The Lakers played a good show with small fights in Orlando and defeated the Magic in the winning streak 129-110.
Don’t underestimate this victory. In the absence of Davis, facing such a tall opponent, the Lakers actually played the small ball they dreamed of, not only scoring high, but also assisting 32 times.
What is the concept of 32 assists? The league averaged 24.9 assists, up to 29.4 of the Warriors, and the Lakers ranked in the midstream, with an average of 24.5 assists. This is their fifth assist of the season, 30 +,32 times ranked second.
In fact, as long as the Lakers have more than 30 assists, they have never lost. The average assists of the Lakers in 14 games were 28.9, while the average assists of 20 games lost were only 21.8.
Assists are just data and appearances. The reason for playing 32 assists is that the Lakers used defense to play a lot of offensive and defensive changes. Fast Attack score 15-10 cannot reflect the effect of the Lakers’ offensive and defensive conversion. Without conversion score statistics, 32 assists are the most direct representative.
This is exactly the style the Lakers have always wanted to play: small lineup, strong defense, quick counterattack.
This is also the style Wei Shao likes to play. In this way, he is like a duck to water, and the result is 15+13+13. Three pairs are three pairs, although they cannot be compared with the historical data such as Lucca 60+21+10. Since he played the substitute, it is difficult for Wei Shao to play three pairs again, but this is the third one he got after playing the substitute. There were only three pairs, which could hardly be compared with 194 before him. However, Wei Shao unexpectedly became the first person in history: since the 1970-71 season began to mark the starting substitute, he was the first the replacements to win three double pairs in a single season.
Wei Shao played well, which proved that he had a good pushing effect as a core defender. In this game, his positive and negative value was +18, the highest in the team, indicating that within 29 minutes and a half of his appearance, the Lakers won the Magic 18 points. With such a lack of power, the Lakers were reluctant to replace him, because once they were replaced, the replacement was not such a characteristic, and the small lineup counterattack style of the Lakers lost its support.
Now, I don’t know what happened to Davis’s foot injury. Maybe the senior Lakers can’t judge it internally. Without Davis, using magic is probably the only way.
Before playing Magic, the Lakers, Lakers fans and reporters who followed and reported the Lakers were all in despair. They suffered another 4 consecutive defeats, and in the case of leading 12 points in the third quarter in NBA Christmas wars, they were plot twist by the Mavericks and scored 51 points in a single quarter.
Then they flew to Orlando. Magic is a weak team in the east that won only 13 games, but eight of them won in the last 9 games. Judging from the winning momentum, magic is a strong team in stages.
At this time, the Lakers did not have any morale. Davis’s injury is uncertain. Ham be at the wit’s end, everyone has begun to discuss whether to prepare for next season in advance. A good guy went to James’s Twitter to dig a grave and found that one he sent at the end of the regular season in April this year was gone. That one said: I will never (can’t) miss the playoffs in my career. James deleted the post. Do you think this season is over?
Magic is not easy to play, not only because of the momentum of winning streak, their formation is also very strange: the big Wagner in the first row, who is 211 in height, plays 5, and the Boer, who is 218 in height, plays 4, wagner, who is 206 tall, hit 3, bankelo, who is 208 tall, hit 2, and Fultz, who is only 1, is 191 tall. In front of the Magic, the Lakers are like coming from the “Lilliput”.
It is impossible to compete with the Magic team in height, but fortunately, Ham did not take out the extreme five small swords like playing Mavericks, and did not let James or weishao play center. In order to score points, Ham played weishao, Schroeder, Beverly, Walker and Rives in the fourth quarter. Weishao played 5 in order to score points. As a result, both ends were exploded.
Let Wei Shao play center, really can figure it out.
Although there is no need to rank such an odd extreme five small, the best way to deal with the Magic’s “four big lineups” is to play small, but there is no need to exceedingly five small.
For so many years, I have summarized basketball into three pairs of contradictions. After understanding these three pairs of contradictions, basketball will understand: first, outside line and inside line; Second, strong side and weak side; third, height and speed. The Lakers won the Magic, which is exactly the third one, fighting the height with speed.
It’s easy to say, it’s really not easy to do. Since speed and height are a pair of contradictions, each must have its own advantages and be short. The Lakers’ small lineup is short in height, without height, there is no rebound, and without rebound, there is no counterattack. Therefore, the key is to make up for the weakness of the rebound. The only way is to fight.
In this game, the Lakers won the fight, and rebounding 46-37 won the Magic team with the “four big. In addition to the first “big four” of magic, there are little Wendell Carter and Bamba on the bench. Their common characteristics are both high and able to vote. But they also have problems. It’s really hard enough to play hard. The big men, who had the most rebounds, only robbed five, namely bankelo, Bor Bor and Bamba. However, the Lakers’ Wei Shao robbed 13, Thomas Bryant 10 and James 7. The substitute center Gabriel only played for 15 minutes and robbed 6 rebounds.
Coach Ham is a firm ball player. After losing to the Mavericks, he even thought that he should go to the fifth Junior earlier. He thought: “(play the fifth Junior) just to compete for more ball rights, playing small like that, one of them can push faster when they get defensive rebound. As long as you want to play fast, you have to fight back and make the opponent tired, let them fall into a situation where they can only foul, and then we can use free throws to chase points.”
Fortunately, Thomas Bryant and Gabriel played hard. Otherwise, James and Wei might have to play center again in this game.
After grabbing the rebound, the Lakers launched a quick counterattack. At this point, the whole team was the same, so there was less than half of the 32 assists.
In the conversion of attack and defense, the rhythm of three points can be better, and it is easier for the pitcher to get a large vacancy. In this game, the Lakers scored 17 out of 43 points, and you should know that 7 of them did not come from James’s 7 out of 0.
Recently, James’s three-point ball feels bad. In the last two 11 games, the three-point hit rate this season has retreated to the edge of 30%. But Beverly got four, Troy Brown got three, Reeves and Walker got two respectively. For a team with an average of 10.2 three-point goals per game, 17 three points are just like the new year.
However, this game can’t get the Lakers out of trouble. At most, they can see a glimmer of light in the dark tunnel and know how to deal with the high lineup in the right way. The difficult eastward march of the Lakers is still going on. Next, the heat will be played back to back. It is quite difficult to win. James may take a break. By the last game of the new year, on James’s birthday night, they will challenge the Eagles in Atlanta and fight the Hornets in the last away game.