God's hand behind the scenes

Chapter 380 Victory in the First Battle
Popovich was very troubled. He didn't expect the 76ers' starting lineup to be inextricably tied to his own team.Originally, he planned to gain an advantage when the two sides started to fight, but now that the two sides are equivalent to a tie, the Spurs' disadvantages in the bench lineup will be exposed immediately, and the depth of the 76ers' bench is the top in the league.

In fact, Popovich has always paid attention to strengthening the rotation lineup. In addition to Malik Rose, both Antonio Daniels and Terry Porter are very useful substitutes.Of course, there is also a future league-leading scorer Stephen Jackson on their bench, who is also the leader of the "Golden State Gang" in his previous life, but now Jackson is only averaging 9.9 points and 3.9 rebounds in 1.1 minutes per game water fountain watchman.

But compared with the 76ers, this lineup looks a bit shabby. What is the bench lineup sent by Brown now?Point guard McGee, shooting guard Snow, small forward Arenas, power forward Hill, center Dalembert, among them Snow, Arenas and Dalembert are all players with starting strength.Originally, the 76ers' rotation lineup was at the top of the league, and now adding Dalembert to it is like adding wings to a tiger. How could the Spurs resist it?

By the end of the first quarter, the 76ers in turn led the Spurs by 7 points, thanks to Arenas, who was fully fired.In this game, Arenas has a very strong desire to score, and the teammates who appeared with him are also happy to be adults. Since Arenas is willing to take on the heavy responsibility of scoring, then just pass the ball to him.So Arenas scored 10 points in a sudden outside shot and helped the 76ers reverse the situation on the field before the start of the second quarter.But... Well, in fact, the 76ers were just behind in the score before. The situation was evenly matched, and Arenas just helped the team take the lead.

However, this is definitely not what Popovich wants to see. Although the Spurs are not the Western Conference regular season champions, facing the mediocre 76ers inside, Popovich is confident that he can beat his opponents in what he does best.But now they are the one behind, this is not going according to the predetermined plan at all! The way the 76ers responded greatly exceeded Popovich's expectations.

The most critical issue now is that the Spurs' pure bench lineup is far from that of the 76ers, and Popovich has no available soldiers. "Captain" seems to be a bit late, the only way is to let the main players play longer, especially Duncan, which may regain the advantage.

Don’t look at Popovich who played rotation and rest to perfection in his previous life. At this time, he still likes to play the main force like other coaches. Although everyone else’s playing time is very average, Duncan averages 40.6 minutes per game, ranking second. The second Robinson averaged only 29.5 minutes per game. It is actually Popovich's routine strategy to let Duncan play more.

But he forgot one thing. Duncan is indeed a rare insider wizard in the league, but he is still a behemoth with a height of 2.11 meters and a weight of more than 110 kilograms. Lewis, who is used as an outside shooter, runs empty-handed and then catches and shoots, but the latter's ability to eat.

Maybe Lewis was still lacking in this area, but Chang Wei has trained him for two seasons, even a pig will change.And Lewis himself can be regarded as a star embryo. Although he can't reach the top level of the league, he is more than enough as a second-tier star. Under such training, his speed and agility have naturally been greatly improved.

So when Duncan faced Lewis again, he still had nothing to do with the lean but quick big man, and he didn't dare to switch directly after Lewis screened.Just kidding, who among the Spurs outside players can interfere with a heavy artillery with a height of 2.08 meters and an extremely high shot point?Robinson?When he moved from the basket to the high position, he probably hit a three-pointer Shi Shiran, and he and his teammates high-fived while returning to defense!

Lewis, who was supposed to be the weakness of the 76ers, turned out to be a big headache for the Spurs in this game. No one expected this before the game.Of course Lewis himself was very excited. After all, it is not possible to take advantage of Duncan by simply pulling out an insider. However, at least in this game, he did what most insiders could not do.

Of course, Chang Wei, who made this suggestion, didn't intend to use it all over the world. With Popovich's unpredictable mind, he might be able to come up with a countermeasure in the next game.But so what?It is already very good to be able to win a game with this wonderful lineup. After all, the Spurs are the champions of the Western Conference. It is not common to win the game by adjusting the lineup casually.

Facing the lineup of the 76ers, the Spurs were almost in a state of confusion throughout the game. Popovich didn't even dare to send a substitute player casually, especially a lineup of pure substitutes, for fear of being taken away by the 76ers.This made several of the Spurs' main players play more than 30 minutes in this game, and Duncan even played as high as 43 minutes, resulting in a sharp drop in the Spurs' shooting percentage at the end of the fourth quarter. On the bench, the difference between the two sides may be even greater.

The most eye-catching thing in this game is of course Lewis. Most of his statistics are actually not very good. He only scored 14 points and 6 rebounds in the game. As a fake fifth position, he can only be regarded as a failure.But this guy has a team-high 9 assists, which is a bit scary. You must know that as an end point, he averaged only 2.3 assists per game this season.

Although Lewis only grabbed 6 rebounds, I was a little sorry for his height, but the 76ers were only behind 42 to 47 in terms of total rebounds. Similar to the situation in the first quarter, they almost all lost on offensive rebounds. , and "not grabbing offensive rebounds" is already an important instruction from the coach, so it is completely acceptable to only have 5 rebounds less than the opponent.

Looking at the technical statistics of both sides, Popovich also looked at a loss. Before that, he had never lost when Duncan scored 30+20.But as long as he looks at the statistics of the 76ers, he will understand that when all the players of a team are playing at a normal level on the court, and some of them can perform supernormally, even if Duncan scores 40+30, it may not be enough. Unable to win, Popovich, who is committed to teamwork this time, finally learned a lesson from the teacher again.

(End of this chapter)