ESPN famous mouth: The head coach of the Thunder is in his mind, they shouldn t adjust the starting lineup at all

ESPN's well-known basketball commentator Stephen A Smith talked about the situation in the G1 of this season in the NBA Finals in a recent show. Smith scoffed at the Oklahoma City Thunder's personnel arrangement adjustment in G1, and he believed that the Thunder inexplicably changed the team's starting lineup to be the reason why they really lost the game.

A-Smith said: I don't think the Indiana Pacers have control over the game in G1, and they certainly don't control the situation in this series, but I want to say that their performance in G1 sounded a wake-up call for the Thunder. One of my colleagues said it right: Mark Daigneault, are you in your mind? You won 68 games in the regular season this season, but before the NBA Finals started, just because the Pacers made a few harsh words, you changed the starting lineup that has not changed since the playoffs? This is simply dazed! The finals have not started yet, and the start suddenly changed without any change? In my opinion, the failure of G1 in the finals is actually because the Thunder itself has problems, and they shouldn't have adjusted the starting lineup so inexplicably.

In the series before the playoffs, the Thunder have arranged Isaiah Hartenstein as the team's starting center and arranged him to serve as the double tower combination with Chet Holmgren. As a result, in the finals G1, Haltenstein's starting position was replaced by backcourt star Cason Wallace, and the Thunder tried five teams without Chet for a period of time in the game. In fact, reducing the use of inside players did not bring any good changes to the Thunder, but instead led to the team's passiveness in the situation and the team's final defeat to a large extent. Of course, the game's defeat may not be completely related to this point, but the facts also prove that Wallace's performance after entering the starting lineup was not ideal, and Haltenstein still had relatively stable performance after entering the substitute lineup. During the playoffs, Haltenstein averaged 23.5 minutes in the first 17 games, with averaging 9.2 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.6 blocks. He also had 1.2 turnovers and 2.8 fouls. His shooting percentage was 62.1% and his free throw percentage was 70.6%. During the playoffs, Wallace averaged 23.1 minutes in the first 17 games, with averaging 5.4 points, 2.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.4 blocks, and 0.7 turnovers and 2.1 fouls. He shot 40% from the field, 30.6% from three-point shooting percentage and 71.4% from free throws. I wonder if the Thunder will readjust the starter in the next G2 and let Haltenstein return to the starting lineup?