On January 4th, the Magic faced the Detroit Pistons at home. There was no doubt that this was a tough battle.
However, before the war, Edison still got good news - Iguodala and Nash both recovered from injuries at the same time and can return to the team. Their return will allow the Magic to face strong opponents in their strongest state, and also give them
Edison sets off a smoke war opportunity before the game.
"After the team doctor's examination, Iguodala can play in tonight's game. Although he has been absent for 10 days, I believe he still has enough tacit understanding with his teammates. It is also a pity that Nash still cannot play in this game.
, his current temperature is still 38 degrees, and his nose is always runny. Although he personally wants to play, we feel that there is no need to work so hard in a regular season."
During the morning press briefing, Edison opened his eyes and started telling lies. His language was vivid, his expressions were spot-on, his body movements were rich, and he was very convincing. The reporters below were so frightened that they fainted. Then he took notes carefully and synchronized them.
Send to their respective news homepages.
"Nash can't play. It seems that tonight's game will be much easier." Pistons head coach Sanders browsed the website in the hotel, and then said confidently to his assistant Kent.
"If Nash doesn't play, the Magic's strength will be reduced by at least 30%. However, their backup point guard Rondo is fast and decisive in breakthroughs. This is the type Billups hates the most. Should we make some tactical arrangements in advance?" Kent
He held his chin and looked at the computer screen, but his mind had already begun to deduce the game that night.
Kent is Sanders' assistant. He is only 1 year older than him, only 56 years old, but he already has a full head of white hair. In addition to being tired and hardworking at work, he is of Nordic descent. Europeans follow the latitude.
As the age increases, the color of his hair gradually becomes lighter. Kent was actually platinum-blonde when he was born, and turned completely white as he got older.
"What you said makes sense. We should really pay attention to this. In my impression, the rookie's shooting is very poor. Maybe we can arrange more zone defenses, such as 2-3 zone defense, and release the top of the key to defend.
His breakthrough." After listening to Kent's words, Sanders also began to use his brain to think about the tactical arrangements for the evening game.
As a result, at night, Sanders was still happily arranging tactics in the away locker room and kept drawing running and passing routes on the tactical board. Kent walked in with a dark face.
"Philip, this is the Magic lineup I just got. Nash was activated from the injured list and entered the starting lineup."
Sanders was originally very smug, but when he heard Kent's words, he was stunned. Then he said word by word, "So everything before was deliberately false news by that guy?"
"Well, now it seems that what he said at the press conference this morning is all false." Kent also looked helpless.
"Wtf! This Paul Edison is worth setting off a smoke bomb in a regular season. I'm really impressed by him."
The swearing was followed by the swearing. At this time, Sanders had to overturn the tactical arrangement for the afternoon, and then improvised a way to deal with it. Fortunately, the Magic were their biggest competitor this season, and they had made many plans before.
It's not precise enough, but it's generally reliable and can be used as soon as you get it.
But no matter what, Edison's smoke bomb before the game still had an effect and interfered with the Pistons' preparations. When Edison took the initiative to shake Sanders' hand before the game, the guy obviously used his maximum strength, and the bones of Edison's hand rattled.
.
Because the staff was fully organized, Edison sent out his best lineup for the Magic as the starting lineup, Nash + Roy + Iguodala + Brand + Howard. The Pistons also had 5 players that fans were tired of watching for a long time.
Individual, Billups+ etc.
The reason why I want to single out Billups is to make fun of him.
Billups is indeed a good player, and his career trajectory is very interesting. He entered the league as the third overall pick. Although all the rookies that year were under the shadow of a man named Duncan, his starting point was relatively
It can be considered relatively high. And the Celtics who chose him at the time were in the confused period of Bird's retirement. People initially regarded him as the cornerstone of the team. For this reason, the Celtics gave up 9 players.
Player of the season, the label of the team's first brother was attached to him.
Because Billups looked really good at that time. His skills at that time were not much different from his later peak. He could break through and shoot, and he also had strength far beyond the same position. This made him just enter the league.
He can attack with his back - in my impression, the only outside players who can do this are Anthony and Pierce.
But Billups is also a point back. He has the ability, but he appeared on the wrong team at the wrong time and was asked to implement a wrong tactic.
First, let’s talk about the wrong time. When Billups entered the league, the position of point guard began to undergo revolutionary changes, before a new era of point guards emerged. This also meant that he was in the stage of a point guard style of play at that time.
The peak state is because it can only be broken and then established. To turn into decline, one must start from prosperity.
The point guards at that time belonged to the era of Stockton. It was the peak period of traditional organizational guards, so everyone including Payton, Kidd and others were mainly organization-oriented. The only outlier was Iverson.
. And Billups has always been a scoring point guard, or to use a now fashionable term, it is called a combo position.
Although the combo position later became a fashion in the league, his style of play was difficult for others to accept in the last century.
It would have been okay if he was on another team, but he appeared on the wrong team - the Celtics who were extremely hungry for glory at the time.
I won’t go into details about the Celtics’ honors here, but the more fans of a great team, the more difficult it is to accept troughs, especially long-term troughs. Therefore, after nearly 10 years of missing a championship, Celtics fans have become
On the verge of an explosion, they became more critical than ever. Billups was undoubtedly the focus of their criticism. They believed that such a player could never become the hope of the team's future.
The reason why they looked down on Billups so much was naturally his poor performance, and a very important reason for Billups' poor performance was that the team's tactics were not suitable for him.
The Celtics' head coach at that time was the legendary NCAA coach Pitino, and he still took his NCAA theory to the NBA - his signature full-court press play. This style of play was reversed.
This does not mean that the whole game is full-court press, but that it requires extremely high speed in the transition between offense and defense. Players keep running without stopping, and the oppressed opponent is breathless. You can refer to the current Nuggets for specific effects.
style of play.
But the problem is that Billups has never been a player who likes to set the pace, and the timer has become a big burden for him. But at Pitino's request, he had to play at a high-risk pace.
, Billups never figured out when to pass and when to shoot in an offense that lasted 10 seconds, so one can imagine his performance.
As a result, the patience of the team and fans quickly ran out. At the mid-season trade deadline, after playing only 51 games in his career, Billups was traded to the Celtics in a deal involving multiple players.
The Celtics sent away the Celtics and got experienced All-Star player Kenny Anderson. Although Pitino later said that he loved Billups, he couldn't pass up a chance to grab a real point guard.
A perfect opportunity. And Pitino made the biggest mistake a person can make in the NBA - he didn't choose to endure the pain of growing up and chose what was ready. He wanted to speed up the process.
What's even more ironic is that a year later the Celtics selected Paul Pierce, a player who was also good at slow-paced positional warfare, and because of Pierce's existence, it also laid the foundation for the Celtics' positional warfare ideas in the next ten years. If Bill Lu had
If Puth hadn't left, he would have been able to join forces with Pierce. Thinking about that scene feels wonderful now.
This period of time became a wandering period for Billups. He wandered around the league but could never find his place or his own characteristics. He only stayed with the Raptors for a few months, and then
They sent him to the Nuggets, and Billups was a little bit worse. He missed the opportunity to play with Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter. "He didn't get that from a veteran player.
leadership, so he didn't have that confidence," Butch Carter said. Denver's run was similarly lackluster. "We got him as a 2," then-Nuggets head coach D'Antoni said.
Recalling, "His true position was definitely a big question mark." In the Orlando Magic, Billups' shoulder injury prevented him from playing a minute of the game. By 2000, Duncan and Tracy McGrady had become disappointments.
One of the few arrowheads in the 1997 draft class. Van Horn was okay—not great, but pretty good. The other players were nothing worth mentioning, and as for Billups, people were starting to say
He is considered "a parallel importer".
It wasn't until 2002 that after he ended his rookie contract with the Timberwolves, he found that he could only get a mid-level contract, but fortunately the team he signed with was the Detroit Pistons.
It can be said that Billups was greatly underestimated by the world at that time.
Not much to say about what happened later. In 2004, the Lakers were promoted to f4 and were elected as the finals mvp. In fact, every time the Lakers launch an all-star lineup, the final ending is always so tragic that people can't watch it.
, this season is the same.
But that was not the peak of Billups, because the honors he achieved in the Pistons were always considered not to belong to him personally. He was only a representative of the Pistons team's performance, and it was not Billups who deserved those awards.
Billups' real brilliance came when he later went to the Nuggets and led this team, which was full of talent but had no results, all the way to the Western Conference Finals. He almost became the regular season MVP that season.
, but it was that season that people really realized how powerful he was, and realized that this guy seemed to be the best brain and the best spiritual leader in the league.
But, is Billups really that great?
Some people may have noticed that what I said above has always been that he has never changed. There was no change in his technical and tactical style from the beginning to the later, and there was no particularly big improvement in his abilities. It's just that he later
He met a team that suited him best.
The Pistons lack offensive capabilities. Hamilton, Prince, and Ben can't create their own scoring opportunities, so Billups' scoring ability can be maximized; the Nuggets don't need him to score, but this team is too picky.
However, Billups' composure and habit of positional warfare stabilized the position at critical moments and made up for the team's shortcomings.
Again, the reason why superstars are superstars is because they have good opportunities and meet a team that can maximize their abilities. This does not necessarily mean that they are truly unmatched in the world. In the same way, Nash
Same thing.
So Billups is now overestimated, and just as much as he was underestimated at the beginning, it is now highly exaggerated. His value to the Clippers is not as high as imagined.
…………
The Pistons suffered a loss before the game even started and were at a disadvantage. However, with the skilled cooperation among the five starters, they quickly suppressed their position. Then they continued the experience of last season's Eastern Conference finals and went to hell.
Pinch Nash and prevent him from relaxing the organization.
However, the current Magic is completely different from last season. Roy and Brand have excellent independent offensive capabilities and can completely eliminate the need for Nash to feed the ball. The Pistons' defense began to focus on one thing and not the other, and the inside and outside lines could not respond.
As a result, the Pistons' tactical containment was ineffective, and both sides could only fight with strength.
At this time, the weakness of the Pistons' lack of talent was exposed. Looking at one against one, only Billups and Rasheed Wallace can tie with the Magic. The other three positions are completely at a disadvantage, so the game
The balance begins to tilt toward magic.
In fact, the last time the Magic played the Pistons away from home, they had the same advantage on the field, but because the team was so unlucky, they couldn't make any shots, and they had no choice but to lose in the end.
But today, although Lady Luck is not on the side of the Magic, she is also far away from the Pistons. The Magic's shooting rate is 41%, which is at the lower limit of the normal range. After all, the Pistons' defensive skills still cause great trouble to the players.
In the end, the Magic defeated the Pistons at home 98-92, with a 6-point advantage at home.
Nash, who was said to be unable to play before the game, actually played 34 minutes, tied with Brand for the highest number on the Magic team. Nash scored 19 points and 10 assists. When he was not serving as the team's organizer, Roy and Brand began to harass him.
In return, he served as an outside turret and scored three three-pointers. However, his defensive disadvantages were still obvious. Against him, Billups scored a Pistons-high 28 points.
8 assists.
Brand still had a stable 20+10, playing evenly with Rasheed Wallace who scored 23 points and 9 rebounds.
Although defensive players like Howard and Iguodala are very important, they cannot determine the trend of the game. The biggest contributor to the Magic's victory is Roy.
Brandroy can be said to have beaten Hamilton in this game, making 11 of 17 shots. He also got 8 free throw opportunities and made 7 of them. Finally, he scored a game-high 31 points.
Roy was not only powerful on offense, he also restricted Hamilton very well on defense. Hamilton had average physical talent and was just active in running, while Roy also had a heart that did not relax. He followed Hamilton very closely throughout the game.
Relax for a second. Unless he encountered two Wallace screens from the Pistons, he did not let Hamilton run out of the open space. In the end, Hamilton made only 4 of 14 shots and only scored 9 points in the game. It was terrible.
No more water.
And Roy also won the MVP of this game with his outstanding performance on both offense and defense.
