beast basketball

Although the altitude of Phoenix is ​​not as high as that of Denver, it is still much higher than that of San Antonio, and the climate here is hot and dry. It is the city with the highest annual average temperature in the United States. It belongs to the tropical desert climate, similar to that in the Middle East, so It is often used as a weapon or personnel training base.

Although it is not the hottest time of the year, the daytime temperature has reached more than 40 degrees. Compared with San Antonio, which has a lower latitude, it is nearly ten degrees higher. The chartered flight of the Spurs landed in Finico. As soon as Stephen stepped out of the cockpit at the Swilliams Pass Airport, he was scared back by the oncoming heat wave. He really didn't expect that Phoenix would be so hot, no wonder it was called the Suns.

Everyone hurriedly packed their luggage and got into the bus. The situation was a little bit better. Looking at the red sun outside, many players who had never played in Phoenix in this environment frowned. , Playing at this temperature is simply fatal.

After putting the luggage in the hotel, Popovich took them to the arena for adaptive training. After playing two games, the players were a little tired, and then came here again to accept such a high temperature test , Popovich is very worried that the biggest factor affecting his team's victory may not be that the Suns will explode when they return to the home court, but whether the players can perform normally in such an environment.

Popovich's worries were not unreasonable. During training, all the players of the Spurs were listless. Of course, exhaustion was only the heart of it. The main reason was that they were not used to the climate here. Torture your own players, let them have a very intuitive impression of this place and take them back to the hotel.

After returning to the hotel, the players recovered a bit better. After hearing that there was a swimming pool here, Stephen went for a swim. Not to mention, the feeling of swimming was quite good, so Stephen called over again Swimming with more teammates, playing and fighting, the discomfort to the climate will be eliminated.

While Popovich was preparing for the next game, he was still troubled by the weather. On D'Antoni's side, when he accidentally saw a comment and then saw the source of this comment, he hurriedly arranged People went to order a dozen copies of this issue of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Although this article can also be seen on the Internet, the paper media is more powerful. Although he does not agree with the views of this review, he can use this article. On the next day, he ordered The newspaper was finally delivered, and after the training was over, all the players were called together and a copy of the newspaper was distributed to each player.

After seeing that everyone got a copy of the "Chicago Sun-Times", D'Antoni said: "Everyone, please turn to the third page and look at the position in the upper left corner." After seeing that everyone has turned to it, he went on to say: "As you all have seen, this review is from Brenny Kwinter, a well-known basketball expert with a relatively neutral view, and the Chicago Sun-Times is not our local media in Phoenix, nor is it San Antonio. media, so the position should also be objective, but this article has criticized us."

"The disappointing Western Conference finals, why do people feel disappointed? It is because after watching those two games, Mr. Winter thinks that the confrontation of the game is not as good as when the Spurs played against the Mavericks. This is the most competitive series in the western part of the playoffs. Mr. Winter said that the Spurs have a physical advantage, but he also believes that with the age composition of the Spurs lineup, even if they have an advantage, it will only be weak. At the same time, even if there is an advantage, it will be an advantage in the first game, and there will never be an advantage in the second game, but in our game, the second game was still easily won by the opponent."

At this time, the Suns players were already a little restless. To say they were tired, they were indeed a little tired, but the main reason was that the Suns’ strength this season was indeed not as good as last season. However, the two teams did not fight particularly fiercely. The Clippers lost at the end of the last game. Their hand feeling was slightly worse than that of the Suns, and the Suns did not have much advantage.

Even the previous seven games against the Lakers were not considered tragic. Although the Suns have reached the tiebreaker every time, they have not had any serious battles. The Suns have a certain strength against these two teams. , but not much higher than the opponent, so he was entangled until the seventh game.

Therefore, when encountering such a difficult Spurs team, the Suns are a bit unsuitable. The offense cannot break through the opponent's defense. The Suns are a team that wins games entirely by offense. If the offense cannot keep up with the opponent, there is no victory Of course, the Spurs' good performance is the main reason, but the Suns' lack of investment in victory is also a problem.

It happened that this article appeared in front of D'Antoni, and was immediately used by D'Antoni as a tool to stimulate the players' desire to win. Others may not know the background of Brenac Winter. He has been wandering in the league for many years, so how could he not know? Well, now that the Heat and the Pistons have reached a one-to-one tie, the Heat have won an away victory. If the Heat finally win the Eastern Conference championship, they naturally don't want to see a Spurs who easily beat the Suns and wait for work.

In the last article, Winter praised Nash greatly, thinking that Nash's performance has reached the extreme, especially in the first game, Nash, who rarely scored, scored 35 points, but imagined that the performance of other Suns players must not Great, Nash has done everything he can, but the teammates around him are not Stoudemire, Joe Johnson and Quentin Richardson last season.

If you don’t know Winter, just from the article, you will think that Winter may not be a fan of the Suns, but he cares about the Suns very much, is worried about the current situation of the Suns, and calls out for the lack of excitement , a neutral and objective basketball expert is on paper.

But this is exactly what D'Antoni needed, so he used it, and this article was also seen by Popovich, but Popovich just said: "boring" and put this comment On the one hand, whether there is this article or not, the Suns will definitely go all out when they return to the home court. Winter's doing this is just judging the heart of a gentleman with the heart of a villain.

It would not be said that without this article, the Suns would release water to the Spurs, allowing the Spurs to easily win this series. As for this article being used by D'Antoni as a morale booster, Popovich naturally does not know , But without this article, D'Antoni would come up with another way.

Before the start of the third game between the Suns and the Spurs, the Spurs came to the central arena in the air corridor, but when they walked into the narrow and small locker room of the visiting team, the staff fiddled with it for a long time and found that the air conditioner was not working. kick in.

At this time, the players had already put on their jerseys, and they were already sweating profusely without wearing warm-up suits. There was a need to worry about catching a cold. Popovich was still in suits and leather shoes, and his shirts were soon drenched with sweat, but After the worker went to negotiate with the other party, he came back angrily. Looking at the expression on his face, Popovich knew that there would be no results.

Sure enough, the other party claimed that there was a problem with the ventilation ducts, and said that they could not solve the problem of the air conditioner in the locker room. Whether it was the staff's own initiative or the Suns' high-level instructions, it was time to entangle the problem with the other party. , will only fall into the opponent's trap, so Popovich ordered the players to change their clothes quickly and go to warm up. After finding the most insignificant staff member to negotiate with the opponent, Popovich put this Things were forgotten.

As soon as the players entered the stadium covered in sweat, Nesterovic and Robert Horry sneezed twice, and the others hurriedly put on their warm-up suits before entering. Many players felt uncomfortable, and even Stephen secretly scolded the Suns for being too shameless for playing such tricks.

By the time the game started, on the surface, the Spurs had recovered, but in essence, the impact had not faded away, but the Suns played extraordinarily unrestrainedly. As soon as the game started, the Suns started to attack the Spurs. Crazy sharp attack frenzy.

The Spurs were able to parry at the beginning, but after half a quarter, they had been beaten by the Suns and had no power to fight back. All their energy was spent on coping with the Suns' offense. Even the Spurs' own rhythm was not Popovich kept roaring on the sidelines and was taken by the Suns long ago.

After the first quarter, the Spurs trailed by [-] points. In the second quarter, the situation became more serious. Popovich didn't even dare to replace the substitute lineup, but he still couldn't change the gap in the score, which was widened step by step. In reality, Stephen scored [-] points in a row in the middle, but he still couldn't help the Suns' offense, but kept the score from being further stretched.

The defense can't prevent the opponent's attack, but the Suns' own offense is disrupted by the rhythm of the Suns, so they can't stick to their own tactical play and can only rely on the individual abilities of the players. This situation is naturally not the Suns team's life. opponent.

Stephen made a goal in the last offense with only three seconds left in the second quarter, otherwise the Suns would have widened the gap to more than [-] points. Looking at the [-]-point gap at halftime , Going back to the locker room was still too hot, Popovich couldn't help being furious, and personally went out to scold the Suns staff.

The opponent still gave the head coach a lot of face. When the half-time break was about to end, a little bit of cool air came out of the air-conditioning outlet in the room, and then the cool air increased accordingly. The shirtless player They all put on their warm-up suits.

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To borrow a sentence from the book, the scorching heat is unbearable. I rode a bicycle on the hot asphalt road for two hours, and almost fainted when I got home. Let’s update the chapter first, and see the status in the next chapter.