Junior Basketball says

Chapter 381
Before the start of the second game, the Spurs' defensive strategy had been clearly analyzed by experts, but Popovich didn't care.Knowing the principle is nothing. After all, even if you know how to do it, you still have to be able to do it!

In fact, many experts believe that if the Timberwolves want to break the predicament, they only need a strong enough scorer. heavy duty player.Facing the Spurs' defense, each of them seems at a loss, so how can they help the team win?
McHale does not agree with their remarks. He believes that his players can solve the problem. The first choice is of course the team's top scorer Xu Hao this season.In his opinion, if even Xu Hao can't handle it, the others can't even talk about it.

Before the start of the second game, McHale found Xu Hao privately and told him his thoughts.McHale hopes that Xu Hao can become the scoring arrow of the team, and he can be given unlimited firepower during the game.Of course, the prerequisite is that Xu Hao must be able to break through the Spurs' defense, otherwise the unlimited firepower will only continue to send rebounds to the opponent.

Xu Hao understood this, and he said to McHale: "Coach, now I won't say how sure I can handle the Spurs' defense, but I think I can try it, and I will do my best. This is what I give Promise of."

McHale was silent for a while, reached out and patted Xu Hao's shoulder, sighed slightly, and left without saying anything.But Xu Hao knew that the coach had made up his mind to let him try, which made him feel that the burden on him was very heavy.

However, no matter how heavy the burden is, he needs to shoulder it. After all, he is the team's chief scorer and perimeter core, and he is also the player with the strongest singles ability in the Timberwolves. This is his responsibility and his obligation. Others are not as strong as him.

In fact, Xu Hao's score in the system has reached 87 points, which is already the score of the league's first-class players. According to the system's evaluation, there are only a handful of players with a score of more than 90 in the league. It can be seen that Xu Hao is the strongest below the super giants that file.In Xu Hao's view, as long as he gives full play to all his strengths, he can handle the Spurs logically.

The time soon came to the second game of the Western Conference Finals. For this game, the entire Timberwolves team looked dignified.They know that it is difficult to beat the Spurs on the road. The opponent has achieved the league's best record of 36 wins and 5 losses at home in the regular season this season. Even the Timberwolves did not take advantage of AT&T Center. Now it is naturally more difficult to overcome.

However, the Timberwolves could not accept the result of returning to Minnesota in despair with a big score of 0-2. This made them work hard to win a victory here. It would be good to return to their home court then. beated.

Before the start of the game, McHale bluntly expressed his thoughts to everyone-let Xu Hao play singles with the ball most of the time, breaking the Spurs' defense.No one raised any opinions, but they all looked at Xu Hao with puzzlement and encouragement.They don't know why Xu Hao took this job, but as a teammate, encouraging him is enough.

Xu Hao smiled helplessly: It seems that everyone still doesn't think highly of him!Think about it too, the Spurs are the top defensive team in the league, how could their impenetrable defense collapse at the first touch?Even if Xu Hao can succeed, it will take a lot of effort.

But Xu Hao doesn't think so. The Spurs' defense is strong, but it's not impeccable. As long as you feel good, breaking their defense is basically a certainty. Judging from the warm-up before the game, my state tonight should be good OK.

After the game started, Xu Hao handled the ball as usual. This time McHale simply replaced Rubio with Ellington in the starting lineup, allowing Xu Hao to concentrate on singles with the ball.Rubio's organizational ability is of course better than Ellington's 3D attribute by a few blocks, but this ability is temporarily unusable, it is better to let Xu Hao organize the offense of the substitute lineup when he is resting.

At the beginning, the Spurs players didn't care, and continued to use the strategy of the previous game to defend. Similarly, Leonard also stood in front of Xu Hao.Although he is well aware of his gap in physical confrontation, he still has to do his best.

However, the position of the Timberwolves players made them a little confused. Love pulled up to the high position, but did not go to cover, but stood near the three-point line on the weak side. The two pitchers, Ellington and Korver, naturally occupied the two bottom corners. .If the Timberwolves were in such a position in the last game, Jordan would basically pull out to cover, but he also stood outside the three-second zone, as if he had nothing to do with himself.The Spurs players couldn't guess what the situation was, so they could only arrange the defense line in the half court step by step.

Xu Hao didn't call for a pick-and-roll, and rushed to the inside of the Spurs with the ball against Leonard. He wanted to play a simpler inside-out, that is, pass from inside to outside.Disturb the opponent's defense by breaking through, take the opportunity to pass the ball to the appropriate position, and wait for teammates to hit the shot.It doesn't matter even if they can't make the shot, isn't there still a young Jordan who is eyeing the basket?

In the end, the round was completed by Korver in the bottom corner.Xu Hao easily attracted the Spurs' defense, and then passed the ball lightly to Korver who was in the open position. The latter scored the first point of the game for the Timberwolves with a knife in his hand.

After a few rounds, the Spurs took the lead in adjusting their defensive formation. With Popovich's coaching experience, he could easily see what the Timberwolves were thinking.Under his command, the Spurs switched to man-to-man mode. Except for Duncan guarding the inside, everyone else had to pay attention to cutting off Xu Hao's passing routes and forcing him to play singles. The old man never believed that one person could handle a game. A team.So this is also the fundamental reason why the Spurs prefer tactical literacy. Duncan is just an accident.

However, just when Popovich felt that this move could limit the Timberwolves, Xu Hao scored consecutive shots from inside and outside. took all the shots.To the horror of the Spurs players, Xu Hao completely ignored Leonard's defense, as long as he took a shot, he would definitely hit it.

With his extraordinary performance alone, the Timberwolves took a 19-10 lead before halfway through the first quarter. Among the 19 points, Xu Hao contributed 11 points alone.It is normal for the Timberwolves to score 19 points, but it is not normal for the Spurs to only score 10 points, largely because their mentality has been influenced by Xu Hao.You can't even maintain a stable mentality, so why talk about sending the ball into the basket?Not making any mistakes is pretty good.

(End of this chapter)