The rest is just noise

In the conference finals of the Eastern and Western Conferences, the teams facing each other may be fresh or fresh, but they may not be fresh at all.

Both the east and west are missing a familiar face.

In the Eastern Conference, the Celtics, who reached the conference finals eight times from 1980 to 1989, fell in the semifinals.

In the West, the Trail Blazers missed the Western Conference Finals for the first time since they drafted Michael Jordan in 1984.

The reason that caused these two teams to miss the conference finals was injuries. The Celtics' injuries had a great impact. As for the Trail Blazers, Jordan was eliminated by Paul Allen when there was a 40% chance of his return.

Requesting season reimbursement.

He can't gamble the team's future for a 10% chance of winning the championship.

This caused Jordan and Allen to have a bad relationship.

Jordan had to watch helplessly as the team was eliminated 4-2 by the Utah Jazz.

In this way, the Eastern and Western conference finals will become the Knicks versus the Pistons, and the Jazz versus the Lakers.

It is worth mentioning that the Lakers, like the Celtics, have reached the conference finals eight times since 1980.

When the Lakers decided to rebuild and there were many rookies in the team and no strong support, The Tragedy Master led the team to the conference finals with great statistics for two consecutive years. People have to sigh about his strength and the implicit meaning of the Tragedy Master's name.

The malice is so great.

Especially this year, after all, the Celtics are gone. If the league is less competitive, the Lakers may be able to win the third championship in the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar era. Even if there is no championship, the Lakers can win an MVP trophy.

.

But the Knicks won 74 games in the regular season

With New York's media influence and such a record, although the MVP has not yet been announced, it is already certain that the Knicks will choose among the main players.

Either Wilson or Ewing.

The Tragedian may not even get second place in the MVP voting.

Isn't this tragic enough?

Even Louis is not worthy of him, because with the appearance of Louis, the tragedy master has actually become a stronger and more comprehensive player than Louis in his previous life.

However, this tragic upgrade of the best point guard Magic in history has suffered five consecutive defeats in the finals in the modern era and has not yet won an MVP.

Realizing this, Louis indeed felt that he was guilty.

But what can he do? These results were not achieved under his subjective will.

So he spent a few minutes feeling sorry for the tragedy master, and then decided to move on.

On May 20, 1989, Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals began at Madison Square Garden.

The Pistons' results this year are very surprising. The combination of Dumars, Ilo, Aguirre, Worthy, Parish, and Mahon works extremely well.

They played the second-best defense in the league and achieved their biggest goal in the 1980s, defeating the Celtics in the playoffs.

Even if they defeated an incomplete Celtics team, it was enough to comfort the coaching staff and management that their efforts were not in vain.

In the Eastern Conference Finals, they decided to give the Knicks a try.

Although the Knicks swept the Pistons with an overwhelming advantage in the regular season, during the regular season, some teams preferred to play according to their own habits rather than being targeted. They may not adjust their strategies according to the characteristics of their opponents and win or lose at the same time.

When there is little suspense, there is no need to work too hard on yourself.

Now that they have reached the Eastern Conference Finals, and their ticket to the Finals is just around the corner, they will never be intimidated by the Knicks' reputation of 74 wins and vow to compete with them.

Chuck Daly demanded that the game be more confrontational, with protecting the penalty area as the first goal, and ignoring the Knicks' pick-and-roll tactics.

So the Pistons allowed the Knicks' group of pick-and-roll players to frequently make moves in the mid-range without the ball. Even if it was possible to defend them by taking a step forward, they had to choose to take a step back and risk their lives due to the directive from the coaching staff.

The consequence of this is that the inside line led by You Yin is very uncomfortable. The Pistons block the penalty area and they cannot play hard inside.

But ball handlers like Wilson and Stockton who like to play pick-and-rolls are so happy.

Especially Wilson, he has put too much effort on the defensive end this year, and is used as an arrow to defend on the offensive end. His scoring average and shooting percentage are not as good as last season, but his strength is undoubtedly a level higher.

He was originally a player who was very accurate in the mid-range with the ball, but he was sometimes unstable under high-intensity defense, and his confrontation ability still needed to be practiced, so Louis asked him to use more empty-handed running, catching and shooting routines.

However, if you give him a solid screen and no one interferes with his shooting, he can really make you sick with accuracy.

Originally, as long as the confrontation was not strong, Wilson didn't care whether your defense could keep up. He was capable of producing tons of output just by shooting against the defender.

The Pistons chose to give up the mid-range, increase confrontation without the ball, and follow up on the perimeter.

Louis took advantage of the situation and changed the focus of tactics to let Wilson hold the ball more.

After his hand started to develop, Wilson showed a mature and stable side. He was not satisfied with scoring high points and taking away the game by himself. He also liked to serve as a hand-off screener in the high post and attack in the low post to attract double teams. He has become very proficient in these routines.

From an overall perspective, Louis did not use much tactics on Wilson, so from a scene perspective, it was Wilson who led the shooters to lead the pick-and-roll and the inside players who cut through the screen, killing everyone on the court.

"Well done Benj, you are really my baby!"

Ewing felt uncomfortable hearing Louis' disgusting praise.

"Why don't you just pass a few balls?" Ewing was even more angry because Louis had never treated him like this before.

Louis looked at him with contempt: "If I praise you like this, Benj won't have any reaction."

"Humph, that's nice to say," Ewing said bitterly, "It's like you praised me."

"You have to speak with your conscience. Didn't I praise you?"

"do you have?"

"I don't?"

"No!"

"No way!" Louis said firmly, "I slapped your butt at least ten times and then said you did a good job!"

Ewing protested: "That's perfunctory!"

"So what you mean?" Louis suddenly laughed, "Oh my god, you are so disgusting. Do you expect me to call a big guy who weighs hundreds of pounds? You can listen, but I can't call you out. You are too

Disgusting!”

Piston didn't realize the severity of the problem.

Wilson began to appear more at the elbow or holding the ball in the low post. In addition to one-on-one, most of the time, he played a command tower role.

His assists and assist rate have always been low, but the Knicks have enough commanders, so Louis hopes that Wilson will be more like Bird when instigating the offense and guide his teammates to score without taking up too much ball power.

Bird may be the playmaker who most resembles Tetsuya Kuroko in the history of professional basketball.

He basically passes the ball as soon as he touches it and never sticks to the ball. This skill cannot be learned by watching videos. Wilson does not have that kind of monster consciousness, but if you give him the ball and use the standards of a big core, he will be able to do what he does today.

Later this became the core of the tactics.

Use the Pistons' defensive resources to control the penalty area, prevent the Knicks' inside line from showing off, and defend the outside line to avoid being shot through by Stockton, Miller, Wilson, Hornacek, and Marly.

This is the limit.

The middle distance is the point where they actively give up.

Since ancient times, this has been the killing point in the playoffs.

No matter what era, a stable mid-range jump shot can play a key role in the playoffs.

The Pistons bet that the Knicks were inaccurate in the mid-range. Wilson was regarded by Louis as the core ball-handler. He scored 40 points, 7 rebounds and 12 assists, leading the team to a 124-98 victory over the Pistons by 26 points.

"No matter how you look at it, New York dominates this game."

"Patrick Ewing's offense was limited, Kevin McHale only played 20 minutes with poor mid-range shooting, and New York shot 3 of 13 from outside three-point range. You can see how hard Detroit worked to beat the Knicks.

, but they faced a team that won 74 games in the regular season."

"Someone of them can always step up."

The reporters were happy to see Wilson score 40 points, "Benj, congratulations on getting your highest personal score in the playoffs this season in this game. How are you feeling now?"

"I'm very excited, but it's not because of the score, but because we won." Wilson said modestly, "I didn't do much. It was entirely because of the trust of the coach and the support of my teammates. I relied on their strength to perform in this game.

Victory belongs to us, glory belongs to New York."

Every press conference of the Knicks is a representative of extremely high and extremely low emotional intelligence.

Wilson is too good at talking. It's not a question of whether Ewing can talk or not. He doesn't know how to speak human words.

"40 points is great, but I won't be happy for him. Where is this?" Ewing said without a smile, "If it was for victory, I could score 60 points."

After a while, Ewing said to the reporter who was frozen in place: "Yes, I made a joke."

Thanks to Mr. You for throwing himself in the face in the end, otherwise everyone would have thought there was something wrong within the Knicks.

Ewing's jokes, like the talent of a popular star, are only visible to himself and his fans.

Louis is used to it. Even though it is a bad job, he finds it interesting. Now everyone regards it as a repertoire, so he can say whatever he wants.

Just like Wilson never took Ewing's jokes seriously.

Within the team, their relationship is very special.

The two are not friends. They have a strong sense of competition with each other, and even other players have to take sides between them.

But this did not affect their cooperation on the court. If there was a fight, they would stand up for each other immediately.

As long as there is no obvious conflict of interests, this is healthy competition.

The next day, the last grand prize of the season was announced.

The regular season MVP of the 1988-89 season belonged to Patrick Ewing.

He narrowly defeated teammate Benjamin Wilson.

Wilson's biggest advantage in the MVP campaign is media affinity. He is more popular and sought after than Ewing, and is the only wing star among the new generation of stars who can be compared with Jordan.

However, Ewing is the elephant in the room.

He is the boss of the Knicks both on and off the court, and Wilson has repeatedly claimed that the Knicks have only one boss (that is Ewing).

From a data point of view, Ewing is also undoubtedly the leader.

He averaged 23 points, 12 rebounds, 4 assists and 3.8 blocks per game in the regular season, and averaged 24 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 blocks per game in the playoffs.

In contrast, Wilson was limited by ball rights and tactics and did not produce dazzling statistics this season.

Even if he is not as good as Ewing in all aspects, he still lost to Ewing by a small margin in the MVP voting due to his media affinity. Think about it conversely, once Wilson produces data comparable to Ewing in the future, this will

Will the gap be evened out?

The answer is beyond doubt.

At this point, the fourth-year Ewing has completed the harvest of first team, first defense, DPOY, and MVP.

On this day, Ewing was late for training.

Louis didn't give him a good look: "What's wrong? You won't come to training on time after winning the MVP, right?"

"I'm stuck in traffic"

"Yes, yes, after you won the MVP, the bastards on the road started blocking your car. Why haven't they blocked your car before?"

"I'm really stuck in traffic!"

"I believe you. After all, you won the MVP. Maybe you even changed your license plate to MVP? Who else will you block if they don't block you?"

Ewing was furious: "Why the hell don't you believe me?"

"I believe it. The last MVP player in the Knicks was 26 years ago. If they don't block it, who will block it?"

“!#￥@%……”