The second half is about to begin. On the television screen, the Boston players walk out of the tunnel.
Lin Qi watched Rick Carlisle's calm expression on the broadcast camera.
Faced with the Lakers' extremely spread-out lineup in the first half, Rick Carlisle made the most tactical and logical adjustment, but it also put the players' physical endurance to the test: cutting off the connection between the inside and outside, and guarding O'Neal one-on-one.
This is a helpless choice. "Choose one of two poisons."
Double-teaming O'Neal would certainly protect the paint, but it would inevitably leave open spaces on the perimeter. If the Lakers ' four shooters found their rhythm from beyond the arc, a barrage of three-pointers could cause the game to collapse within minutes. On the other hand, not double-teaming him and letting Big Ben battle it out one-on-one, while unsightly and allowing O'Neal to score a significant number of points, would require O'Neal to expend tremendous energy battling in the paint for every two-point attempt.
Rick Carlisle chose the latter; he preferred to use Big Ben to wear down O'Neal rather than let the Lakers ' outside shooting get going.
At the start of the third quarter, the Lakers quickly noticed the shift in Boston's defensive focus.
When O'Neal dropped deep into the low post to receive the ball, Garnett kept his eyes on Marion in the corner, showing no intention of helping. Billups, on the other hand, closely guarded Kidd the entire game, making it more difficult for him to pass the ball.
Ben Wallace was completely isolated in the paint. He could only lower his center of gravity and use pure lower body strength to fight off O'Neal.
O'Neal backed down Big Ben three times in a row. O'Neal's huge size advantage was still obvious. He forced a turn in the low post and slammed the Big Ben into the basket twice over Wallace. But on his third attempt, his hook shot was too short and hit the rim.
Although O'Neal was still scoring, the Lakers ' offensive efficiency was forcibly reduced.
Rick Carlisle stood on the sidelines, watching Big Ben being knocked around in the paint, and quickly gave the next tactical signal.
Boston employed the " Hack-a-Shaq Tactic. Players from the bench were brought on one after another, and their task was singular: the moment O'Neal received the ball, they would foul him hard and send him to the free-throw line.
"Beep!!!"
The referee's whistle began to blow frequently. O'Neal stood at the free-throw line with a stern face, his huge hands holding the basketball, and he threw out a series of free throws with smooth arcs.
Clang.
Clang.
O'Neal's poor free throw percentage finally brought the Lakers ' scoring to a standstill. More importantly, frequent clock-stopping and fouls completely disrupted the game's rhythm. The Lakers ' smooth half-court ball movement disappeared, and their outside shooters spent long periods without the ball, their touch turning cold.
Boston took the opportunity to gradually narrow the gap.
Seeing the increasingly stagnant and ugly situation on the court, Phil Jackson called a timeout from the sidelines.
The " Zen Master " decisively substituted Fisher and Marion, who had cooled off, and brought in 37-year-old veteran Mitch Richmond and young Lamar Odom.
After the timeout, Odom received the ball at the top of the arc and orchestrated a play. A convincing pass fake fooled Gerald Wallace, who was making a recovery move, and the ball was cleverly shifted to the weak-side corner.
Mitch Richmond receives the ball. Without any extra adjustments, he jumps very low, but before the Boston defense can rotate and close in, he has already decisively released the ball.
"Whoosh."
A swishing three-pointer from the corner helped the Lakers stabilize their near-collapse situation. At the end of the third quarter, the Lakers led 75-70, a five-point advantage going into the break.
The decisive battle of the fourth quarter has officially begun.
With four minutes left in the game, the scoreboard showed a tie at 82. Both teams were pushing their physical limits, making their tactical movements sluggish, and every screen and switch involved a lot of pulling and scrambling.
For two whole minutes, neither side managed to score from open play; the Staples Center was filled with the sound of missed shots.
With eight seconds left on the shot clock, the ball was passed to Michael Jordan.
Jordan, who had been deliberately controlling his energy throughout the first half, now found himself at the right end of the free-throw line. In modern basketball data analysis, this is a long two-point area with a relatively low expected value, but for Jordan, it was his absolute territory.
He was being guarded by Ron Artest. Artest was sweating profusely, his eyes were bloodshot, he lowered his center of gravity, pressed his chest tightly against Jordan's back, and kept pushing and shoving with his hands, trying to limit Jordan's space to exert force with his extreme physical confrontation.
Jordan dribbled with his back to the basket, leaned back slightly, and just as he was about to take a probing step, Artest subtly nudged Jordan in the lower back.
"Beep!!!"
The baseline referee blew his whistle sharply, pointing directly at Artest, a defensive foul.
Artest paused for a moment, then suddenly raised his hands, his eyes wide like saucers, and strode toward the referee to complain. In the playoffs, where physical contact is emphasized, this level of entanglement being called a foul was utterly incomprehensible to him.
The Lakers inbounded the ball again. Jordan once again positioned himself to receive the ball, and Artest, in an attempt to gain position, got his arm tangled with Jordan's. Jordan deftly broke free, leaving Artest's arm caught.
"Beep!!!"
Another whistle blew. The referee pointed at Artest again, calling it a foul for off-ball movement.
This time, Artest's rational defense completely collapsed. The muscles in his face twitched slightly with anger, his chest heaved violently, and he even started muttering profanities. His eyes were so fierce that it looked like he was about to throw a punch at the referee or Jordan.
Sitting in front of the television, Lin Qi was all too familiar with this kind of body language. Artest's near-out-of-control rage was even conveyed through the screen.
"This idiot is about to make a fool of himself." Lin Qi gripped his water glass tightly, his brow furrowed. In the crucial fourth quarter of the NBA Finals, if Artest lost control of his emotions and received a technical foul, or was ejected from the game, it would be a devastating blow to Boston's morale.
The broadcast camera cut to the Boston bench.
Rick Carlisle reacted swiftly. He clearly sensed Artest's unusual mood and, without hesitation, Rick Carlisle requested a substitution from the technical desk.
Gerald Wallace went to the sidelines to replace Artest.
The substituted Artest was filled with disbelief and anger. As he walked off the court, he roughly pulled at his jersey collar, cursing under his breath. When he reached the bench, he didn't even take the towel offered by the assistant coach. Instead, he kicked a folding chair hard, then slumped into the seat, covered his head with the towel, his body language filled with extreme displeasure and resistance.
The game continued, and this substitution became the turning point of the match.
Facing the relatively inexperienced Gerald Wallace who switched onto him, Jordan didn't even bother with any fakes after receiving the ball. He leaned back slightly, sensed the young man's slightly stiff defensive balance, quickly gathered the ball, and jumped.
Even at 39 years old, his core strength still allowed him to maintain extremely high stability in the air. With his body slightly leaning back, Gerald Wallace jumped with all his might to block the shot, his fingertips still half a hand's width away from the basketball.
With a flick of the wrist, the basketball arced perfectly through the net.
In the next three possessions, without the presence of a top-tier heavy defender like Artest, Jordan dominated both sides of the free-throw line. He didn't need complicated screens; just simple jab steps, back-to-the-basket moves, and sudden fadeaways, and he calmly sank the ball, leaving Gerald Wallace in despair.
84 to 82.
86 to 82.
88 to 84.
With 40 seconds left in the game, Jordan, facing a double team from Boston, hit his fourth audacious pull-up fadeaway jumper from the left mid-range, Staples Center into a frenzy.
" Michael Jordan!!!" commentator Mike Breen roared hoarsely into the speakers, "He took over the fourth quarter! He killed this young Boston with four inexplicable mid-range jumpers!"
The red light flashed, and the buzzer signaling the end of the game echoed throughout the stadium.
The Los Angeles Lakers secured a hard-fought but solid victory in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, 92-88, at home.
On the television screen, Jordan was chewing gum, his face not showing much excitement. He simply gave a light high-five to O'Neal as he walked over, then turned and headed towards the players' tunnel.
Lin Qi, holding a glass of water, leaned back quietly on the sofa, lost in deep thought.
He looked at the full game statistics on the screen. Jordan scored 18 points in the second half with a field goal percentage of over 60%, and the vast majority of those points came from mid-range shots near the free-throw line.
Lin Qi took a deep breath and drank the half-melted ice water in his glass in one gulp.
In the final five minutes of a playoff game where the battle is fierce and the defense is at its most intense, tactics and systems often become completely ineffective due to exhaustion and high-pressure defense. At this point, the ability of a superstar to ignore the defensive environment and forcefully put the ball into the basket one-on-one from mid-range is the only way to break the deadlock.
Jordan taught Boston a lesson with four mid-range jumpers, which also made Lin Qi realize the gravity of the situation.