you are all star

Chapter 341 The first confrontation with Kobe

"Dear viewers, the game between the Pistons and the Lakers, which has been strong in recent years, started 10 minutes later. The starting lineups of the two sides, the Lakers have not changed much, still led by the OK combination, and the Pistons In the regular starting rotation lineup, La Ray Brown put the controversial Neal at the starting point guard position like in the past few games. In the past few games, the performance of this controversial point guard has exceeded expectations. Can he bring the The team tore through the Lakers defense, we will wait and see."

The game was completed with a jump ball amid waves of applause and cheers from the fans. The first wave of possession was won by O'Neal, who was tall and burly, like a spinning top, with extraordinary jumping ability, overwhelmed Ben Wallace of the Pistons. The Warriors picked Kobe Bryant.

What should come will always come, and what should not come will also come.

This is what Neil thought of at this moment. For him, he was looking forward to the stars and the moon in the battle against Kobe Bryant. Finally, this day came, and as a starting point guard, I am very excited at this moment. If I play well, I can wash off the dirt attached to my body by the outside world. If I don’t perform well, I will be wearing the No. [-] jersey. I have already won three consecutive championships. Kobe Bryant, who is the favorite of the black people, is going to explode, so I am afraid that the outside world may sweep his eyes and doubts about him again. After so many years, he is very afraid of such voices and gazes.

However, he firmly believes that as long as he does his best to reduce mistakes and improve efficiency, the outside world will not be angry. He still has a lot of trust in the people of this city.

"Brothers, keep an eye on your own people, don't take it lightly!"

This is what Neal told his teammates from time to time in the process of defending Kobe.

But Kobe, who has always been very tempered and cold-blooded, couldn't understand Neil's words of encouragement to his teammates. He glanced at the unknown Neil, gave him a cold look, and threw away a provocative look and expression. Neil ignored him very much. , I couldn't bear to look at him.

"It's ok, parallel importer Tanhua! How dare you ignore me like this, Peter Pan, see if I don't beat you all over the place today." Neil ignored Kobe like this, and Kobe was very upset, so he reminded himself in his mind.

As soon as this idea was over, Kobe ran around the penalty area with the ball, saw that there was no good opportunity, and ran out of the penalty area. Neal also reacted quickly and hurriedly followed, and at this time an offensive round time was also too short. After the jump, with only two seconds left, Kobe held the ball in front of Neal and dangled it. Neal's attention was diverted. Kobe pulled up the ball, faced Neal's block, and shot three points backwards. The ball was a little short and bounced off the front edge of the basket. The rebound was taken off by Rasheed and handed over to Neal to organize the offense. Love the ball, give the ball to Prince, Prince took the ball, and gave the ball to Ben Wallace who wanted the ball in the low post, Ben Wallace received the ball, and the person in front of him was O'Neal, In an instant, he was full of strength all over his body, turned his back to O'Neill, hit the ball with his butt, received the ball, turned to face O'Neill, bent down, held the ball with a low center of gravity and swayed it, took off, and threw O'Neill with his right hand, even though O'Neill He didn't lose his position and took off to block the block, but he was still slow and didn't touch the ball. Ben Wallace succeeded and led the team to fire first.

As the boss of the team, Ben Wallace's scoring instantly ignited the stadium, greatly inspired the confidence of his teammates, and conveyed a kind of positive energy to them. Such a game trend.

But today they are facing the Lakers, a team that has won three consecutive championships, and this year's goal is to win another championship, so momentum and confidence come in an instant for them.

Therefore, when Kobe came back, he assisted O'Neill to catch and smash the basket and dunk in return.

As the team's point guard, Kobe, who has always liked singles, tried to drive his teammates to score points. Therefore, in the next round, Neal assisted Hamilton to hit a field goal and returned the favor.

You come and I go, the two teams are on the bar.

But in the second half of the first quarter, the Pistons' overall offense suddenly became weak, their shooting percentage dropped, and they didn't make any shots. However, the defense was okay. The defensive end Rashid gave Kobe a cap, which made the audience boil. Kobe It's the kind of person who must take revenge, and when he came back, he tried to tell everyone on the field with a cold-blooded three-pointer: "I don't care if you cap me, as long as the final victory is ours."

Kobe was blocked once, but when he came back, he scored a difficult three-pointer. Therefore, the momentum is still evenly matched. If you have to win or lose, even though the Pistons are at home, the momentum of winning is still the same as the Lakers. Side, because after the first quarter, they got a five-point lead.

Fighting again in the second quarter, because Larry Brown designed a new set of tactics to limit Kobe and assist in double-teaming O'Neal.

This tactic used by Larry Brown achieved great results in the second quarter. At one point, Kobe's shooting rate dropped rapidly, from 50.00% to 40.00%. O'Neal was also double-teamed. Very uncomfortable to defend, and missed several shots in the low post that should not have been missed.

Phil Jackson immediately made adjustments, allowing other players to screen for Kobe in pick-and-rolls, and then let the confident Kobe single out Neal or others. This timely adjustment of tactics prevented the Pistons from further widening the point difference.

And Kobe was also strong, winning two consecutive singles, one against Neil and one against Hamilton, scoring four points in a row to narrow the point difference to only three points.

Larry Brown saw that the situation was not good. Kobe, the scariest person in the Lakers, was coming back, so he had to limit the growth of his self-confidence.

Therefore, a new tactic was also arranged, so that positions [-], [-], and [-] were used as pick-and-roll screens for Neil and Prince respectively, and let them attack.

After adjusting, Neil wanted to see how Prince was doing today, so he handed him a pass, winked at him, and screened and rolled for him.

After receiving the eye signal, Prince used a high pick-and-roll to make a two-pointer. The ball went out of the basket and failed to hit.

When he came back, with the help of his teammates, Kobe decided to play Prince once, and let Prince know that he is the singles king.

He took the initiative to find Prince in the breakthrough attack with the ball, glanced at Prince with provocative eyes beforehand, and then dribbled the ball with fast and coherent left and right low hands, shaking Prince's eyes from side to side, seeing Prince Cooperating very well, Kobe suddenly stopped to the left. Prince thought he was going to break through from that direction, so he hurriedly moved a step in that direction. Kobe wisely passed Prince with a step from his right hand. Hamilton, who came to make up the defense, quickly collected the ball and took three steps. The European step bypassed the person who came to make up the defense, and hit the basket with a low hand.

Kobe's home fans booed and sighed after seeing Kobe's goal.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Neil could not allow Kobe to be so arrogant and domineering, so he had to respond to him.

With this kind of thinking, Neil decided to carry the team on his shoulders and give it a go, because he blindly let other teammates take shots, and if they were inaccurate, it would only make the team face more troubles. In such a desperate situation, he decided to fight Kobe with wisdom and skill.

Based on the current status quo, Neil exploded under Kobe's unsolvable offense. He broke through like the wind, played like flowing water, split the ball when facing double teams, and played decisively in singles when he had the opportunity. Even if he couldn't score, he could still cause damage. , Win free throw opportunities, bite the score tightly, prevent the Lakers from overtaking the score, and not let them increase the score.

With Neal's style of play, all the Lakers players felt unnatural. In the end, the Pistons narrowly beat the Lakers by one point.

Neal scored 24 points, 8 assists, 9 rebounds and 3 steals. Although his data was far behind Kobe's 38 points, he won in the end. This was the first time in his career that he faced Kobe Bryant. , Unexpectedly, he was able to retreat unscathed. He firmly believed that this game would have an extremely significant impact on him.

(End of this chapter)