Chen Xi caught the ball and pushed forward quickly, driving against Shamet all the way to the top of the key. Then he spun into a front crossover, blew straight past him, and charged into the paint before gently lofting the ball over Durant's defense.
The ball spun briefly through the air before the trailing George caught it and hammered it down into the basket.
A spectacular alley-oop dunk.
In fact, if Durant had not backed off fast enough, he might well have ended up on the wrong side of a poster.
But even without getting dunked on, Brooklyn's morale still took a substantial hit.
Chen Xi's unstoppable individual offense, the Knicks' intense team defense, and this string of scoring runs had abruptly wrested control of the game's tempo away from the Nets.
Things would not look good if this continued.
Brooklyn quickly called its second timeout, hoping to make another adjustment and control the tempo.
But it did not seem to help.
After the timeout, they still failed to regain the initiative.
In fact, they might only have been able to keep the deficit steady because the Knicks had already gone deeper into their rotation.
The game slowly progressed along a trajectory that was hardly favorable to the Nets Team.
Before long, the first quarter ended with the score at 37–32.
The New York Knicks carried a five-point lead into the second quarter.
The player statistics were somewhat surprising. Even among the several All-Stars, nobody had put up numbers impressive enough to really stand out.
Chen Xi had delivered a "run-of-the-mill" quarter of 14 points, 3 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal, and 1 block.
Durant, who had looked unstoppable at the start, had also scored "only" 16 points, along with 3 rebounds and 1 assist.
Among the others,