Almighty Coach

On the Blazers' bench, head coach Tris stood there, glaring, as if a yaksha monster just crawled out of hell, roaring loudly at the players on the field.

"Run, run for me!"

"Fast break, put them all on me!"

"Shoot, such a good opportunity, hurry up and shoot!"

"Didn't you eat? It's so slow to return to defense, hurry up and work harder on defense!"

In a basketball game, if the head coach swears or constantly questions the referee's judgment, he may get a T, get a technical foul, or even be expelled by the referee. In addition, referees can conduct on-site command from the sidelines, as long as they do not interfere with the progress of the game, they can also use shouting.

Every coach in the NBA has a different style. Some coaches just like to shout at players. As long as they are not satisfied with the player's performance, they will roar wildly like wild animals; Weak scholar, sitting honestly on the bench, never shouting loudly, even if the player's performance is not satisfactory, at most he just frowns to express his dissatisfaction.

Tris has never been the kind of "beastist" head coach who likes to shout at the players on the court, but when it came to overtime, he couldn't restrain his eagerness.

It is said that in the overtime stage, the side with the superior strength will have an advantage, the side with a deeper bench will have an advantage, and there will be a certain advantage at home. These three advantages are all occupied by the Trail Blazers, so Tris simply There is no need to be so anxious, as long as the Blazers play steadily, they can win the overtime game.

But whenever Tris thought that the Trail Blazers he led were going to play against an underdog led by an outsider, he felt like sitting on pins and needles.

Tris even felt that every look he looked at him had a mocking color, as if he was mocking him, not even a layman coach who participated in an NBA game for the first time.

For the Clippers, assistant coach Cassell kept looking in Tris's direction. Tris's excitement today was indeed a bit beyond Cassell's expectations.

"Coach Tris seems a little excited. This is just a regular season. With the Blazers' current win margin, even if the Blazers lose, it won't affect the team's ranking. As for that! "Cassell underestimated a few words to himself, and then looked at the score on the field.

In the last two and a half minutes, the score has not changed at all, and neither side has scored a goal, so the situation is still very stalemate.

The Clippers are a weak team. Facing the Blazers' strong defense, it is understandable not to score. But the Blazers are a strong team and they are playing at home. It is really unreasonable to not score in two and a half minutes up.

This is still overtime. For such a long period of overtime without scoring a goal, it is indeed something that needs to be seriously reviewed for a playoff-level team.

"Speaking of which, today's game seems to have always been this rhythm. When the Blazers feel good, we feel good. When the Blazers feel bad, we also feel bad. Basically, they score and we score; they We don’t score, we don’t score either. It’s like an agreement between the two sides. It’s a strange rhythm of the game.”

Cassel looked at the statistics in his hands, and scratched his head in confusion. From the statistics, the Clippers did not play well today. The shooting percentage, rebounds, assists, and turnover control can only be regarded as It is quite satisfactory, and it is said that such data cannot beat the Blazers, so Cassel can't figure out how the Clippers played back and forth with the Blazers.

"What's wrong with you?" Dai Li's voice sounded from the side, and he noticed Kassel's puzzled expression.

"It's nothing, I just didn't expect that we could go to overtime with the Blazers. After all, in terms of strength, the Blazers are much stronger than us." Cassel said.

Dai Li nodded: "Yes, we are a weak team, and the lineup is not complete. The key is that the coach of the team is an outsider like me, so almost everyone thinks that we will lose, or even lose miserably. .No one thought that we and the Blazers would play the first overtime."

"The first overtime?" Kassel blinked, and then asked: "Coach, you don't think there will be a second overtime in this game, do you?"

"Maybe there will even be a third overtime." Dai Li replied with a smile.

At this time, Li Dai remembered the first round of the U.S. Open. He had just entered the match where Chen Zhen faced tennis king Basel. In the last set, it was a long set tiebreaker.

The gap between Chen Zhen and Basel is much greater than the difference in strength between the Blazers and the Clippers, so Li Dai thinks it is not surprising that the game between the Blazers and the Clippers will take two or three overtimes.

Assistant coach Cassell did not believe Li Dai's judgment at all. The Blazers' starting players were stronger, the bench was deeper, and they were playing at home. These advantages would be exaggerated in overtime. Kassel I even feel that the Clippers may collapse at any time.

...

"Beep..." The sound of the on-site electronic timer sounded, and the game time also reset to zero, and the second overtime ended.

Cassel looked at the score of 118 to 118, and didn't know what to say for a while.

"Coach Li really got it right, and we're going to play the third overtime." Kassel secretly glanced at Dai Li, and now he felt more and more that there was an impenetrable mystery about Dai Li. feel.

"Coach Li said just now that there will be a third overtime. I thought he was joking, but it turned out that there was a third overtime. Is this just a coincidence? But three overtimes are not common in the NBA. , if it's a coincidence, it's too 'coincidental', so coincidental that I can't believe it!"

"In the third quarter before, he didn't call a timeout, saying that the players could recover the score by themselves, and the players really recovered the score. Is it a coincidence again? How could everything happen? Is it a coincidence?"

"Could this be Coach Li's professional judgment? But he doesn't know basketball? How could he make such an accurate judgment? At least I, who has been a basketball coach for more than ten years, can't see that this game will be played In three overtimes, I don't see how the players can catch up when they are 15 points behind."

"In other words, Coach Li knows basketball at all. He has been pretending that he doesn't understand anything. He is deliberately pretending to be a pig and eating a tiger! He wants everyone to think that he is a layman and let his opponents relax their vigilance. And then he's killing the opponent."

Cassel thought of this possibility, and looked at Dai Li involuntarily.

Dai Li also noticed that Kassel was looking at him, so he smiled at Kassel.

However, in Kassel's view, this smile really seems to hide a knife in a smile.

...

On the Blazers' bench, coach Tris's mentality collapsed.

What he wanted was a big victory without any suspense, what he wanted was to crush his opponent easily, but the result was that the game reached the third overtime, and the game still had no winner.

More importantly, the Trail Blazers are now two points behind.

Although it was only two points behind, Tris felt very helpless.

"Could it be that we are going to lose to the Clippers?"

Tris' self-confidence was shaken at this time.

On the field, the Trail Blazers players also became impatient. A game that should have been easily won has now reached the third overtime, and they are still behind by two points. The players are still very calm, not at all. Don't worry, it's impossible.

As for the audience at home, the sound is getting smaller and smaller, and some fans even started to leave early. The atmosphere at home has dropped significantly.

The 48-minute regular time of an NBA game, including the intermission and timeout, takes almost two hours, and then two overtime games, which also include rest and timeout, are also very exhausting for the fans. Things, those people who kept cheering for the home team had already shouted loudly by this time, and the third overtime really couldn't help them.

Moreover, Portland's geographical location is relatively west, so the game will start later than other places. Although everyone implements Western Time in the United States, it is impossible for fans to live near the Moda Center. Many fans They drove dozens of kilometers to watch the game, and they had to work the next day, so it was impossible to stay at the stadium late. If it's just one overtime, you can still stick to it, but when it hits three overtimes, some fans really can't hold on and can only choose to leave.

What's more, the game was not very good. Although it was three overtimes, the opponent was a weak team like the Clippers. , Spending time watching a boring game is really meaningless.

In fact, many fans are also a little disappointed with the performance of the Blazers. The Blazers are currently ranked third in the West, and fans have high expectations for them. Many fans are looking forward to the Trail Blazers being able to reach the Western Conference Finals, or even the Finals, and win the NBA championship. However, against an underdog like the Clippers, they can't attack for a long time. Naturally, the fans don't buy it. Some fans even began to accuse the Blazers of playing poorly.

Whether it is the mentality of the players or the atmosphere on the scene, it is beginning to be unfavorable to the Blazers. The previous evenly matched situation seems to have changed a little bit.

...

"Boom!"

The basketball hits the hoop and bounces out. Three Clippers players rushed over and protected the rebound.

At this time, the Clippers still have a two-point lead, and the game time is less than 10 seconds, which means that even if the Clippers do not attack, they will win the game.

The Blazers players on the opposite side hesitated for a moment, and did not foul immediately. Obviously, their attention was not so focused.

"Go and foul!" Trail Blazers coach Trice yelled at the players.

The Trail Blazers players rushed up, but the basketball had already passed from the inside players to the defenders.

According to NBA rules, if the foul in the last two minutes is not the ball holder, it will be a technical foul of two free throws and one throw. This is also a rule to limit the "shark hacking tactic".

Now that the ball is in the guard's hands, the Blazers' foul this time can only be committed on the Clippers guard, sending the guard to the free throw line.

The defender's free throws are still reliable. He made two free throws and widened the score gap to 4 points. This is a safe point difference. The Blazers need at least two rounds to catch up.

The Blazers no longer have a timeout, which means they can only serve from the backcourt, and then take the ball to the frontcourt to shoot. Judging from the remaining time, it is impossible for them to complete two attacks.

"We won! We actually beat the Clippers!" Although the game was not over yet, the Clippers' bench celebrated ahead of time.

Dai Li also heaved a sigh of relief.

"After using the title of evenly matched, the result of the match is no longer under my control. The last time I used evenly matched was Chen Zhen's U.S. Open match against Basel. Chen Zhen lost in the end. But this time my luck was still Not bad, the Clippers actually won against the Trail Blazers. I hope the luck will be as good in the next game."

...

"The Clippers beat the Blazers in three overtime upsets"

The next day, after people saw this headline on the news, they couldn't help but want to read the content of the news.

The Clippers are the underdogs in the league, and they have just encountered the turmoil of changing bosses and coaches, while the Blazers are a strong team in the league, and they are also well-known teams in the odds of winning the championship. In the contest between the two, the Clippers actually counterattacked and won. Driven by curiosity, people wanted to know what happened.

The situation of three overtimes is rare in the NBA. It may not happen once in a season. For fans who have watched the game, it may be that they have watched three overtimes. When it comes to the news, it becomes a highlight.

It is not uncommon for a weak team to defeat a strong team in an upset. This is not uncommon in the NBA. The first in the league has lost to the last. Moreover, neither the Trail Blazers nor the Clippers are the kind of focus teams. Except for the fans of the two teams, this game is just a report on the news, and it did not cause much waves.

Moreover, there are so many games in the NBA every day, and a team has to play 82 games in the regular season alone. This kind of victory or defeat in a non-critical game will not be particularly memorable. Most people forget about it in a blink of an eye after seeing the results of the game, and they can't even remember the score.

But for the Clippers, this game was the team's first victory after the deal was completed, and for Dai Li, it was also his first victory after becoming the head coach of the NBA.

It is said that the team should celebrate the first victory, but this is only the first of the Clippers' four away games, and they will play three away games next, so there is no time to celebrate this long-lost victory. Instead, he went to New Orleans non-stop, preparing to challenge the Pelicans away.

New Orleans is located in Louisiana. If you open the map of the United States, some people will think that Louisiana's geographical location is more inclined to the eastern part of the United States. In fact, there are three teams in the West, the Pelicans, the Grizzlies and the Timberwolves. Their geographical locations are relatively east, and they are closer to most of the Eastern teams.

From Portland to New Orleans, it is almost from the northwest of the United States to the Gulf of Mexico, and it takes a long time to arrive by plane. So after the game against the Trail Blazers, the Clippers didn't go back to the hotel to rest, but took a special plane to New Orleans.

The Pelicans are also a playoff-level team. In the fiercely competitive West, as long as they can make the playoffs, there are no underdogs.

So in terms of strength, the Pelicans are much stronger than the Clippers.

Facing an opponent stronger than himself, Dai Li could only use "evenly matched" again.

As a result, Dai Li's luck was still very good. After three overtime games, the Clippers narrowly won again, winning two consecutive games.

Then the Clippers flew to Indiana to challenge the Indiana Pacers away.

The Pacers are currently ranked fifth in the Eastern Conference, with a winning rate close to 60%, and this Pacers team has always been known for its tenacity. Although the current situation in the league is that the west is strong and the east is weak, the Pacers are not afraid to face the strong teams in the west.

In terms of strength, the Pacers are also stronger than the Clippers, and this time, Dai Li still used "evenly matched"

This time, luck was not on Dai Li's side. After four overtimes, they lost to the Pacers.

For Dai Li, two wins and one loss in three games are acceptable.

Dai Li had also calculated in his mind that if the result is 50-50 after using "Even Match", then the probability of winning two consecutive games is 1/4. This is actually a very high probability, which is equivalent to the test Multiple-choice questions, when you choose one of the four, you get it right. Many people have encountered this situation.

And if they win three games in a row, the probability is one in eight, which is much lower.

What Li Dai cares about is the probability of the team winning, but what others see is the problem of overtime.

A total of 10 overtime games have been played in the last three games, and the Clippers have become the king of overtime games in the hearts of fans.