Thunder gambling five small lineup failed, Dagenot couldn t get rid of his own

The trend of the first game of the finals was beyond the expectations of most people. The Pacers made up as many as 19 mistakes in the first half. They still completed a tenacious reversal when they were 15 points behind in the fourth quarter. Halliburton made a final decision in the last 0.3 seconds.

The most important controversial point of this game occurred in the last stage of the fourth quarter. With about 3 and a half minutes left in the game, Dagnott saw that the outside was pierced by a three-pointer, replaced Homegren with Wallace and chose to set up a five-square lineup to fight the Pacers to the death.

In hindsight, Degenot's adjustment did not achieve the desired effect. During the five small lineups, the Thunder were hit by the Pacers with a 13-4 attack wave. On the offensive end, the pick-and-roll between the Thunder guards was completely limited by the Pacers; on the defensive end, the lack of height made the Thunder repeatedly lose valuable backcourt rebounds, and Nesmith and Nemhard were still using precise three-pointers to quickly chase points. Obviously, Dagenot's five-small decision became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

Put yourself in your shoes and face the Pacers' three-point offensive like a tide, the Thunder urgently need to adjust the team's defensive strategy. In Dagnott's view, Chett's relatively slow pace dragged down the Thunder's overall speed of repairing defense, resulting in the emergence of open space opportunities on the outside. In other words, the Pacers' precise three-pointers made Dagnot question the defense of one, one, four, and four. Faced with this situation, Degenot hopes to start with rotation speed and try to increase the speed and mass of defensive rotation. But he did not expect that the innate excessive defense and rebounding problems of the small lineup exposed the Thunder's Achilles heel.

For the Thunder, in addition to improving the quality of the conversion offense in the next game, the most critical focus of the layout must be the re-evaluation of Chet and the five-small system. If you want to solve the problem of excessive defense, the fifth small team is obviously not the optimal solution. What he needs to do is to put Chet closer to the basket to ensure the quality of the outside defense.

In fact, when the Pacers faced the Thunder's extremely aggressive defensive rotation in the first half, they had an unacceptable situation, and 19 mistakes were the best proof. In the second half, the three-pointer simply made a resolute three-pointer, which became Carlisle's weapon to smash the Thunder's rapid defensive rotation. The Pacers made adjustments during the half-time break and staged an incredible reversal. Next, Dagnot will have more time to think about it. The Thunder are behind 0-1 at home, and they can no longer lose.