The 16-4 Pistons overtook the 15-4 Trail Blazers to top the league list!

With 2 wins and 2 losses in four consecutive away games, the Trail Blazers had their worst record since the start of the season. On December 10, Liu Xiu and his teammates flew back to Portland with some frustration.

But after returning to Portland on the "Rose Bay Prison", thousands of fans still came to pick him up, with cheers, cheers, and comforting slogans... At this moment, Liu Xiu felt that they

The current generation of Trail Blazers players have really built a solid local fan base.

As a basketball player, you can only live up to the expectations of the fans!

Liu Xiu entered the intermittent exertion mode.

I went home and had a good night's rest. On December 11th, the home games came back to back!

At 6:40 pm, the Trail Blazers faced the challenge of the Timberwolves in their first back-to-back game.

Tomorrow's opponent, the Pacers, in the second game of back-to-back games, also had some players come to watch the game.

Before the game, Liu Xiu and Tianzun exchanged pleasantries, but they didn't talk much.

Emotions will always fade away. The main reason is that Tianzun won his first career championship with the Pacers, and his friendship with the teammates of that Pacers team is better than that of the "Rose Bay Seven" in just half a season.

The friendship is much deeper, and Liu Xiu won the championship in the second year, and the friendship with his 14 teammates from last season is also deeper than Tianzun.

Coupled with the grievances between Liu Xiu and Artest...

Although there was an uncontrollable flow of players, the friendship between Warden and Tianzun still took a path of mutual separation.

Although the two of them would still greet each other warmly when they met, they couldn't go back to the past.

At 7 o'clock in the evening, the Blazers' home game against the Timberwolves begins!

The fans at the scene were extremely excited tonight - The Butcher is back!

In order to help Randolph regain his form, Liu Xiu gave Randolph 8 singles opportunities in 9 minutes of the first quarter. Randolph was really disrespectful and only scored 6 points on 2 of 8 shots. This made the Trail Blazers first

Trailing the Timberwolves by two points 22-24 at the quarter.

The Blazers' crazy fast-paced offensive state in the past two games was directly destroyed by Randolph.

But not only Liu Xiu, but everyone on the team is accommodating Randolph and giving Randolph the most opportunities, teamwork, and singles opportunities.

In the second quarter, Randolph was not sent out at first, and the Flying Squirrel and Liu Xiu dealt with Garnett for half a quarter.

Randolph continued to sit on the sidelines, digesting the feeling of the 9-minute game in the first quarter, watching the game and thinking about how to play next.

Randolph came back on the court after the official timeout and performed much better, scoring 7 points on 2 of 4 shots and 3 of 4 free throws.

The entire Trail Blazers team worked together and scored 26-25 in the second quarter, defeating the Timberwolves with only Garnett and Szczerbiak left, and easily reversed the situation.

After halftime, the Trail Blazers were only 1 point behind the Timberwolves 48-49.

In the second half, seeing that Randolph had almost adapted, Liu Xiu and Ray Allen started to attack. Randolph played 14 minutes in this half and scored 8 points, 6 rebounds and 1 assist on 3 of 7 shots. His performance improved.

Ray Allen played 14 minutes at halftime and scored 13 points, and Liu Xiu played 16 minutes and scored 12 points and 6 assists.

In fact, the offense was not as good as when Randolph was focused on helping Randolph regain his offensive feeling in the first half. At that time, he was only thinking about offense. Not to mention that the offense was not very good, and the offensive state of the Wizards and Suns was also affected.

Lost, but there are benefits!

During the halftime break, the Trail Blazers' adjustments focused on strengthening their defense!

The Timberwolves were defended and only scored 13 points in the third quarter, only 21 points in the final quarter, and only 34 points in the second half.

The Trail Blazers scored 43 points in the second half!

Ray Allen had 18 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists, Randolph had 21 points and 10 rebounds, and Liu Xiu had 23 points, 6 rebounds and 9 assists.

In this game, the Trail Blazers relied on defense and rebounding to complete their comeback. Garnett was cursing throughout the game. He played 42 minutes and scored 16 points, 22 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, and 5 blocks. Scores, assists, and steals

, not to mention his performance in blocking shots, he got 22 boards by himself, but the team only got 32 boards, and the rebounds his teammates grabbed were less than half of him!

91 to 83, the Trail Blazers easily completed the reversal, improving their record to 16 wins and 4 losses, relying on the advantage of head-to-head wins to regain the league's top spot from the Pistons!

…

After playing against the Timberwolves, I rested for a night, and the next day, December 12, came the game day of the second game of back-to-back games.

Back to back, there is no preparation training.

It can’t be said that it didn’t happen. Yesterday morning’s preparation training was just to prepare for today’s game. When we played against the Timberwolves, we didn’t actually prepare for it. We just went on the field and played.

Today's pre-game meeting focused on analyzing Randolph's play style after his comeback, emphasizing which combinations worked well and which ones didn't.

Randolph played 29 minutes last night, scoring 21 points on 7-of-19 shooting. His efficiency was not very good, but his condition gradually improved as the game progressed. Even Liu Xiu was stunned by the speed of adjustment.

This reminds Payton of another fat guy he once played with - Shaquille O'Neal.

After Maurice Cheeks analyzed yesterday's game, he said very clearly: "Butcher, we need you to reintegrate into the team, immediately, now! If not, the coach will take your place as the starter, you

Be prepared."

Such a serious matter, of course Randolph agreed.

Every team member felt a lot of pressure when the coach said this, but no one thought there was anything wrong with this request.

Everyone knows that the coach is serious. If Randolph performs like yesterday, he will really be put on the bench. Raheem played really well in the few games when Randolph was injured.

Good, and Raheem will not refuse to return to the starting position from the bench.

We have already played 20 games in the regular season, a quarter of the way through, and we will enter the middle of the season in less than half a month. We will certainly not give a certain player too much time to re-adjust after an injury.

Unless this player is nicknamed the Warden.

After putting the pressure on Randolph, the coach went aside to do nothing. Huo Tu and Coach Bush began to make tactical arrangements for tonight's game, which was limited to the meeting level. After the meeting, they continued to rest and gathered for dinner at 5 o'clock in the evening.

, Start warming up and preparing for the game at 6 o'clock...

…

In the evening, the Trail Blazers faced back-to-back challenges from the Pacers at home.

The Pacers' current record is 14 wins and 6 losses, surpassing the Heat's 13 wins and 7 losses and ranking second in the Eastern Conference.

Yesterday, instead of playing against the Pacers, Liu Xiu and others exchanged pleasantries with Tianzun before the game. Today, there was no such thing as pleasantries, just doing it!

At 7:58, the pre-match preparations ended and players from both teams took the field.

Liu Xiu quickly took a look at the player detection reports of the five starting players on the opposite side.

Jamal Tinsley, with an ability rating of 79, averaged 7.3 points, 3.2 rebounds, 6 assists and 1.3 steals per game.

Cuttino Mobley, with an ability rating of 83, averaged 14.4 points, 2.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.4 steals per game.

Ron Artest, with an ability rating of 93, averaged 25.5 points, 6.4 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.8 steals per game.

Jermaine O'Neal, with an ability rating of 91, averaged 17.5 points, 9.3 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 2.6 blocks per game.

Rasheed Wallace, with an ability rating of 87, averaged 12.6 points, 6.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.8 blocks per game.

The team has an excellent offense, with core scorers, veterans, and inside pillars. The two towers combined average 4.4 blocks per game, which is the strongest in the league...

There are also substitutes on the bench such as Austin Crohill, Anthony Johnson, Samonas Jaskevicius, Jeff Foster, David Harrison and others.

After going through a year of pain after winning the championship, cleaning up the veterans, and some mid-level players signed around 2000 expired, the Pacers completed their reconstruction and restarted towards the championship!

Although the lineup is not strong enough and the bench lineup has no strong points, the defense of the three cores is quite amazing. There are three teams averaging less than 90 points per game this season, and the Pacers are one of them!

Liu Xiu's four starting teammates are Ray Allen, Outlaw, Randolph, and Kwame Brown.

At 8pm, the game starts!

The game entered a fierce defensive battle from the beginning.

The best performer of the Trail Blazers in the first quarter was Kwame Brown...played for 8 minutes and scored 6 points, 5 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 block on 3-of-4 shooting!

All 6 points were scored with offensive rebounds!

Led by Kwame Brown, the Trail Blazers led the Pacers by 4 points 22-18 in the first quarter.

However, in the second quarter, Tianzun scored 9 points on 3 of 3 open three-pointers, and the Pacers gave the Trail Blazers a 22-16 quarter score.

At halftime, the Pacers led the Trail Blazers by two points, 40-38.

In the third quarter, the Trail Blazers had a difficult quarter and only scored 14 points. In this quarter, the Pacers relied on Tianzun's precise three-pointers, Artest's sharp breakthrough score, and Jermaine-

O'Neal's singles, Tinsley's increasingly stable passing and control...he scored 27 points in a single quarter!

Although Liu Xiu led the team to 26 points in the final quarter with 7 points and 3 assists, and counterattacked with a score of 26 to 19 in the quarter, the Trail Blazers still lost to the Pacers 78 to 86 and lost the title of the season.

After losing in Game 5, the record fell to 16 wins and 5 losses. The Spurs overtook the team with 17 wins and 5 losses, falling to second place in the Western Conference and third place in the league!

…

Liu Xiu made 8 of 18 shots and scored 20 points, 9 rebounds and 8 assists. Ray Allen scored 15 points on 6 of 13 shots. This performance against the Pacers was pretty good. Kwame Brown played 28 minutes and scored 15 points.

15 points and 14 rebounds can be called an explosion.

But Randolph made 5 of 14 shots and only scored 12 points, 12 rebounds and 2 assists...

In fact, during the game, no one thought Randolph played well. He maintained control throughout the game and attracted the attention of Tianzun and Jermaine O'Neal, the two defensive towers in the league. Only then could he be praised.

Mae Brown made 6 of 8 shots and scored 15 points.

However, Randolph failed to play the role of an inside passing hub in the early season in the offense. The offense was mostly singles, his movement was not good enough, and his positioning was slow... These are indeed Randolph's problems.
To be continued...