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Chapter 498 - 216. Crazy G6 Night!_3

Chapter 498: 216. Crazy G6 Night!_3

And now, after winning the pivotal Game 5, Saunders has started running his mouth against Bickerstaff... Fans feel that Saunders has been played hard by Bickerstaff in this Eastern Conference Finals.

An old reporter who has been working since the 80s commented, "Saunders has tasted what those coaches who faced Bickerstaff in the 80s and 90s felt—like Dick Motta in the ’87 playoffs, Doug Moi in the ’88 playoffs..."

Dick Motta, a legendary coach who started in the NBA during the 60s, won two championships and one Coach of the Year award during his first 18 years of coaching. In his 19th year, the ’86-’87 season, he led the Mavericks to a 55-win season and second place in the Western Conference, only to be upset by the 39-win Nuggets in the first round. He was psychologically outmaneuvered by Bickerstaff, which led to his retirement that summer.

Doug Moi, leading the Nuggets to a 54-win season and second place in the Western Conference, won Coach of the Year in the ’87-’88 season. They were pushed to five games by the seventh-seeded SuperSonics in the first round. Every game was a struggle, with three of the five going into overtime. Although the Nuggets won that series, they lost in the second round due to fatigue to a team that wasn’t as talented as they were... Two years later, Moi also faded from the NBA.

Twenty years have passed, and the once ’young and promising’ head coach Bickerstaff has now become an elder, but his style of messing with people’s minds has not changed.

Some fans who heard Bickerstaff was coaching as far back as twenty years ago were surprised and posted online asking, "If he started coaching in the 80s, doesn’t that mean he has been through three completely different styles of play?"

Another fan corrected them, "Actually he started working in the NBA as an assistant coach or assistant general manager in the 70s, so he’s been through four completely different styles of play..."

The charm of basketball lies in its diverse attractions, rather than just who is the better shooter.

At the beginning of the Eastern Conference Finals, fans were focused on whether Zhang Yang or Hamilton had stronger scoring abilities in the playoffs.

As the games went on, the comparison shifted to which group was more formidable – The Young Four or The Four Tigers.

Latter on, the discussion turned to who had better pressure resistance between Billups and Felton, or who had a better court vision between Billups and Rondo... And at this point, fans have already started comparing the two teams’ coaches.

...

The time came to June 5th, and as expected, the Western Conference Finals were over.

Duncan rarely had such an explosive game, scoring 20 points with 22 rebounds, 8 assists, and 2 blocks, leading the Spurs to a comfortable 95 to 82 victory over the Jazz, with a series score of 4 to 1, advancing to the Finals ahead of time.

After seeing the report, Zhang Yang looked through the Spurs’ data for the first three rounds. Duncan averaged 20.2 points in the first round, 26.8 points in the second round, and 21.8 points in the Western Conference Finals, always the team’s highest scorer... How bad would the Knights’ exterior defense have to be in the Finals for Parker to snatch the FMVP from Duncan?

Forget Duncan, when Zhang Yang watched the games live, he felt Parker wasn’t playing as well as Ginobili.

After a day of rest, on the evening of June 6th at 9 PM, at Auburn Palace, the Bobcats faced off against the Pistons in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

The Bobcats made some adjustments to their starting lineup tonight, with Millsap and Okafor pairing up in the frontcourt.

The offensive strategy was also heavily adjusted. In the early stage, Zhang Yang took on the role of distributing the ball from the outside while Felton moved to the corner to create space. Okafor pulled up from mid-close range to attack while Gerald Wallace and Millsap stormed the basket!

During the crucial Game 5, Rondo’s performance had declined, failing to score in double digits. His footwork was sharp, but this tactic was easy to counter.

However, Millsap played excellently in Game 5, scoring in double digits mostly by grabbing offensive rebounds.

Okafor and Gerald Wallace also performed well in Game 5, but that day the Bobcats did not make good use of their frontcourt scorers. Tonight, Bickerstaff decisively chose to attack the interior from the start.

The result was very effective, with Gerald Wallace shooting 4 out of 6 in the first quarter, plus making 2 out of 3 free throws, scoring 10 points in the quarter!

Together with Millsap’s 4 points, Felton’s 3 points, Zhang Yang’s 4 points, the substitutes Muhammad and Alan Anderson combining for 6 points, and Okafor’s alley-oop dunk as well as a 2+1 play against Rasheed Wallace towards the end of the quarter... the Bobcats scored 32 points in the first quarter!

Rasheed Wallace held out until Game 6 but finally couldn’t keep up.

In the previous games, Saunders put Webber in the starting lineup, which significantly improved the Pistons’ offense. The coordination between Billups and Webber on the offensive end was almost perfect, but this also meant that Rasheed Wallace had to bear more defensive pressure. Webber worked hard on defense, but he was far from McDyess’s level.

By the last game, Rasheed Wallace had already shown signs of fatigue on defense, and tonight... he cried out in frustration, "The kids in Xia Village are picking on me again!"

Unable to hold his ground on defense, the Pistons also suffered in offense. After the Bobcats’ front line hassled Rasheed Wallace with offense, they began deliberately allowing Wallace to shoot from a distance on defense, focusing on containing Hamilton and Webber instead. The tactic worked well!

In the first quarter, Hamilton only managed to score 5 points from 2 out of 6 shooting, Prince got 3 points, Webber 3 points, Rasheed Wallace 2 points, Delfino 3 points... Billups was forced to take wild shots, scoring 8 points in the quarter, but the Pistons only managed 24 points as a team.

At 32 to 24, the Bobcats took an 8-point lead at the end of the first quarter!

During the intermission, Saunders sent out a frontcourt combo of Prince, McDyess, and Dale Davis.

He guessed that Bickerstaff would focus on attacking the inside this game and knew Bickerstaff would play to the extremes, but he didn’t imagine it would be this extreme!

During the first quarter, Bickerstaff had Zhang Yang, the leading scorer of the past five games, play a supporting role, distributing the ball from the top of the arc and creating shooting opportunities for role players like Millsap and Alan Anderson...