April 26.

The second game of the first round of the playoffs between the Thunder and the Trail Blazers was still played at the Ford Center Arena.

Although the Thunder beat the Trail Blazers 26 points in the last game, O'Neal also beat Marcus Camby without any suspense at the basket.

But in this game, Trail Blazers head coach McMillan still had to put Marcus Camby in the starting center position.

Because except for Marcus Cambi, the entire Trail Blazers now have no center player capable of this position.

So even if Camby was completely at a disadvantage in the match against O'Neal and even faced a blow-up ending, McMillan still had no choice.

What he can do is to try to reduce O'Neal's damage to the penalty area through the defensive arrangement.

In fact, after the start of this game, McMillan has always done this, that is, narrow the defense range of the entire team and try to move the position of all players to the direction of the basket.

Even so, the Trail Blazers may give the Thunder more space to attack on the outside, but giving the Thunder some space to attack is better than being forced to double-team O'Neal, so that the Thunder can get out of the open space.

At least in this case, the Trail Blazers can also use speed to make up for defense and avoid being in a dilemma on both sides.

Unfortunately, McMillan obviously overestimated his players' defensive ability, or in other words, underestimated the Thunder's offensive ability.

Seeing the flaws exposed by the Trail Blazers on the defensive end, Yang Fan was not polite at all and directly let the players start to exert force on the outside, allowing O'Neal to act as bait.

As the game between the two sides continued, at the beginning, the Trail Blazers could also intersperse back and forth between the inside and outside through speed, trying not to let the Thunder come out to shoot at an open position.

But this defensive method is based on the premise that the players are full of physical strength. When the physical strength of the Trail Blazers begins to decline, the entire Trail Blazers' defensive efficiency will undoubtedly be directly reduced.

In this case, Thunder can naturally get more opportunities to make mobile phones, forcing the Trail Blazers to pay some price.

In this way, after the half, the Thunder at home was already 12 points ahead of the Trail Blazers.

Although this score is not enough to directly send the game into garbage time, falling behind by 12 points in the first half is basically equivalent to falling into a deep abyss.

After all, the Trail Blazers have always been on the weak side in this series. With this broken lineup, they are not against the Thunder under normal circumstances, not to mention that they are still behind in large scores.

Throughout the second half, the Trail Blazers also made every effort to catch up with points. "Yellow Mamba" Roy and Aldridge joined forces to fight an 8-0 offensive to help the Trail Blazers hold on to the score tightly.

However, the Thunder's offensive methods are too abundant, and the points that can complete the ending are also very scattered.

So even if "Yellow Mamba" Roy scored 12 points in the third quarter, he could only watch the team be hit by five thunders.

Finally, after the game ended, the Thunder defeated the Trail Blazers again with 19 points at home, rewriting the total score of this round of series to 2:0.

In this game, Durant's performance was very impressive. Facing Webster's personal defense, Durant made full use of his personal advantages and scored 37 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists in the game.

In addition to the last game, Durant contributed 68 points in two games. His overall performance was not only very stable, but also a whole body of youth.

In addition to Durant, the "Big Shark" O'Neal's performance in this game is still impressive enough.

As the saying goes, there is an old man in the family, and after entering the playoffs, O'Neal's concentration in the game has been significantly improved.

When facing Marcus Cambi, he even showed his due offensive dominance.

O'Neal made a total of 28 minutes in the game. He made 7 of 11 shots on the offensive end, including 4 of 8 free throws, and eventually contributed 18 points, 7 rebounds and 2 assists.

Marcus Camby, who played against O'Neal throughout the game, only scored 6 points, 7 rebounds and 1 blocked data in this game.

While being dominated by O'Neal again, he was replaced by the Thunder on the defensive end for misaligned singles, becoming a defensive presence for ten thousand people stabbing the defense.

I have to say that if Cambie failed to join the Trail Blazers this year, or the Trail Blazers failed to meet the Thunder in the playoffs, then with Cambie's personal data during the regular season, he would definitely be able to cheat a premium contract.

But after this round of playoffs against the Thunder this year, I believe that although Camby is not ignored during the offseason, he is undoubtedly a bit of a dream to sign the next huge contract.

At most, the veteran can barely struggle with the basic salary.

It can be said that Marcus Cambi directly lost his value in this round of the series, but Yang Fan did not have any psychological burden on this.

After all, Yang Fan was considered to eliminate harm for the people and help other teams avoid trampling on mines, thus blinding his eyes by Marcus Camby's personal data.

In addition, Curry scored 15 points, 2 rebounds and 3 assists in this game, Westbrook scored 13 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists, Jeff Green scored 16 points, 7 rebounds and 2 steals, and Ibaka scored 9 points, 8 rebounds and 3 blocks.

It is worth mentioning that Ibaka has also received a great personal improvement this season.

During the regular season, Ibaka averaged 27.8 minutes per game, and he could contribute 11.7 points, 8.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocks.

Among them, he averaged 2.3 blocks per game, ranked fourth in the league, and the three players in front of Ibaka averaged more than 32 minutes of playing time, and they are all the team's main players.

It can be said that Ibaka has also shed some of the youthfulness of the rookie season and has more stability on both offense and defense.

In the last few games that were about to end the regular season, Ibaka was mentioned by Yang Fan as the starting lineup and had a partner with O'Neal for a period of time.

During that time, the two towers of Ibaka and O'Neal were also excellent, and it could even be said to be just right complementary.

Because as O'Neal grows older, his personal movement speed is already very slow, but Ibaka's excellent defense ability can help O'Neal share more defensive pressure.

Let O'Neal just sit at the basket and wait for the opponent's defender to break through, and leave the rest to Ibaka.

However, Ibaka's shooting ability on the offensive end is much worse than Jamison, so in most cases, Yang Fan will continue to let Jamison be the starting player.
Chapter completed!