In Popovich's view, boosting the team's morale was the most important thing right now. They needed to win Game 6 first; they could worry about the rest later.
If they couldn't win Game 6, what was the point of talking about Game 7?
In fact, Popovich had begun to have doubts of his own. He wondered whether the strategy he'd devised—guarding Wang Yi one-on-one—was the right one.
The goal of guarding Wang Yi one-on-one was to wear him down. Popovich believed that as the series went on, Wang Yi would become more and more fatigued and his performance would get worse.
But in reality, Wang Yi had only looked a little off in Game 3. He'd recovered quite a bit in Game 4, then bounced back in Game 5 with a 70-plus-point game.
It seemed like the guy's stamina hadn't been affected at all.
What Popovich didn't know was that Wang Yi had a cheat code on his side.
No matter how much a game wore him out, all he needed was a night's sleep, and the next day he'd be full of energy again.
Still, although Popovich had his doubts, he had no intention of changing his defensive strategy.
Even though Wang Yi never seemed affected by the previous game, he still ran into some stamina problems in the second half of the third quarter.
By the fourth quarter, those problems became even more pronounced.
That was exactly what Popovich's defensive strategy was designed to cause.
No matter how good your stamina was, if you had to initiate the offense from start to finish,
and your connection with your teammates was cut off, even a man of iron wouldn't be able to take it.
So in the games ahead, Popovich remained determined to stick with the no-double-team strategy.
The