Chapter 792: Just 1 More Game
The Knicks opened the 3rd quarter with a shooting heavy lineup.
Barea, Curry, Chen Yan, Battier, and Al Harrington shared the floor.
All 5 players were capable 3 point shooters, and the lineup possessed excellent mobility.
Chen Yan took primary responsibility for guarding Anthony.
Tonight, that assignment was not particularly demanding.
Anthony had completely lost the rhythm he carried through the first 3 games, making only 3 of his first 12 shots.
Worse, he seemed determined to shoot himself out of the slump.
He opened the 2nd half by missing 2 more consecutive attempts.
Yao Ming had been Brooklyn's most reliable player.
By halftime, he had accumulated 16 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 assists, contributing in nearly every area.
Without him, the Nets might already have been facing a blowout.
New York adjusted its defense against Yao after halftime.
The Knicks began fronting him aggressively, constantly denying the entry pass and making it difficult for him to establish possession near the basket.
That was one of the inherent limitations of playing through a center.
No matter how dominant a big man was, someone still had to deliver the ball to him.
If the pass never arrived, there was no opportunity to score.
As a result, Yao was gradually forced farther away from the basket.
He began receiving the ball around the high post, near the top of the arc, and occasionally even beyond the 3 point line.
Yao possessed enough touch to score from those areas.
But the principle of basketball remained simple.
The closer the shot, the easier it generally became.
Brooklyn's fans could only watch as the deficit continued to grow.
In reality, even if Yao had maintained his 1st half efficiency, the Nets chances of completing a comeback remained slim.
New York's offensive emphasis in the 2nd half was clear.
3 point shooting.
Suppose a team converted layups at 50 percent, mid range shots at 40 percent, and 3 pointers at 30 percent over 10 possessions.
10 mid range attempts at 40 percent would produce 8 points.
10 layups at 50 percent would produce 10 points.
10 3 pointers at 30 percent would produce 9 points.
That was the mathematical appeal of the 3 point shot.
As long as New York maintained a respectable percentage from beyond the arc, an opponent relying primarily on 2 point baskets would have tremendous difficulty closing a large deficit.
There were essentially 2 ways to survive against the Knicks.
Hope their shooters went completely cold.
Or make enough 3 pointers to match them.
Scoring heavily in the paint alone was not enough.
The real battle was beyond the arc.
And Brooklyn was badly outmatched there.
The Nets did not possess nearly as many reliable shooters as New York, nor could they match the Knicks overall accuracy.
With Anthony struggling badly on top of that, the gap in perimeter firepower became impossible to ignore.
Yao continued finding scoring opportunities late in the 3rd quarter.
Against such a small lineup, a center of his size would inevitably produce something.
But his baskets were no longer enough to change the direction of the game.
By the end of the 3rd quarter, New York's lead had once again climbed beyond 20 points.
Brooklyn's fans immediately remembered the pain of Game 3.
This time felt even worse.
In the previous game, Anthony had at least been dangerous.
Tonight, his jumper had turned ice cold.
With their leading scorer struggling this badly, the home crowd had little reason to believe in another comeback.
Avery Johnson made a bold adjustment to begin the 4th quarter.
Brooklyn shifted its offensive focus toward the pick and roll between Deron Williams and Yao Ming.
Anthony was pushed to the side.
Johnson knew Anthony would hate the decision.
He no longer had the luxury of worrying about Anthony's feelings.
When a scorer was this cold, continuing to feed him possession after possession was simply wasting opportunities.
With the season slipping away, Brooklyn needed something different.
3 minutes into the 4th quarter, the deficit had barely changed.
Johnson made another drastic move.
Yao Ming went to the bench.
Brooklyn went small.
The decision looked desperate, but Johnson had his reasons.
Nothing else was working.
He might as well gamble.
More importantly, Yao had already carried a heavy workload through the first 3 quarters.
Johnson had always been cautious with his minutes because of his injury history.
Once Brooklyn committed to the smaller lineup, the entire rhythm of the game changed.
Jordan Farmar, Anthony Morrow, and MarShon Brooks turned the game chaotic.
Strangely enough, that chaos worked.
Brooklyn began cutting into the deficit.
Nelson responded by turning to Beverley, strengthening New York's perimeter defense.
For most of the first 3 quarters, Chen Yan had focused primarily on facilitating and organizing.
Now he changed gears.
He began displaying the full depth of his scoring arsenal.
Perimeter jumper.
Another.
Then another basket.
Chen Yan personally produced a 7 point scoring burst and crushed Brooklyn's developing momentum.
The home crowd sank into despair.
At that point, watching the rest of the game felt like scratching a losing lottery ticket after the result had already been revealed.
Why keep going when you already knew there was nothing waiting underneath?
The final buzzer confirmed it.
New York Knicks 109.
Brooklyn Nets 88.
Another dominant road victory.
For the 2nd consecutive game, New York had defeated Brooklyn by more than 20 points.
The results raised an uncomfortable question around the league.
How had this Nets team managed to steal Game 1 at Madison Square Garden?
Back inside the visitors locker room, the Knicks were surprisingly calm.
There was no wild celebration.
Players showered.
They changed clothes.
They handled their interviews.
Everything looked routine.
Winning Game 4 had almost felt inevitable.
The series now stood at 3 to 1.
Game 5 would be played at Madison Square Garden.
Few people believed Brooklyn would survive long enough to force another trip back to New Jersey.
New York needed only 1 more victory.
On the flight home, Curry and David West were already discussing who they might face in the next round.
Elsewhere in the Eastern Conference, Miami also held a 3 to 1 series lead over Boston.
Durant had struggled badly through the first 4 games.
Outside of a 29 point performance in Game 3, his production had fallen far below expectations.
Miami had identified a weakness.
Double teams.
Against a single defender, Durant was nearly impossible to contain.
His height, wingspan, skill, and athletic ability combined into an offensive package that very few defenders could challenge.
Against multiple defenders, however, his effectiveness dropped significantly.
His 1 on 1 scoring ability was historically elite.
His ability to consistently solve double teams was much closer to that of an ordinary NBA star.
When Rose was healthy, opponents could not freely send multiple defenders toward Durant.
Leaving a scorer like Rose unattended was far too dangerous.
Once Rose suffered his season ending injury, everything changed.
Teams began aggressively targeting Durant from the opening round.
His scoring average in the 1st round even fell below Stoudemire's.
The problem became even more obvious against Miami.
Sometimes, while reviewing game film, Durant found himself questioning assumptions he had once held about his own game.
He had always considered his handle polished.
His jumper remained one of the most reliable weapons in basketball.
But this postseason had forced him to recognize something.
He was an extraordinary isolation scorer.
When defenses committed multiple players to him, however, he did not always have a clean solution.
That realization made something else equally clear.
Durant needed another dangerous perimeter player beside him.
Someone capable of forcing defenders to think twice before abandoning their assignment.
LeBron James, meanwhile, produced a spectacular performance in Game 4.
39 points.
10 assists.
10 rebounds.
3 steals.
3 blocks.
He controlled nearly every aspect of the game.
Afterward, James and the people around him once again began pushing the argument that LeBron was the best player in basketball.
The narrative gained traction among some fans.
And with both New York and Miami holding 3 to 1 leads, anticipation began building for a potential Eastern Conference Finals showdown between Chen Yan and James.
In the West, San Antonio had already completed a 4 to 0 sweep of Denver.
The Spurs looked frightening.
For a supposedly aging team, they had shown almost no signs of decline.
They swept the first 2 rounds without losing a game.
Experience, discipline, and veteran cunning had made them even more dangerous.
The Lakers and Grizzlies, meanwhile, were tied 2 to 2.
More fans were beginning to question whether Los Angeles would even reach the Western Conference Finals.
The Lakers looked increasingly fatigued as the series progressed.
Even in their 2 victories, Kobe had been forced to expend enormous amounts of energy.
That was not a sustainable formula for a long postseason run.
2 days later, Game 5 between the Knicks and Nets tipped off at Madison Square Garden.
New York needed only 1 more win.
....
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