Vol 3 Chapter 245: March

After the end of the February campaign, the entire NBA has entered the most critical moment of the playoffs.
Teams like the Thunder, Rockets, Warriors, and Raptors are more relaxed. They are all teams that have entered the playoffs. The eyes of the team have reached the last two rounds of the playoffs. There are also some teams that are relatively nervous, and the original lineup is also good, but whether they can enter the playoffs or not is still an uncertain thing. Of course, there are more nervous than these teams. That is the teams that have been rebuilt or have been on the road for a long time. They are all working hard to make themselves more likely to get the best lottery.
For the Thunder, March is a rare time for them to practice the lineup. The highlight of April will definitely be the first round of the playoffs, after all, there will be few games in the regular season. Donovan's keynote for this month is running-in. Unlike the beginning of the season, the origins of the Thunder are already very familiar, and the cooperation between them is also very tacit. The problem they urgently need to solve now is how to allocate different playing time for the three core Thunder players in order to take into account the starting lineup and the bench lineup. After all, in the playoffs, it is impossible to rely on only 6 or 7 people to play the game. There are not many players on the bench that can take on the role of Oklahoma City, and Westbrook, Paul George and Anlo are needed to play. The three of these guys have each brought a rotation lineup individually, but none of them are particularly ideal.
On the first day of April, the Thunder defeated the opponent very thrillingly at the Lone Ranger's home court. This is the last time the two sides played against each other in the regular season this season, and the Thunder still prevailed in the previous few times. The Lone Ranger is destined not to enter the next race. This season, the "Mavericks" are really not strong. And although the Smith they picked last year did well, it was obviously not the core of the team that the Dallasans were waiting for. Therefore, they still rushed to the June draft. It is said that they have fancy a European player. Dallas has always favored international players. In addition to Nowitzki, Nash, Jose Barea, Peja Stojakovic, Wang Zhizhi, Yi Jianlian, etc. The Mavericks played.
But in this game, the Lone Ranger played very well. Although the Thunder was caught off guard by the Thunder's strong offense and defense in the first quarter, it was 15 points behind. But in the subsequent games, they never gave up chasing the score. Barnes and Powell became the arrow figures of the Lone Rangers. The two brothers, inside and outside, just reversed the passive situation of Lone Rangers. Of course, Smith and the old tank also contributed a lot.
When the game progressed to the last quarter, the Lone Ranger even overtook the score three times. Donovan had to put all his main players on the field. With 38.2 seconds left in the game, An Luo took the ball from the three-point line. At this time, the Thunder fell behind by 2 points 108:110.
In fact, in Donovan's arrangement, An Luo can make a move. His position is not bad. Although Matthews is very active and close to him, his strength still cannot cause much trouble to An Luo. But An Luo saw Westbrook in a better position. Without the slightest hesitation, An Luo passed the ball directly. If this were placed in the previous season, An Luo would have voted. It can be seen that after the ability to pass the ball is clicked, some things in consciousness still have some influence.
But Westbrook did not waste Anro's pass. After catching the ball, he used Adams's screen to accelerate and throw off the young Smith. After reaching the inside, Powell, who quickly changed his direction and turned off for defense, leaned on Barnes and scored a layup. The two collided in the air, and the referee blew Barnes's foul.
After steadily making a free throw, the Thunder overtook the score again.
111:110, although only 1 point, but at this critical moment, it is enough to determine the outcome of this game.
With 27.8 seconds left, the Lone Ranger launched an attack. Barnes made a strong breakthrough inside, and Roberson made an offensive foul close to the reasonable collision zone and missed the chance to go ahead. However, the Thunder then returned an offensive foul, and once again passed the opportunity. In fact, these two fouls are both controversial. Barnes's offensive foul was very unreasonable. Perhaps the referee himself found out. In order to compensate the Lone Ranger, he took the opportunity to blow the Thunder one. It seemed that he blew one on one side, and didn't favor anyone. But in fact, neither side is satisfied. This shows that referees are not so good. If it doesn't work, the mouse will get into the bellows-the two will get angry.
The last attack of the Lone Ranger was done by Smith. But his final shot was guarded by Paul George and Anlow together~EbookFREE.me~ In the end, the Thunder relied on Westbrook's two plus one and a perfect defense to narrowly defeat the Mavericks.
After the final whistle sounded, Westbrook took the lead in embracing Nowitzki and others. Then he asked his old teammate McDermott to warm up. The mood of the players on both sides did not have much ups and downs. The Thunder deserved to win, and the Lone Ranger was willing to lose. And after losing the game, they are also closer to the top picks such as No. 1 overall, No. 2 and Tanhua.
After leaving Dallas, the Thunder went to Phoenix. This is another opponent that the Thunder can't take lightly. Not long ago, they lost to each other. But this time the Suns played fairly normal and they lost the game cleanly. And this game, Westbrook and An Luo did not play! After all, this game is just the previous back-to-back game of the Thunder away. Under such circumstances, Paul George became the devil on the court, scoring 45 points in sudden shots. The Suns do not have a player who can limit him.
After winning the game with the Suns, the Thunder went to Portland non-stop to challenge the Trail Blazers away.
This one is not easy! The Blazers now are not what they were at the beginning of the season. Led by Lillard and McCollum with double guns in the backcourt, they have become more and more courageous, advancing all the way, and are now firmly ranked fourth in the West. And in the previous five games, all have won. Judging from the momentum, they are not weaker than the Thunder.
In fact, this game was also the toughest game the Thunder played after the Warriors. Even winning in Dallas before was thrilling, but they have been leading for a long time. On this night in Portland, most of their time was out of chasing each other.