The rest is just noise

"LJ, when was the most humiliating moment in your career? Was it when you lost 58 points in a single game in the playoffs?"

"No." Larry Johnson will answer this question in the future. "We would have lost more in the playoffs, but for some reason, the Knicks wanted to control the loss to a specific number."

Controlling points in the playoffs, and controlling the opponent's points loss, usually only happens to teams that participate in betting.

However, the Knicks did not bet on the game and could not bet on the game because New York State made sports betting illegal in 1993.

The Knicks' massacre of the Hornets has heightened the discussion of another matter.

That is the question about who will be named the regular season MVP this season.

Most of the time this season, there is no suspense about the MVP.

Jordan! Jordan! Jordan!

It looks like it can only be Jordan.

If Jordan is elected MVP, he will achieve the second consecutive victory in this award, and at the same time, it will also be the third MVP trophy in his career.

However, after the second battle with the Knicks, the Blazers' tactical system was dismantled by Louis, and the shortcomings of the five-star lineup were discovered by the league.

The Blazers began to lose frequently.

They lost from being first in the league with a clear advantage to third in the league.

During this period, Jordan did not act like an MVP, using his unparalleled personal ability to drag the team out of the quagmire.

In the words of Pat Riley: "Can Michael do it? (referring to leading the team forward), of course! He is the best player of this generation and he can lead us to 80 wins if he wants to

, This is not an exaggeration at all. But Michael knows that he alone cannot get to the end. We have many talented players, so Michael does not need to bear everything alone, he only needs to find a solution to the problem, and all difficulties will be solved.

will be cracked."

It sounds nice, but the Blazers didn't solve the problem until the end of the regular season.

Laili was like a man possessed, vowing to solve the problem of the Blazers' inability to guard against fake pick-and-rolls.

The Trail Blazers, who like to switch defenses, quickly discovered that if they wanted to solve this problem, their lineup could not have too many defensive holes.

In addition to the various butterfly effects triggered by Louis' own operations, what has his rise brought to the alliance?

The most intuitive point: the league has achieved cross-generational development of defensive concepts.

Whether it was the pocket formation in the early 1980s, which forced a large number of 1980s stars to develop a three-point threat that "can at least shoot", or the "suffocation defense" implemented in New York in the late 1980s, which inspired Lai Li and led to

The rise of the Trail Blazers inspired the league to follow suit.

The consequence of these things is that contemporary basketball coaches have a similar understanding of defense as modern basketball coaches:

Targeting people is a bad strategy;

Flexible local defense is the middle strategy;

The best strategy is to mobilize the strength of the entire team to hide defensive deficiencies, or to mobilize the strength of the entire team to achieve the best collective defensive effect.

Double-teaming, assisting defense and supplementary defense are defensive options that have existed since the birth of basketball. Then, Louis brought defense switches and high-speed rotations.

Moreover, he corrected the concept of a generation of coaches: If you have to give the opponent dislocation to ensure that they are basically in alignment, then why not?

Starting from Louis, the concept of proactively giving opponents mismatches on the defensive end and gaining defensive flexibility at the expense of defensive quality is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

It was the defensive revolution brought about by Louis that put the Blazers in a difficult situation.

Because Louis' fake pick-and-roll was just an introduction.

The underlying logic behind the Blazers' inability to prevent this is that the defense of their lineup has fatal hidden dangers, and the offensive firepower that is considered the best in history on paper is difficult to display. Therefore, once a weakness is seized and attacked, the offensive end cannot respond.

If it does, it will collapse.

Louis inspired other coaches, and they began to follow Louis' ideas and target the Blazers.

This is why the Blazers kept losing in the closing stages.

They can really solve this problem roughly.

Laili also knows very well that if the problem is not solved, even if he reaches the finals again, he will not be absolutely sure of defeating the Knicks.

So they fought all the way, at the cost of losing Jordan's MVP qualifications, and at the cost of losing the home court advantage in the Finals (unless the Heat and Nickelodeon were upset), one thing was certain: with the lineup unchanged, the Trail Blazers

The problem cannot be solved.

In other words, the only way to solve this problem is to change the lineup.

However, who among Thomas, Jordan, Barkley, Nance and Sabonis should be substituted?

Although Thomas is here to support the team, he is a winner in the Celtics. At the same time, he is also the only player on this team who has the experience of leading the team to win championships as a core player.

Even if he is a beggar, he can be regarded as standing and asking for food.

In order to win the championship, he has given up his fame and fortune. It is impossible to replace him, not to mention he is not the person with the biggest defensive problem of the Trail Blazers.

Jordan can be skipped.

Barkley was the cause of the Blazers' defensive holes. It can be said that other teams' eyes lit up when they saw him on the court.

Because Barkley, standing in the third position, is like a female dog in heat and will attract the covetous attention of countless male dogs.

Laili's football strategy allowed Barkley to lose weight successfully. However, no matter how thin Barkley was, his defense was not good.

This is purely a human issue.

He can't defend well no matter which position he plays, but playing the third position intensifies the problem of poor defense.

So should the Trail Blazers bench him?

In Louis' previous life, Barkley stole Jordan's MVP award in 1993.

Barkley in this timeline, who has been trained by Laili to lose sight of fat, will only be stronger than Louis in his previous life.

It can be said that regardless of defense, Barkley's hard power should be considered among the top three in the league. Even including defense, he is still among the top five in the league.

The only players better than him are Jordan, Sampson, Olajuwon, and Wilson.

Discussing whether such a player is a possible substitute is like discussing whether the author of this book will update Chapter 10 or 20 tomorrow. It is meaningless.

So, Nance? He and Jordan are the only two players of the Trail Blazers selected for the defense. Replacing him is like Zhang San accidentally breaking his left hand and breaking his right hand just to look more balanced.

Having said that, Nance is indeed the only player on the Trail Blazers who has room for adjustment.

Because Sabonis didn't have to think about it at all. Before he joined the Trail Blazers, he didn't do it for fame or money. He only had one requirement: guarantee.

He knew that he was about to be teammates with a group of superstars, and that it was impossible to get the kind of tactical status in Europe. He was prepared to give Jordan and the others a beating, but as the first player in the history of European basketball, he believed that he could keep up with his teammates.

, and display his personal characteristics, but the premise is that he must have enough playing time.