NBA's King of Talking

Chapter 497 Both large and small lineups were suppressed.

Jia Fei drove through JR and Love and finished with a stylish dunk. Love and JR shrugged at each other, expressing their dissatisfaction with each other's defense.

On the other side, the Running Man member had already started shrugging. No one is better at shrugging than him; it's almost become an instinct for him. He shrugs to the referee when he misses a layup, indicating that the opponent fouled him; he shrugs to indicate that he didn't foul when he was called for a foul on defense; he shrugs when his teammates make defensive mistakes.

I keep shrugging my hands all day long; I wonder if it's because I've sprinkled magnesium powder on them too many times and there's something wrong with them.

"The Cavaliers didn't defend that play very well. Jia Fei was absolutely amazing! That was a beautiful play!" Wang Meng couldn't help but exclaim.

"The Cavaliers' defense lacks sufficient intensity and speed. Love can't defend pick-and-rolls, and TT's speed is just adequate; don't expect him to sweep the entire court for you. The Cavaliers can only rely on LeBron on the defensive end! But LeBron has to guard George, so he can't free up his hands!" Yang Yi explained in detail.

Jiao Zhixi brought the ball over to set a screen for Love, but the Clippers didn't switch on defense.

Beverley's ability to screen is truly exceptional, while Love's screen quality is indeed quite average.

In the case of this kind of single screen, unless you have the ball-handling and shooting ability of Curry and Lillard, how can a half-baked shooter like Jiao Zhixi so easily make a three-pointer!

Jiao Zhixi passed the ball to the Running Man cast.

With Love's screen, the Running Man player made a strong drive past Gallinari and pushed past Olynyk to complete a one-handed dunk!

It's clear that the Clippers switch on every pick-and-roll. They give you one-on-one opportunities, provide help defense in the paint but don't easily collapse their defense, giving you plenty of open looks on the perimeter.

Olynyk was brought back to the basket because Tristan Thompson was there to grab offensive rebounds, and Thompson doesn't have any shooting ability, so he's not much of a threat from the outside.

4:7, Running Man also scored.

The Cavaliers weren't incapable of scoring; they simply couldn't defend the Clippers.

In fact, the presence of Tristan Thompson and Josh Smith are two points that the Clippers struggle to address. It's well known that the Clippers' starting lineup, a strong defensive team, has only two weaknesses: poor rebounding and mediocre rim protection.

TT is a rebounding maniac, and his presence makes it very difficult for the Clippers to protect the defensive rebounds. Meanwhile, Runner-up is one of the strongest penetrators in the league, posing a huge threat to most teams that do not have a tall center.

The Clippers have Jia Fei and Paul George, but they can't completely contain Running Man. Because Running Man uses pick-and-rolls, the real obstacle to his rim protection isn't the player in front of him, but the player guarding the paint.

But the Clippers aren't afraid of them. While TT is great at offensive rebounding, his presence prevents the Cavaliers from executing their signature "one star and four shooters" strategy. Runner is indeed unstoppable when attacking the basket, but if you want to stop him, you have to accept that he'll lead his teammates to shoot. However, his age and the team's current strength can't support him relentlessly attacking the paint like this.

No matter how well Running Man maintains his physique or how well he performs, he is still 34 years old. The biggest decline with age is never in jumping ability or explosiveness, but in physical fitness. Physical fitness inevitably declines year by year after 30; this is an objective law, and this is the cruelty of time.

The Cavaliers couldn't stop the Clippers, so head coach Larry Drew made some personnel adjustments. They replaced Tristan Thompson with Jeff Green, who has played for multiple teams, and started a five-outside lineup with Kevin Love at center.

This is also a five-outside lineup, but unlike the Clippers' five-outside lineup, this lineup has issues with rim protection and rebounding.

The Clippers have no plans to change their lineup; they did not use the small-ball lineup with Jia Fei at center as they did in the previous round.

In Jia Fei's view, no matter how the Cavaliers change, they are essentially a ball-handling lineup. With Tristan Thompson starting, it's a big lineup focused on defense and rebounding, while Love at center is a one-star-four-shooter composition.

But the Clippers won't double-team the Running Man. If you're so capable, try killing me all by yourself.

This defensive strategy wasn't first implemented by the Warriors, but by the Spurs. The Spurs used this method to prevent their running players from boosting their shooting. Essentially, you can't completely shut down both running players and shooters. It's always a choice between two poisons. The best solution isn't to agonize over which to choose, but to think from a higher perspective: why not just score higher than them?

That's right. As long as the Clippers' offense is better than the Cavaliers', they can win by either defending the Clippers one-on-one or double-teaming them.

Jia Fei and Coach Buden chose the same method used by the Spurs and Warriors: one-on-one defense and rotation to prevent him from engaging his teammates.

After all, the physical strength of the Running Man members is limited, while the Knights' shooter has a strong explosive power that could be difficult to control.

The Cavaliers used a nine-man rotation, with four reserves: Larry Nance Jr., Jeff Green, Kyle Korver, and Jordan Clarkson.

Compared to the Warriors' "Death Lineup," which boasts impressive offensive and defensive capabilities, the Cavaliers simply cannot field a balanced lineup. Even with a purely offensive roster, the offensive ceiling of the combination of Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, Kyle Korver, Jeff Green, and Jordan Clarkson is limited; the only truly threatening player is Durant.

After Kyrie Irving left, the only player on this Cavaliers team who can truly fight tough games is Kevin Love. Love has already proven that he can't even break down wing players like Jia Fei and Paul George in the low post.

The Clippers also used a nine-man rotation in this game. Art Mayok, who was on the bench for DNP, returned to the rotation in Games 4 and 5 of the Western Conference Finals, and Harrell and Lou Williams' playing time also returned to normal.

As for Dillon, he was still heavily relied upon, and the Clippers assigned him to the second unit to defend against the Running Man.

The Cavaliers have always had Running Man lead the second unit in order to make up for the lack of an offensive engine in the second unit.

However, there is a problem: this means that Running Man will leave the game early in the first quarter, and once he leaves the game, the Cavaliers' offense will lack a core player.

With Running Man and Tristan Thompson off the court, the two most threatening players to the Clippers are gone, and the rest are no threat at all. The Clippers have the best perimeter defense in the league; even the Splash Brothers were contained by them, let alone players of Clarkson, Korver, and Nance Jr. on your side.

The Cavaliers are essentially an perimeter team, and Love has lost his low-post threat after losing weight. He's now more of an mediocre player. You could say he can shoot, but he's not that accurate. He can handle the ball, but his playmaking ability isn't strong enough to be the team's primary offensive initiator. His most noteworthy passing move right now is that long pass after a defensive rebound, similar to a quarterback pass, but that's not a regular offensive option.

While the series of trades before the trade deadline did bring them back to the Finals, their ceiling did indeed decrease after those trades.