Chapter 650
"Use the Hayes star card."
"Ding... The host uses the Chuck Hayes 2010-2011 version of the star card, and the time limit for this game can obtain matching bonus attributes: comprehensive strength 90, lower body strength 100...the fit is 60%, ability matching Adding..."
"Ding... The overall strength of the host has increased to 84, and the strength of the lower body has increased to 91."
"Ding... due to the impact of the soaring strength of the lower limbs, the host's speed in this game has increased to 95, and the bounce has increased to 94."
Liu Mang obviously felt that the waist and buttocks were more powerful!
Instead of using O'Neill and Ben Wallace's full-body feeling of strength, he also felt a little difference in his upper body strength, but it didn't have much impact, mainly the lower body strength, which obviously made a big difference!
Ben Wallace's lower body strength can only be said to be excellent. Every time he meets Yao Ming, he is pressed and beaten. In his rookie year, Yao Ming can easily score 20 points on Ben Wallace. Rais scored 25 points, 20 rebounds and 5 blocks on his head.
O'Neal's lower body strength mainly comes from tonnage, not to mention Howard's lower body strength.
And Hayes, this lower body strength is too exaggerated!
Liu Mang only improved his lower body strength to 91, and he clearly felt that his lower body strength was much stronger than his upper body strength.
It's a bit of a mouthful!
Sure enough, just as Liu Mang thought, the star cards of role players sometimes have very different effects.
This is the third game at home without the roar of Rasheed Wallace. I feel a little unaccustomed to it. Liu Mang stands at his free throw line and waits to receive the serve.
On the other side, the Rockets players are ready to retreat and defend at any time.
Yao Ming and Ratliff came to the middle circle for a jump ball, and the two of them jumped the ball equally, both of which made the fans of the home team feel heartbroken.
The referee blows his whistle, the game starts, and the ball is thrown into the air.
The two jump ball weak chickens both jumped up vigorously and stretched their hands to the ball. Yao Ming pushed the ball back with a slight advantage, and the Rockets attacked first.
Liu Mang came to the top arc and waited for Francis to come over.
The Eagles judged the Rockets' offense and believed that the Rockets must give the ball to Yao Ming again.
However, unexpectedly, Yao Ming pulled to the middle distance and did not force Ratliff. Instead, he came to the middle distance to open the space and pulled Ratliff out, destroying the Eagles who wanted to use it at the beginning. The idea of Ratliff's defensive advantage against Yao Ming!
Ratliff and Yao Ming don't have many one-on-one fights. They haven't faced each other this season. But last season, Yao Ming failed to please Ratliff, so he simply pulled Ratliff out.
Francis passed the ball to Maurice Taylor in the middle distance of the bottom line. Maurice Taylor received the ball frame and singled Boozer. two points.
Liu Mang was ready to retreat to the free throw line to defend and flank Yao Ming, but when he saw Yao Ming pull out and thought that the Rockets were going to play a pick-and-roll, Liu Mang extended to the three-point line. Unexpectedly, the Rockets got the ball from Morris Taylor. attack!
The last time the two teams met, Ratliff rested, Boozer couldn't defend Yao Ming, but Rasheed Wallace defended Maurice Taylor to death, and Boozer defended Maurice Taylor , was passed in one step.
Liu Mang could clearly see that the Rockets' style of play has changed since Maurice Taylor was confirmed to replace Kevin Cato in the starting lineup! When the opponent has a defensive player under the basket, it is obvious that Yao Ming will be less consumed by widening the shot.
Such a player with a mid-range shot and a behemoth at the basket is simply amazing.
The Rockets returned to defense immediately after scoring a goal, and Liu Mang received the serve and advanced to the frontcourt.
The Eagles' style of play was also clear. Seeing Francis' aggressive defensive posture, although Liu Mang played Francis easily, the team's goal was not him, but Yao Ming!
Ratliff came out to pick and roll Liu Mang, and Yao Ming had to follow. If he defended the basket and let Maurice Taylor come out, he could be killed or suddenly killed by Boozer.
With Ratliff's pick-and-roll, Liu Mang's pick-and-roll master level 5 was triggered, and his speed soared, passing Yao Ming like the wind. Francis was blocked by Ratliff, and Yao Ming couldn't keep up with Liu Mang's speed.
The Rockets' defense against Liu Mang is more than this one. Jim Jackson, who has been reformed by Pat Riley for two years, played very actively. When Liu Mang was about to pick and roll, he judged that Yao Ming and Francis could not guard Liu Reck's pick-and-roll, got stuck in front of Liu Reck at the first time, Liu Reck flicked the ball and passed the ball to Raheem on the baseline, Raheem received the ball and rushed into the basket, Maurice Taylor was too late to defend, so he had to Try to move to the right side of the Nets, seeing that Raheem can directly block the dunk, but he passed!
Raheem threw the ball to the left of the basket, and Boozer scored two points with an easy lob.
Quite a team's selfless pass and cut cooperation, but Liu Mang's heart was bleeding when he saw this scene... Raheem had an assist, Boozer had a score, and he had nothing!
Liu Mang turned around and returned to the defense resentfully, and he was even more upset with the Rockets, especially Morris Taylor, who couldn't defend Boozer well, and insisted on looking for something to do when he had nothing to do, and imitated Cato's defense.
However, Maurice Taylor is not good on the defensive end, but he did a good job on the offensive end. In the last two years of his rookie contract, he averaged 17 points and 6 rebounds per game. If the contract expires, it will be cheaper if the contract cannot be renewed, so the Rockets can win Morris Taylor with a contract that is a little bit more than the middle class.
It's just that Maurice Taylor basically didn't improve after playing for a year in the Rockets. The Rockets wanted an inside core player, so they abandoned him and trained Eddie Griffin, but Eddie Griffin It was also useless, and after getting Yao Ming, he established the core of the inside line.
But now as a role player, Morris Taylor's value is reflected.
There is a mid-range shot, Ratliff goes to defend, Maurice Taylor pulls away the mid-range shot, and Boozer hits the basket hard on defense.
Moreover, after Yao Ming saw Boozer defending after pulling out, he immediately cut back to the basket. Although playing Boozer was tiring, it was much better than playing Ratliff. Yao Ming began to wreak havoc around the basket again.
The Eagles tried to shrink from the outside line. Jim Jackson's rebounding impact, Mobley's three-pointers, and Francis' air cuts were all excellent.
Without Rasheed Wallace, the Eagles' inside defense has indeed dropped a notch, and if Muhammad or Kwame Brown is brought up to play power forward when Yao Ming is there, the independent offense of the inside players is basically gone. COSCO has no shots at all, and can only rely on Liu Mang to organize the offense, especially when Kwame Brown comes up, directly exhausting the physical energy of the two big centers.
Therefore, the Eagles can only use Liu Mang and Ratliff's pick-and-roll to consume Yao Ming, and at the same time attack or support the offense by themselves, and try their best to defend on the defensive end.
The two sides played like this, obviously neither side could defend the other, until the official timeout of the first quarter, the Eagles trailed the Rockets by 2 points 16-18.
Liu Mang scored 6 points and 2 assists in more than half a quarter. Today he did not deliberately increase his shots. This game is much more difficult than those weak teams during the previous seven-game winning streak.
Neither Liu Mang nor the Eagles' coaching staff expected that the Rockets would assist Morris Taylor today, and it had a miraculous effect!
Scored 7 points and 3 assists in half a quarter, Maurice Taylor gave Mobley a three-point pass assist, Yao Ming squeezed Boozer back to the basket for an empty dunk, and an empty dunk for Francis cut.
Now Maurice Taylor has the feeling of a rising star when he has good center teammates, outside pitchers, and the ball in his hands. At the age of 28, he is at the peak of his career. There is no big improvement, but as long as it suits his style of play, his teammates are better, and the Rockets this year and following the general trend of the league, stars are willing to sacrifice to let teammates with better opportunities score. Morris Taylor played today Very good start.
Liu Mang felt that Morris Taylor's performance today was really good. It was a bit different from Yao Ming's memory that he didn't have a good power forward as a helper. Although Morris Taylor was not top-notch, he was still very good on the offensive end.
The Rockets are catching Rasheed - Wallace is not in this defect, defending the defect that everyone else in the Eagles can't shoot except Boozer and Yao Ming's defensive mask at the basket, the Eagles can only start the game against the offense !
Moreover, even when Yao Ming only made 1 of 2 shots and 2 of 2 free throws, and only scored 4 points in the first quarter, the Eagles failed to gain an advantage.
But when it comes to the rotation lineup, the Eagles' advantage comes out.
The official timeout ended, and the Hawks replaced Liu Mang with Stockton, bringing Prince, Jason Terry, Boozer, and Kwame Brown up to play.
The Rockets sent Mark Jackson to deal with Stockton, and Mobley, Witherspoon, Maurice Taylor, who played very well today, continued to play, and Cato replaced Yao Ming.
The matchup between the two god-level assist masters who are the historical assist king so far and the second in the historical assist list.
This duel sounds very loud, but in fact, one of the two is over 40, and the other is almost 40. Both of them have already passed their peak years.
Moreover, the assist leader in his 40s is far better than the one who has not yet reached 40. After the rotation of the two sides came up, the Eagles clearly had the advantage.
The Rockets can only rely on the old cat Mobley to play singles. Mark Jackson now just passes the ball to the right teammate. Stockton still has an offensive threat.
Maurice Taylor withered without Yao Ming to attract the best defenders, Cato basically had no scoring ability, Boozer could guard him, Maurice Taylor met Kwame Brown... miserable.
In the second half of the first quarter, Francis and Yao Ming were absent, and the Eagles relied on the old and young version of the Shuangsha combination to lead the team to easily overtake the score in the last five minutes.
33 to 29, the Eagles went ahead by 4 points and entered the intermission.
...
After returning from the break, the game started before the second quarter. Stockton, who was in good shape and scored 2 points and 2 assists in the first quarter, continued to play, bringing Jason Terry, Raheem, Muhammad, Kua The May-Brown combo goes up.
The Rockets replaced Francis, Witherspoon, Jim Jackson, Charles Oakley and Cato.
The Rockets are obviously going to attack the outside line, and the inside line is replaced by the two defensive combinations of veteran Oakley and Cato.
During the beginning of the second quarter, Stockton managed to take Muhammad, Rahim, and Kwame Brown to play pick-and-rolls, trying to maintain a slight lead.
Liu Mang didn't take Stockton's place on the pitch, he went up against the Rockets' outside trio, he went up to play pick-and-rolls with Stockton and his teammates, the effect was not much different, the Rockets were not in the seven-game winning streak period Those weak teams, the Rockets, the outside three-man team is really fierce, Prince needs to rest, Liu Mang and Raheem can defend, the two can't defend the third, they are all playing against each other, the Eagles coaching staff would rather let Stockton goes up for a while, Stockton plays more than ten minutes per game in the regular season, which is also very good for the Eagles in the playoffs, maintaining the status of a veteran.
Liu Mang is discussing defense with Mike Woodson, and Mike Woodson's face is getting worse and worse.
"Mike, do or do?"
Mike Woodson looked at Liu Mang with dead fish eyes. Does he have any other choice?