Chapter 2214 - 29: Top Anti-Fan_2

Chapter 2214: Chapter 29: Top Anti-Fan_2

The Jazz’s head coach is still Sloan, so in terms of roster construction they’re still using the familiar Point Guard + power forward model.

With Stockton retired, the Jazz used the third pick in the 2005 draft to select Deron Williams.

With Karl Malone gone, the Jazz picked up Carlos Boozer on the free-agent market—Boozer originally planned to stay with the Knight; if he really had stayed, today’s Knight would be stronger, instead of having to sign Chris Weber off the buyout market.

That kind of going back on his word also earned Carlos Boozer the label of "traitor."

Of course, Boozer’s subsequent performance and development proved that coming to the Jazz was indeed the right choice.

He was originally just a second-round pick; after coming to the Jazz, Jerry Sloan’s system suited him perfectly, his numbers shot up, and this season he was selected as an All-Star.

His technical style has been like a fish in water in Sloan’s system, a budget replacement for Karl Malone’s old role—though in terms of individual ability, he’s still quite a ways off from Malone.

Now he has to go up against Ah Gan, and the pressure is anything but small; in their previous matchups, Boozer did manage to take advantage a few times thanks to his youth.

But the playoffs and the regular season are completely different beasts—especially when it’s Gan in the playoffs.

Yao Ming is the first to touch the ball, Glory launches the first attack, opening with a pick-and-roll between Allen Iverson and Gan Guoyang.

Gan Guoyang’s screen is rock solid; Iverson takes one explosive step into the Three Second Zone, the Jazz collapse to help, and Iverson dishes to Gerald Wallace cutting to the rim. Wallace catches and lays it in for the first bucket.

Once in the playoffs, Glory sheds every bit of that regular-season laziness; right from the first possession they’re taut, focus cranked to max.

And for the Jazz, this is their first trip back to the playoffs since the 2002–2003 season when Stockton retired and Malone left.

Nerves are inevitable; you can see it from their passing—stuttering, even trying to run a simple high-post handoff screen, they get bumped by Radiant Players and their rhythm gets cut.

Once rhythm breaks, the offense stops flowing, the set plays don’t come out; after they’re forced into the half court, the first few possessions all turn into isolation.

Williams goes one-on-one against Bell, spins and shoots a fadeaway—misses. Boozer goes one-on-one against Gan Guoyang, still a jumper, also misses.

Glory, on the other hand, is pushing the break at full tilt; Wallace scores in transition, Yao Ming goes to work on the block, catches, and hooks it in.

Glory quickly jumps out to a 6–0 lead; the Jazz, playing at home, urgently need to get on the board.

Gan Guoyang knows Jerry Sloan’s sets inside out, so Glory goes with strict man-to-man defense.

The only defensive hole in their starting five is Iverson, so Porter has Iverson guard Ronnie Brewer.

Brewer is a rookie—if he leaks, he leaks; they’re not worried he can torch Iverson.

The job of defending Deron Williams goes to Bell, and Bell’s tight, physical on-ball defense gives the strong Deron headaches.

More importantly, Gan Guoyang is bodying Boozer at the four, Gerald Wallace is glued to Kirilenko, and Yao Ming is dealing with Oko.

Aside from Iverson being short and at a size disadvantage, Yao being too tall is also a problem; Oko can shoot threes and keeps pulling him out to the three-point line.

But that’s easy to fix: as long as Boozer dives inside, Gan Guoyang is there in the paint; nobody is getting to the rim easily, and the boards are locked down.

The Jazz finally break the scoring drought when Brewer hits a mid-range on the wing, but facing Glory’s stubborn stick-to-your-man defense, the Jazz offense still struggles to get going.

Deron Williams tries to use the pick-and-roll with Carlos Boozer to open things up, looking for cracks in the defense.

Glory opts to rotate—Gerald Wallace comes over in time to help, creating a numbers advantage on the strong side.

That does leave some space on the weak side, but Brewer and Kirilenko’s wing scoring isn’t a lethal threat.

The Jazz’s real killer is still the Williams–Boozer pick-and-roll; their scoring creation is the engine of the Jazz’s offense.

Once those two are choked off, the Jazz are in danger; they don’t even have a third playmaker like Hornacek used to be, someone who can step up and solve problems.

From 6–0, to 6–2, to 10–2, to 10–5, then to 15–5, Glory is cranking up the pressure on the Jazz at both ends.

Gan Guoyang doesn’t take a single shot in the first quarter; he’s purely defending, rebounding, directing, handing offensive chances to Iverson and Yao Ming, letting them find their touch in the playoffs.

Drexler sees this and can’t resist sliding in a jab: "Ah Gan has already degraded into a blue-collar player this season; you’d never have imagined that, not even in a dream. No, actually, back when Ah Gan first came to the Trail Blazers, his blue-collar work was already excellent. It’s just that all his other work was excellent too."

On TV, for the sake of ratings, Drexler isn’t going to worry about anything else—he says whatever he wants.

What if Gan Guoyang’s scoring spikes later? No problem, nobody cares. Early on you make one part of the audience happy listening to you; later, you slap your own face and make another part happy. That’s called killing two birds with one stone—that’s the true essence of commentary.

Unlike the regular season, in the playoffs Gan Guoyang plays the entire first quarter. Glory leads 29–19, up 10 on the Jazz, whose points all come in scattered bits.

Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer are tightly bottled up—one has 2 points, the other 1. Boozer is 0-for-5 from the field, scoring his lone point at the line.

During the break between quarters, Malone, seated not far from the Jazz bench, calls out to Boozer and Williams: "Carlos, you need to defend more, facilitate more! Deron, attack, attack, attack!"

Malone’s veteran wisdom: against Ah Gan’s teams, a power forward, a big man, should stop dreaming about scoring—just defend and organize properly.

The guards, especially the Point Guard, have to go all-out, carry the bulk of the scoring load across an entire series; otherwise, forget about winning.

Boozer takes a sip of water and nods, but in his heart he’s thinking: you say defend, I defend; you say organize, I organize—if only I knew how!

Boozer as a player, the main reason he only went in the second round back then was that his defense was too poor, his athletic profile just average.

He’s not that tall, but he’s very broad and strong; on offense he’s got a soft touch, that crooked-machine-gun mid-range, solid finishing at the rim, old-school, complete skill set—in some ways he does have a bit of Malone in him.

But his defense is miles worse than Malone’s. Malone’s one-on-one post defense was elite; his help defense was limited by his wingspan but still decent.

Boozer is different—his on-ball defense is bad, his help defense even worse. As a big man, he averages only 0.3 blocks; many defensive tasks have to be picked up for him by Kirilenko and Oko.

On top of that, within the Jazz’s UCLA system, his slow lateral movement and weak rim protection are all covered up by the tactics.

That’s why people say his betrayal turned out beautifully—not only did he get more money, he also played himself into a big role on the Jazz and made the All-Star team.

In reality, once he leaves the Jazz’s system, Boozer’s impact drops greatly, because his defensive flaws get magnified and his wide-frame screener’s edge can’t be fully leveraged.

Tonight Gan Guoyang and Glory’s main method of defending Boozer isn’t simply sticking to him, but sabotaging his role in the Jazz system and cutting off his connection with teammates.

When Gerald Wallace comes to help, he focuses on Boozer, not on Deron—exactly for that reason.

At the start of the second quarter, the Jazz, down big, mount a fierce chase. Deron Williams does take the advice to heart, ramping up his individual offense.

This young guard, big and strong—tank-class among Point Guards—when he first came to the Jazz, he couldn’t fit into Jerry Sloan’s system, played terribly, and was so anxious he almost cried.

After several seasons of grinding, he’s becoming one of the best ones in the League—simple, straightforward game, overflowing aggression.

In the second quarter he uses his individual skills—crossover into a floater, pull-up mid-range jumper—to score and cut into Glory’s lead.

At one point the Jazz claw it back to just a 4-point gap; Glory calls timeout, Gan Guoyang checks in, and immediately gives his teammates a mirror demonstration of what the UCLA system really looks like.

Gan Guoyang catches high, fakes a handoff, spins and dribbles down the lane, finishing a left-handed layup.

On the wing at 45 degrees, a simple pick-and-pop; catch, rise, mid-range jumper, good.

From the high post, he sets the screen, catches, draws the defense, then threads a straight pass inside to Iverson for a layup.

In the corner hot zone, catch-and-shoot jumper—pure. Easy as lifting a weight, he fires off 8 straight points, and on defense sends Williams packing with a huge block.

8–0 run, the lead back up to 12. Gan Guoyang reins in his energy again, going back to defense and rebounding.

Drexler holds it in as long as he can, then says, "Ah Gan’s medicine must have worn off—counterattack now, Jazz!"