Our first-round playoff opponent is the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In the original timeline, this was a team that could make every head coach in the league go bald.
Since All-Star center Daugherty was sidelined with a severe back injury, head coach Fratello has completely abandoned offense, relying on a depleted blue-collar roster to bring the game to a standstill.
In the tactics section of the match report, Fratello's famous quote was clearly printed. "If the opponent can only score 0.8 points per round, then we win with 0.9 points."
They only allow 88.5 points per game, the lowest in the entire league.
Their average points per game are also among the lowest in the entire league.
For David Stern, this team was the culprit behind the league's ratings disaster; but for their playoff opponents, they were a super meat grinder spread across the court.
They never care about scoring points; their only pleasure is to disgust their opponents to death with their sweat, sneaky elbows, and relentless harassment.
Lin Qi slowly closed the file, interlaced his fingers, and chuckled softly.
"Interesting. Before meeting Jordan, we'll have to crush this tough nut to crack."
The first match.
The Cleveland Cavaliers simply wouldn't run with the Celtics.
Their starting point guard Trey Brandon, is incredibly fast, but he moves the ball as slowly as if he's taking a stroll. He sticks his butt out against the defender, and each time he manages to get the ball across the half-court line just before the last second of an eight-second violation.
As he entered the half, he shielded the ball while looking up at the countdown timer.
24 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds...
In every possession, the Cavaliers played like a precise clock, slowly grinding down the clock until only five seconds remained. Only when the Boston Celtics' defense started to get impatient would Phills or Mills on the perimeter force their way onto the court and engage in direct confrontations.
In the first game, the young Celtics had half their firepower neutralized by the defensive intensity of the playoffs.
On the perimeter, Bobby Phills pressed his chest and concealed elbow against Jones's lower back. Inside, Michael Cage's every positioning maneuver involved pulling from the referee's blind spot, making it impossible for Garnett to exert any force.
The younger players became increasingly agitated as the fight progressed.
Nineteen-year-old Garnett made two defensive lapses in the first three minutes, accumulating two fouls and being substituted early on.
When Adelman pushed him back onto the bench, the gifted high school student bit a towel in his mouth, slammed his fist into the back of the chair behind him, and his eyes turned red.
Finley attempted to force his way into the paint, but collided squarely with Danny Ferry, who was already in position. Ferry fell backward, and the referee immediately blew his whistle: offensive foul.
With their key players in disarray, the point difference quickly widened to double digits. In the final two minutes of the fourth quarter, Sam Cassell made a difficult shot over the bar, but it slammed into the rim. The Cleveland Cavaliers grabbed the rebound and began stalling for time in their backcourt again.
Beep--!
The game ended with the Cleveland Cavaliers winning 86-79, taking the first game.
Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Boston Celtics' president's box, Lin Qi stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the players leave the court with their heads down.
The tactical system that could easily score over 100 points in the regular season felt like stepping into glue tonight. Facing Cleveland's lackluster physical play, every pass and cut by the Boston Celtics looked like a slow, laborious process.
Lin Qi turned around with a cold face and pushed open the office door.
"It's time these kids learned how to bleed themselves dry in the mud."
It was 11 Late Night. in the CEO's office.
Head coach Adelman's face was ashen, while assistant coach Tom Thibodeau, responsible for defense, was staring at the video of the first game, his Coke can crumpled in his hand.
Thibodeau said in a hoarse voice, " Brandon is trading time for our margin for error. The more impatient our youngsters are, the harder their shells become."
"Then smash his turtle shell."
Lin Qi leaned against his desk, toying with a marker in his hand. " Fratello's quagmire tactics might disgust everyone in the regular season, but in the playoffs, their Achilles' heel is as big as a toilet seat. It can be summed up in eight words... fight fire with fire, a dimensional attack."
Adelman and Thibodeau both looked up at the same time.
"The underlying logic of the Fratello tactic is: 'If I don't score, you won't score either.' But there's a fatal premise... the Cleveland Cavaliers ' own defense can't collapse. During the regular season, how did Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls break through their defensive shell? The Chicago Bulls played with the same intensity on the defensive end, even more aggressively than the Cleveland Cavaliers, forcing their way into position and playing half-court sets. The Cleveland Cavaliers didn't have a superstar to deal with that, and in the end, they could only be defeated by the Chicago Bulls ' unstoppable one-on-one plays from their superstars!"
Lin Qi sneered and turned to look at Thibodeau.
" Tom, first step: shut down their only engine. In the next game, don't use smaller players to play hide-and-seek with Brandon and try to dominate him. Let Kevin and Eddie ( Jones ) suffocate Brandon the whole game! If their engine can't get going, let's see how Cleveland plays!"
Adelman gasped. "What about the offensive end? No more passing and cutting?"
"Forget it. What's the point of teamwork in this mud? This is the second step: pull their Twin Towers out!"
Lin Qi stepped forward and drew a circle heavily on the high part of the tactics board.
" Michael Cage and Danny Ferry are typical old-school big men, excellent at boxing out in the paint, but their movement speed is as slow as an old lady. In the next game, Dino ( Radja ) shouldn't go to the low post for even a second; he should be pulled up to the high post and the free-throw line. He has a top-notch high-post mid-range shot, which is exactly the nemesis of a drop-out, physical player like Cage!"
"Once the penalty area was open, Sam ( Sam Cassell )... specifically 'targeted' that slow-moving Danny Ferry."
There was complete silence in front of the tactical board.
Thibodeau swallowed hard, looking down at the defensive line crossed by the marker, his eyes bloodshot with excitement.
Sitting to the side, Adelman looked at Lin Qi with a strange expression. This usually elegant and highly tactically astute academic coach rubbed his aching temples and finally couldn't help but sigh.
"Lin, sometimes I feel like you're more of a head coach than I am. Why did you spend so much money to hire me to come to Boston?"
Lin Qi's hand, holding the marker, froze in mid-air.
The air fell eerily still for two seconds.
Lin Qi twitched the corner of his mouth, a rare hint of embarrassment flashing across his face at being caught red-handed. He coughed lightly, casually tossed the marker back onto the table, then, while dusting off his suit, shamelessly shuffled towards the office door.
" Rick, you can't say that. If I did all the work of the head coach, who would I pay that hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary every month? Um... it's getting late, I have a regular sleep schedule, I need to go back to sleep first. You and Tom ( Thibodeau ) can take care of the rest of the details, you guys are busy, you guys are busy."
Before he could finish speaking, Lin Qi had already unlocked the door, crouched down, and slunk out of the office, closing the door behind him.
The door closed, and Adelman's faint laugh and curse echoed in the locker room corridor, "This guy... came here to have some fun."
Thibodeau chuckled twice, the seriousness in his eyes completely gone.
The basic logic of the tactics has already been written by that guy who slipped away.
The night after tomorrow, all they need to do is follow the plan and make Fratello lose all his hair on the sidelines.
The second match begins.
The tactical change, implemented in the very first second of the game, plunged the entire Gund Arena into a deathly silence.
Just as Trey Brandon was about to dribble, he looked up and saw Garnett's long arms pouncing right on him like Hupu.
The long, dark arms swung wildly, instantly cutting off all passing lanes.
"Hey shorty, try passing the ball out!" Garnett lowered his center of gravity and threw out a sinister trash talk.
Brandon was instantly drenched in cold sweat. Under Garnett's relentless pressure, he didn't even make it past half-court.
"Beep--!"
The referee's whistle blew sharply: Eight-second violation in the backcourt!
The Cleveland Cavaliers ' star engine stalled right from the start.
On offense, the Celtics completely stopped playing teamwork with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Radja went straight to the free-throw line, forcing Cleveland's two heavyweights to follow, instantly opening up a wide corridor in the Cleveland Cavaliers' previously impenetrable paint.
Sam Cassell grinned widely, grabbed the ball, and immediately started acting like a hooligan.
He first called for Radja to screen, then forced a switch to "target" Danny Ferry. Facing Ferry, who was 2.08 meters tall and moved as slowly as a grandmother, Sam Cassell didn't need to use his butt to push him, but instead used two consecutive crossover steps that were extremely stealthy on the streets to change direction.
Ferry's massive center of gravity was instantly thrown off balance, and he almost twisted his back. Sam Cassell timed the moment Ferry lost his balance perfectly, stopped abruptly, jumped, and his signature zombie jump shot sank cleanly!
Back to the point, when the Cavaliers finally managed to get the ball across half-court, Sam Cassell started playing dirty on defense again.
Facing Brandon, who was orchestrating the attack, Sam Cassell seized the moment when the referee's view was obstructed by other players and delivered a sharp, resounding blow to Brandon's wrist! After making the steal, Sam Cassell simply shrugged and grinned as Brandon complained to the referee about being hit on the wrist.
In the next offensive possession, Sam Cassell stuck out his rather conspicuously large buttocks for a point guard, and with a powerful push, like a bulldozer, he rammed Brandon all the way from the three-point line into the paint.
Brandon's center of gravity was completely blocked, and despite his speed, he couldn't generate any power. Sam Cassell drove him into a comfortable position, then executed a turnaround jump shot, and it went in!
Fratello's stalemate philosophy instantly became a joke in the face of the Celtics' unreasonable mismatch isolation plays and suffocating defense.
As for Garnett, when the Cleveland Cavaliers' perimeter players were paralyzed by tactics and forced to force their way into the paint within the 24-second timeout, they were met with Garnett's towering arms.
Bang!
Garnett used his terrifying initial burst of speed to catch Cage's powerful shot mid-air, landing with a roar like a beast that had been pent up for two days.
The score was decisive in the final two minutes, with the Celtics trailing 86-88.
It was still Sam Cassell's one-on-one. He lowered his center of gravity at the top of the key, bracing Brandon's almost desperate close-range attacks, and with 24 seconds left on the clock, he forced a jump without any coordination, hung in the air, and coldly launched a mid-range shot.
Whoosh! 88 to 88!
On the Cleveland Cavaliers' final possession, Brandon, double-teamed by Garnett and Jones, abruptly stopped and attempted a mid-range shot that bounced high off the rim.
Inside the paint, former rebounding champion Michael Cage, like a wild beast, stuck out his rear end, trying to block Garnett behind him.
The instant the basketball fell, Garnett leaped into the air with terrifying speed, his monstrous 2.26-meter-long arms soaring over Cage's head and forcefully deflecting the ball towards the outside in mid-air!
"Charge!" Adelman waved wildly from the sidelines.
Sam Cassell dribbled the ball forward, and in a split second when he had nowhere left to retreat, he twisted his body through the crowd and flung the ball towards the unguarded left corner.
Wesley Person calmly received the ball, jumped, and shot.
Swish!
91 to 88.
The Celtics won the game, tying the series 1-1.