rpbooks Chapter 348 The Opening Battle Worthy of Reflection
Chapter 348 The Opening Battle Worthy of Reflection
Chapter 348 The Opening Battle Worthy of Reflection
It wasn't until he left the press conference that Donovan breathed a sigh of relief.As the head coach of a professional team, his pressure is not small.
This is the price of building a luxurious lineup: everything points to the final championship, winning the championship is success, otherwise, it is failure.In the process, victory becomes a matter of course.
Therefore, although the game was won, the problems reflected still worried Donovan.
The first is lineup running-in.The existing problems were quite thoroughly exposed in this game.Although the team's offense is relatively smooth, it is all due to the strong personal abilities of the players.The designed tactics did not play particularly well, and several successful cooperations were only short-lived.
Westbrook is indeed working hard to connect his teammates. Paul George and An Luo's scoring ability is indeed very good, but if the chance of scoring is completely pinned on the three-point shooting percentage of Paul George and An Luo, Then such a team is more suitable to play on the wild field, not in the Chesapeake Energy Arena.
The players are all capable, but very lack of linkage.Obviously, it can be seen that the biggest problem for the Thunder now is not who to give the ball to, but what should others do when Westbrook or Paul George holds the ball?It's not enough to just throw from the paint and shoot a [-].Excellent off-the-ball ability is not about catching and shooting, but whether a player with containment power can make the opponent's defense feel threatened through his own running without holding the ball.An Luo did a good job in this regard, but he is not enough alone, Paul George must do better.
When they start to learn to take the initiative to respond to the inside, this Thunder team will surely usher in a radical change.
Secondly, in this game, the Thunder lost the speed of last season, and the rhythm became a bit procrastinated.Still, Westbrook's five straight first-half points made the game's turning point.Before that, the Thunder had never played very much like the Thunder.Fortunately, Westbrook discovered this problem, so he began to let his teammates keep up with his rhythm.Therefore, in the second half of the game, the Thunder played relatively smoothly.
In fact, in the last season, Donovan has already tried related tactics and achieved great success.As long as Westbrook rushes up, he has the ability to play two or even three or four in the penalty area.So we often see Thunder's lightning-fast breaks.Usually only Oladipo or An Luo is followed.There is absolutely no need to push everything up like many times in this game.When the speed is raised, as long as you get rid of the pursuers behind you, the game will become a competition of the personal strength of the players on both sides.In this regard, the Thunder's starting perimeter combination is definitely among the top three in the league.They should play that rhythm.
Of course, if the player's personal ability is not enough, that's another matter.Just like the Lakers in the Los Angeles Derby not far away in California, Luke Walton is letting Lonzo Ball do the same.Play fast break with his long pass as the core, but because the player's personal ability is not good enough, it is difficult to convert fast break into points.Therefore, they fell into the opposite defensive formation instead.Doubling mistakes is something the Thunder must pay attention to avoid.
In comparison, the Thunder's defense is still very good.In fact, the Thunder's own defense is very strong.Especially the perimeter defense, which was something that all backcourt players didn't want to face last season.Now with the addition of Paul George, that advantage is multiplied.And Paul George is the kind of player who can defend from outside the three-point line to the basket. His chasing cap made the Knicks' Xiao Li and Hardaway have lingering fears.
Robertson moved to the fourth position, which seemed to be a last resort, but in fact, the effect was quite good.He seems to have returned to the playoffs in 16, which always feels very familiar to him.His height and wingspan do not suffer from alignment, and he is more flexible, able to switch defenses to any position on the outside.Such a defensive champion stood at the fourth position, which greatly liberated Adams at the basket.He can mention the high position for more switching defenses, and this advantage will be infinitely magnified when facing a small-ball team.
So under such circumstances, although the Thunder did not score high in this game, the Knicks were even worse.Under the Thunder's impenetrable defense, they failed to win the first 5 offenses.Although Porzingis' personal ability opened up the situation later, he still couldn't cope with such a defense.
In this game, the Knicks only scored 42 points in the half, shooting only 40.5% from the field, and only 30.8% from the three-point range (13 of 4 shots), with a total of 15 turnovers.At the end of the game, the Knicks shot only 40.5% from the field, 29.2% from three (29.2%), and 25 turnovers.
It can be seen that the Thunder, with their new lineup, have at least succeeded in defense.They just need to solve their own offensive problems. Then, even if they meet the Warriors in the playoffs this season, they still have great hopes of winning in the end.
Of course, from the perspective of the situation, the Thunder is still developing in a good direction.
In fact, among the Thunder's current "Big Three", except for An Luo, Westbrook and George are both ball-handling players, and both need the ball in their hands to play their best role.This requires one of them to be able to make a sacrifice in order to coexist.Judging from the situation of this game, Westbrook is the player who took the lead in making sacrifices.He sacrificed his personal offensive scoring data and kept using his ball-handling ability, double-teaming ability and passing ability to create open shots for George and An Luo.The most important thing is that the vacancies created by Westbrook are all opportunities, and An Luo and George can play easily.George's personal efficiency improved in the second half, and it was because Westbrook spared no effort in series that he finally found his shooting touch.
Of course, he did enough of that last season.So Westbrook doesn't seem to have any resistance, after all, the return is quite good.In this game, he only played 28 minutes, but sent 15 assists.
This is also the distribution model Donovan thought of for the Thunder's offensive possessions: Westbrook is the dominator of the ball and the initiator of the offense, while An Luo and George are mainly responsible for scoring.Everyone also reached a preliminary agreement to approve this method and initially resolve the ball dispute.
(End of this chapter)