Mang even put on training clothes.

The rotation phase is their chance!

…

The Suns replaced Raja Bell with Dudley. After all, Raja Bell is over 30 years old and his physical strength has begun to decline. Dudley, a rookie, was sent in.

“Jared Dudley, ability rating 71… 3-pointer 84? The Suns are also very good at selecting role players, not inferior to Popovich…”

Liu Mang drank Gatorade and watched the Suns replace Dudley. This is a rookie selected by the Suns at the end of the first round. He looks like a very good role player.

The Suns did not replace any other positions. Dio's weight gain actually had an effect. Gentry did not expect it, but Dio's adaptation to this kind of transfer pass is undoubtedly a good thing for the Suns.

Except for Raja Bell, the Suns did not replace anyone else.

Liu Mang chatted with the painter in a relaxed manner. Anyway, the rotation time was given to his teammates. Even if his teammates didn't play well at the beginning, Liu Mang didn't want to take on too much responsibility. When he won three consecutive championships, his teammates could do most of the things he wanted them to do. He never had this concept. It was only last season that he realized the importance of role players also having to maintain their own characteristics.

After the second quarter started, the Hawks were indeed at a disadvantage. Compared with the preseason, the intensity of the regular season was much higher. The key point was that the Suns could only be compared with the Magic. The Hawks' other preseason opponents were far behind the Suns.

In the first half of the second quarter, the Hawks were always suppressed by the opponent's offensive firepower.

The running-in process is always full of ups and downs.

But after the official timeout in the second quarter, the Suns replaced O'Neal. When the Hawks saw O'Neal take off his training suit, they immediately replaced him with Gasol.

It's not that the Suns didn't know that O'Neal was restrained, but that the stars had to be given so much playing time.

Moreover, the current Suns are different from the previous D'Antoni era. In the D'Antoni era, it was a pure run-and-gun game, but it was not an all-out run. There were always times when they needed to slow down and rest. In the Gentry era, when they ran and gunned, they ran and gunned with all their strength, leaving no room for maneuvers, because they had the Card-Shark combination to fight positional warfare.

The Suns were defeated by the Spurs on offense before because they needed a certain buffer time and had no defense, but now they have the Card-Shark combination and are also strong in positional warfare.

Gentry was prepared to use the seamless switching of two sets of tactics to deal with the Spurs from the beginning, and it succeeded in the playoffs last year.

But today he happened to meet Gasol!

Do other teams dare to replace the team's best inside player with a fat rookie after playing for 37 seconds?

The Hawks dare!

O'Neal was so angry that he wanted to compete with Gasol to see who was fatter. Calderon was so upset... He felt the evil power from his old club...

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