The terrifying defense only works half the game! The Thunder cuts off his own arm or reuses Harteng

Sports Weekly All-Media Reporter Li Hui

The road to the finals, the Thunder showed the world their extremely terrifying defensive ability. In the first game of the finals, the Thunder once again interpreted their defensive art to the extreme in the first half. Throughout the first half, the Thunder forced the Pacers to make up as many as 19 turnovers, which set a record of the number of half-time mistakes for a single team in the finals. However, the Thunder's terrifying defense failed to help them win a victory. In the second half of the game, their defensive intensity began to decline, their defensive efficiency began to decline, and they eventually encountered a 15-point reversal in the final quarter.

In this battle, Thunder coach Dagenot boldly changed the team. He let outside player Carson Wallace be the starting lineup and replaced center Harten, who had been starting the previous start. Dagenot's purpose was very clear. He used the five-small and five-small lineups to limit the Pacers' five-small lineup. In the first half, this strategy worked very well. The Thunder made Pacers' mistakes many times, but their poor conversion and offensive efficiency laid the foreshadowing of the loss. When the opponent made 19 mistakes in the half, most of which were live ball mistakes, the Thunder did not seize the opportunity to completely widen the score gap. The gap between the two teams was "only" 12 points, which is undoubtedly acceptable to the Pacers.

In the second half, the Pacers responded to the overall lack of height of the Thunder's small lineup, and asked big men such as Siakam, Toppin, Bryant, Turner to compete for offensive rebounds in turn, and achieved good results. The Thunder had only 39 rebounds in this game, while the Pacers had as many as 56. At the last moment of the game, Siakam's key tip-in also laid the foundation for Halliburton's final quasi-final kill.

During the playoffs, the Thunder continued to reduce Hartten's playing time. Now it seems that good and bad are dependent on each other. On the one hand, Wallace and others gain more playing time can further enhance the Thunder's outside defense ability. They can very well limit their opponents' outside ball holding core. For example, in this game, although Halliburton once again contributed a magical finale, he only scored 14 points in the game, and Nemhard only made 4 of 11 shots, but the price of doing so is that the Thunder's rebounding advantage is gone. Chet Homgren serves as the center, and the team's overall confrontation intensity in the inside has dropped significantly. When they cannot guarantee the rebound, they give the Pacers the chance to breathe and find the feel again.

In addition, the reduction in Hartun's playing time also made the Thunder lose an excellent screener on the offensive end, which undoubtedly restricted the outside offensive players like SGA and Jaylen Williams, especially Jaylen Williams, who still lacked the fire in his personal offensive ability. In this game, the Thunder's nominal second in charge was lost again, making only 6 of 19 shots in the game, and failed to give Alexander enough help.

"I know that this will happen. Coach Dagnot has a strong communication ability. We talked before, and it seems that it was yesterday. I came here to do what is most beneficial to the team. I trust the coach. He did this before. Wallace performed well throughout the playoffs, and he started in the regular season. So I don't think that my appearance on the bench affected the outcome. We control the situation throughout the game. This game is like the first game against the Nuggets. We finally let the victory slip away. The responsibility lies with ourselves." Harten said when talking about the appearance on the bench in this game.

From the perspective of the overall strength of the lineup, the Thunder undoubtedly has a clear advantage, so it is undoubtedly a more stable approach to focus on me. Of course, Dagenot's choice is not completely unreasonable. At least in the first half, the Thunder did firmly control the game, but as the team lost G1, the problem will be in front of the Thunder, and G2 will be the game they must win. In this case, whether Harten will be sent to the starting lineup again and get enough playing time will be a question that Dagenot needs to think about in the next two days.