Chapter 701 - 69 Straight Punch

The Suns exhibited their best performance in Portland in Game 2, yet they were overturned by the Trail Blazers in the fourth quarter.

There’s a class difference in raw power between the two teams, especially in the paint, where the Suns’ rebounding was completely dominated by the Trail Blazers.

In fact, in the first round against the Jazz, the Suns didn’t struggle in terms of rebounding, even outrebounding the taller Jazz.

Mark West and Kurt Rambis may be undersized, but they were very active in fighting for rebounds.

However, during the semifinals against the Trail Blazers, who boast the tallest and toughest frontcourt in the league, the Suns couldn’t hold up.

In Game 2, Gan Guoyang grabbed 20 rebounds, 8 of which were offensive, creating many opportunities for his teammates.

Sabonis scored 21 points with 11 rebounds, most of his points came from put-backs and assists from Ah Gan.

Despite an average overall shooting percentage in the second game, the Trail Blazers relied on rebounding and interior scoring to take down the Suns.

Kevin Johnson performed exceptionally, Danny Ainge and Eddie Johnson were also playing well, with their perimeter shooting finding its mark.

Even with a full-score performance, they couldn’t surpass an 80-point Trail Blazers, and that’s just the way it is.

Moving to Game 3 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, most commentators and fans believe that the Suns will take back a game.

This is a common situation in the playoffs; teams that are down 0:2 when returning home often experience an explosion in Game 3.

With the support from the home fans and the favor of the referees, the home team tends to play very tough, even dirty, in hopes of turning the tide of the series.

While the leading visiting team often has trouble adapting to the away atmosphere, or a mental relaxation, which leads to dropping a game.

Before the start of Game 3, the Phoenix fans were madly shouting and cheering, constantly booing Gan Guoyang.

There were not a few fans supporting Gan Guoyang and the Trail Blazers present, not just Chinese people, but also many young Americans.

Nowadays many young American fans are wearing Avia sneakers, chewing gum, dressed in long Trail Blazers sweatpants, and a pair of tight shorts underneath – this was the most popular basketball attire in the ’90s, both Ah Gan and Michael Jordan dressed this way.

Avia has launched a range of basketball equipment, wristbands, elbow pads, knee pads, headbands, and Gan Guoyang has used almost all of them in games, making the best advertisement.

Among all basketball gear, the only thing Gan Guoyang is reluctant to use is the headband, because it simply looks too ugly on the head.

On the contrary, black players with large foreheads and less hair are quite suited to headbands. Cliff Robinson of the Trail Blazers favors wearing a headband.

Tonight, headband-clad Cliff Robinson played an important role in the game.

In the first round and first two games of the second round, Cliff Robinson was a minor character with not many opportunities to shine.

But in Game 3, the main players from both the Suns and the Trail Blazers played fiercely, with the score alternating and closely contested.

The two teams were tied at 20 each in the first quarter, but the game started to tilt after the Trail Blazers switched to their bench lineup.

Bobby Beelman employed a second unit featuring Cliff Robinson, Petrović, and Divac as the core.

At the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second, they produced a scoring surge of 14:2, establishing a 12-point advantage in one fell swoop.

Instead of letting Petrović handle the ball or Robinson play one-on-one, Beelman handed it over to Divac, who facilitated the offense from both the low and high post, opening up the offensive end.

Divac, who had a lackluster performance in the first round, finally demonstrated his value in this game.

He adapted to the playoff speed and intensity, with solid screens and clever passing, spurring the Trail Blazers’ second unit offense.

Though he didn’t rack up many direct assists, Divac’s smooth high and low post passing and crafty positioning caused headaches for the Suns – the Suns had no one to match up with him.

This is exactly what troubled the Suns the most throughout the series; none of them could match up with the Trail Blazers’ three towering big men.

The entire Suns team lacks a 7-foot big man; the tallest on the team is Andrew Lang at 6 foot 11.

He’s only in his second year and sits at the end of the bench, getting seven or eight minutes a game to contribute in the paint, a typical defensive pivot blue-collar center.

Fitzsimmons tried to put Andrew Lang in the game, but it didn’t work well.

Because Lang could hold his ground in the paint, but he slowed down the Suns’ fast offense.

Offense is the lifeblood of the Suns, and it’s the main reason for their lag when their second unit isn’t clicking offensively.

The Trail Blazers’ bench trio’s combination punches disrupted the Suns’ game rhythm.

Playing at home, they grew agitated, and Fitzsimmons promptly put the starters back in the game to catch up on the score.

By doing so, they fell right into Bobby Berman’s pace trap. Beelman first replaced Thompson with Ah Gan, holding back the Suns’ momentum.

Then he continued to drive the team’s offense with red-hot Cliff-Robinson and Petrović, coupled with Terry Porter’s deadly stop-and-pop three-pointers, the Trail Blazers further widened the gap in the second quarter.

Porter and Petrović, like on target practice, dared to shoot as soon as they got the ball in the counterattack; underneath, Gan Guoyang incessantly seized rebounds in the three-second zone, providing the ammunition.

By the 1990 season, in the NBA regular season, teams’ average three-point attempts increased to seven times per game, with three teams surpassing ten attempts, compared to 1981’s twice, marking significant progress.

This number further rose to eight times during the playoffs, with teams like the Trail Blazers, Nuggets, and Mavericks, all averaging more than ten three-point attempts.

Whether in regular season or playoffs, the Trail Blazers led the league in both three-point attempts and made threes.

All this was led by Gan Guoyang; when a team’s center practices three-pointers daily, it turned even old coach Jack Ramsey into a believer in the three-pointer. Would the others not practice it?

Among the Trail Blazers’ four guards, Terry Porter was the best at shooting threes, not with the highest percentage, but with the greatest volume.

Moreover, he shot more and more accurately in the playoffs than in the regular season, proving himself a big-heart player.

Ranked second was Petrović, who had the highest accuracy at 45%.

His shots were even bolder than Terry Porter’s, in some good shooting games, daring to go for it under any circumstances, regardless of whether Gan Guoyang was on the court.

His playoff shooting percentage dropped, but his ball-handling three-point threat was crucial to the Trail Blazers’ strategies.

The third best was Curry, both good with percentage and volume, but Curry’s ball-handling attacking ability was mediocre, more reliant on assists and needed strategic design, a functional player.

Jeff Hornacek was the least successful three-point shooter among them, mainly because he didn’t shoot threes in college.

Entering the league in 1986, he was dragged into intensive practice by Gan Guoyang, achieving a 40% shooting percentage this season, at last.

But Hornacek had fewer attempts and his shooting percentage plummeted to 20% in the playoffs, currently not a reliable three-point shooter.

Of course, the best three-point shooter on the Trail Blazers was their center Gan Guoyang, the most accurate and with the highest volume—during the regular season’s 82 games, he made 241 three-point attempts, ranking tenth in the league, right behind Michael Jordan and Trent Tucker, an average of 2.93 attempts per game.

He hit a total of 113 three-pointers, ranked fourth in the league, only behind shooters like Michael Adams, Mark Price, and Reggie Miller.

With a high three-point shooting accuracy of 47%, while attempting four less than Jordan, he hit 20 more three-pointers than Jordan.

The Suns faced the Trail Blazers’ barrage of threes, their defense becoming more and more unraveled.

Tonight, Gan Guoyang didn’t join the three-point firing squad but instead restrained the opponents inside, scrapping for offensive rebounds.

By halftime, the Trail Blazers were leading the Suns by 15 points, leaving the Suns unable to turn the game around.

In the second and third games, the Trail Blazers’ strategy was distinctly different from the first round and not quite the same as the regular season.

Beelman adopted a simple and brutish "shoot-rebound" tactic to handle the shorter Suns team.

The Trail Blazers seemed to return to 1985 when Gan Guoyang could grab five or six offensive rebounds per game, wreaking havoc on the opponent’s inside game.

Beelman did so because it was the playoffs; during the playoffs, you target your opponent’s most glaring weakness and hit hard.

Just like a tall player against a short player in a one-on-one, even if the tall player has exquisite skills, in a must-win game, he will surely exploit his height advantage to beat the shorter player, rather than forsaking the advantage for dribbling and shooting contests.

The Trail Blazers certainly had intricate positional offenses and an efficient attacking system, but Beelman just wouldn’t use them and instead opted for straight punches.

The Suns had no answer to this overpowering approach; in the third and fourth quarters, they tried to mount a full comeback but couldn’t find a turning point.

Rebounds were firmly controlled by the Trail Blazers’ twin towers + Jerome Kossie; even if their three-point shooting percentage dropped, victory was still secured.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations, what was thought to be a Suns’ comeback turned into a rout on their home court.

The final score was 121:100, the Trail Blazers triumphing over the Suns by 21 points away, even more than the first game.

They made 8 out of 17 three-point attempts in the entire game, a near 50% hit rate with Porter sinking four.

Cliff-Robinson scored 14 points, Petrović 15, and Divac contributed 3 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists.

Gan Guoyang had an ordinary performance with 22 points and 17 rebounds, leading his team to a 3:0 lead, with a sweep imminent.