The Golden Age of Basketball

Chapter 585 Straight Punch
In Game 2, the Suns played their best in Portland, but the Trail Blazers still managed to come back and win in the fourth quarter.

There is a significant gap in overall strength between the two teams, especially in the paint, where the Suns were completely outmatched on the boards by the Trail Blazers.

In fact, the Suns did not suffer from a rebounding disadvantage when playing the Jazz in the first round; they grabbed more rebounds than the taller Jazz players.

Despite their lack of size, Mark West and Kurt Rambis were very aggressive in rebounding.

But in the semifinals, the Suns couldn't withstand the Trail Blazers, who had the tallest and most powerful interior players in the league.

In the second game, Gan Guoyang grabbed 20 rebounds, including 8 offensive rebounds, creating many opportunities for his teammates.

Sabonis had 21 points and 11 rebounds, with his points mainly coming from second-chance opportunities and assists from Agan.

Despite a mediocre overall shooting percentage in Game 2, the Trail Blazers relied on rebounding and inside offense to defeat the Suns.

Kevin Johnson played exceptionally well, and Danny Ainge and Eddie Johnson also performed admirably, regaining their accuracy from beyond the arc.

Even with a perfect performance, they couldn't beat the Trail Blazers who scored 80 points; there's just no way around it.

The third game was moved to the Arizona Veterans Memorial Arena in Phoenix, and most commentators and fans believed that the Suns would win the game.

This is a common occurrence in the playoffs: a team that is down 0-2 and returns to their home court often has a breakout performance in Game 3.

With the support of their home fans and preferential treatment from the referees, the home team often plays very aggressively and even dirty, hoping to turn the tide of the series.

Away teams with a large lead often struggle to adapt to the away atmosphere or become complacent, leading them to miss a game.

Before the start of the third game, Phoenix fans were shouting and cheering wildly, and kept booing Gan Guoyang.

There were quite a few fans at the scene supporting Gan Guoyang and the Trail Blazers, including not only Chinese but also many American teenagers.

Today, many American teenage basketball fans wear Avia shoes, chew gum, and wear extended Trail Blazers athletic shorts with tight shorts underneath—this was the most popular basketball outfit in the 90s, as seen on Forrest Gump and Michael Jordan.

Avia has launched a variety of equipment for playing ball, including wristbands, elbow pads, knee pads, and headbands. Gan Guoyang has used almost all of them in his matches, making them the best advertisement.

Of all basketball gear, the only thing Gan Guoyang refused to use was a headband, because it looked really ugly on his head.

On the contrary, headbands are very suitable for black players with large foreheads and thin hair. Cliff Robinson of the Portland Trail Blazers is a big fan of wearing headbands.

Cliff Robinson, wearing a headband, played a crucial role in the game tonight.

In the first round and the first two games of the second round, Cliff Robinson was just a minor player and didn't get many opportunities to perform.

The third game between the Suns and the Trail Blazers was extremely intense, with the score fluctuating back and forth, making it a close contest.

The two teams were tied at 20 in the first quarter, but the momentum shifted after the Trail Blazers brought in their bench players.

Bobby Bellman used a second unit centered around Cliff Robinson, Petrovic, and Divac.

At the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter, they launched a 14-2 offensive surge, establishing a 12-point lead.

Instead of letting Petrovic control the ball or Cliff Robinson go one-on-one, Berman passed the ball to Divac, allowing him to hold the ball in the low and high posts to facilitate the offense.

Divac, who had a mediocre performance in the first round, finally showed his value in this match.

He adapted to the speed and intensity of the playoffs, using solid screens and clever passing to energize the Trail Blazers' second unit offense.

Although he didn't have many direct assists, Divac's smooth passing in the high and low posts, as well as his cunning movement, gave the Suns a headache—the Suns had no one to match up against him.

The biggest headache for the Suns in this entire series was that they couldn't match up against the Trail Blazers' three big men in the paint.

The entire Suns team lacks a 7-foot center; the tallest player on the team is 6-foot-11 Andrew Lang.

He's only a sophomore and plays at the end of the bench, getting about 7 or 8 minutes of playing time each game to fill in inside. He's a typical tank-type blue-collar center.

Fitzsimmons tried bringing on Andrew Long, but it didn't work.

While Lang can provide a strong defensive presence in the paint, he can also slow down the Suns' fast-paced offense.

Offense is the Suns' lifeline, and their second unit's inability to connect offensively is the main reason for their deficit.

The Trail Blazers' bench trio's combined attack disrupted the Suns' rhythm.

Playing at home, the Suns grew impatient, with Fitzsimmons bringing on his starters early to close the gap. This put them in Bobby Bellman's rhythm trap, with Bellman first substituting Agan for Thompson to stem the Suns' momentum.

The Trail Blazers continued to let Cliff Robinson and Petrovic, who were in red-hot form, drive the team's offense, and with Terry Porter's deadly pull-up three-pointer from the outside, the Trail Blazers further widened the score in the second quarter.

Porter and Petrovic were like they had scopes in their sights, daring to shoot as soon as they got the ball on the fast break, while Gan Guoyang kept grabbing rebounds in the paint, providing ammunition.

By the 1990 season, the average number of three-point attempts per team in the NBA regular season had increased to seven, with three teams attempting more than double digits of three-pointers, a significant improvement from the two attempts in 1981.

In the playoffs, this number increased to eight, with teams like the Trail Blazers, Nuggets, and Mavericks averaging more than 10 three-point attempts per game.

The Trail Blazers lead the league in both three-point attempts and makes, both in the regular season and the playoffs.

All of this was started by Gan Guoyang. When a team's center and leader practices three-pointers like crazy every day, even the former coach Jack Ramsey has come to agree on the three-pointer, so why wouldn't the others practice three-pointers?
Of the Trail Blazers' four guards, Terry Porter Jr. is the best three-point shooter, although his shooting percentage isn't the highest, he takes a lot of shots.

Moreover, he shoots more and more accurately in the playoffs than in the regular season, showing he has a big heart.

Petrovic ranks second, with the highest shooting percentage at 45%.

He was even bolder with his shots than Peter Porter. In games where he was in good form, he would take any shot, regardless of whether Gan Guoyang was on the court or not.

His field goal percentage has declined in the playoffs, but his three-point threat when he has the ball is very important to the Trail Blazers' tactics.

The third most accurate player is Curry, with good shooting percentage and volume. However, Curry's ball-handling and attacking ability is average, and he relies more on assists. He needs tactical design and is a functional player.

Jeff Hornacek was the worst three-point shooter of the four because he didn't shoot threes at all in college.

He entered the league in 1986 and was trained intensely by Gan Guoyang until this season he finally achieved a 40% shooting percentage.

However, Hornacek has a low shot attempt rate, and his shooting percentage plummeted to 20% in the playoffs, making him an unreliable three-point shooter at the moment.

Of course, the Trail Blazers' best three-point shooter is their center, Gan Guoyang, who is the most accurate and has the highest volume of shots—he attempted 241 three-pointers in 82 regular season games, ranking tenth in the league behind Michael Jordan and Trent Tucker, averaging 2.93 attempts per game.

He made a total of 113 three-pointers, ranking fourth in the league, behind only Michael Adams, Mark Price, and Reggie Miller.

With a three-point shooting percentage of 47%, he made 20 more three-pointers than Jordan, despite taking four fewer shots.

The Suns' defense became increasingly disorganized as they faced the Trail Blazers' barrage of three-pointers.

Tonight, Gan Guoyang didn't join in the scoring; instead, he focused on drawing the opponent's attention inside and fighting for offensive rebounds.

The Trail Blazers led the Suns by 15 points at halftime, making it impossible for the Suns to recover.

In the second and third games, the Trail Blazers' strategy was significantly different from that in the first round, and also quite different from that in the regular season.

Bellman used a simple and brutal "shoot-rebound" tactic to deal with the Suns' lack of height.

The Trail Blazers seemed to have returned to 1985, when Gan Guoyang could grab five or six offensive rebounds in a game, wreaking havoc on the opponent's interior defense.

Berman did this because it was the playoffs, and the playoffs are all about exploiting your most obvious weaknesses and attacking them relentlessly.

Just like a one-on-one match between a tall and a short player, even if the tall player is highly skilled, if it's a game he absolutely has to win, he will definitely use his height advantage to keep attacking the short player, rather than giving up his simple and brutal advantage and playing dribbling and shooting games with you.

The Trail Blazers do have sophisticated half-court offense and an efficient offensive system, but Bellman just doesn't use it; I'll just use my straight punch.

The Suns were helpless against this overwhelming strength. In the third and fourth quarters, they launched a full-scale counterattack, but could not find any way to turn the tide.

The Trail Blazers' twin towers and Jerome Cahill firmly controlled the rebounds, and even though the Trail Blazers' three-point shooting percentage dropped, they still managed to secure the victory.

To everyone's surprise, the Suns, who were expected to turn the tide, suffered a crushing defeat at home.

The final score was 121-100, with the Trail Blazers winning by 21 points on the road against the Suns, even more than they won in the first game.

They made 8 of 17 three-point attempts, a success rate of nearly 50%, with Porter making 4 of them.

克里夫-罗宾逊拿下14分，彼得洛维奇15分，迪瓦茨3分5篮板5助攻。

Gan Guoyang contributed an unremarkable 22 points and 17 rebounds, leading his team to a 3-0 lead and putting them on the verge of a sweep.

(End of this chapter)