Chapter Ninety-Four: First Encounter with Run-and-Gun

The opening tip went to the Suns’ Thomas.

There was nothing they could do about it. Their starting center, Diaw, stood only six feet eight and was actually shorter than Thomas.

It was fair to say that, in their push for speed, the Suns had effectively abandoned the center position.

Kaman won the tip with ease; Thomas was no match for him.

“Could you show me a little respect and send someone halfway decent to jump?” Kaman said with a spread of the hands after Cassell secured the ball.

“Cut Chris some slack. They don’t exactly have anybody decent,” Xinghui said, going one better and taking a shot at the whole Suns team.

Nash fell back on defense without a flicker of expression, but the other Suns could not be nearly as calm as he was.

Thomas, in particular, had no answer and felt the sting of it keenly.

On TNT, the translator promptly relayed Kaman and Xinghui’s trash talk.

“Hmm, hmm, hmm. I know a Chinese saying about staying near ink and turning black. It means people change when they keep company with bad influences. Clearly, our good boy Kaman has already been corrupted by Xinghui,” Barkley said with a grin.

The Clippers had the ball.

The Suns’ plan was to clamp down hard on Xinghui and Brand: Bell shadowed Xinghui, and Marion took Brand.

On that Suns roster, those were the only two who could really be trusted on defense.

The rest all had glaring flaws.

Nash lacked strength, Thomas lacked experience, and Diaw was too short...

Brand fought for position while Xinghui ran the set. Just as everyone’s eyes fixed on those two spots, Cassell lofted the ball straight down to Kaman under the basket.

Kaman bullied Diaw and finished the layup with ease.

The Suns’ defense had never really been any good.

Otherwise, they would not have fallen short year after year in the conference finals.

Offensively, they were the most explosive team in the league. Defensively, they were only average at best.

“I heard that you...” Xinghui was about to taunt Bell again, but Bell had already sprinted upcourt, so he had no choice but to shut up for the moment and chase after him.

The sight sent Barkley into delight.

“I suggest the rest of the league learn from Bell: don’t give Xinghui a chance to talk. That way you avoid getting rattled by his trash talk. Then his mouth becomes useless,” he said.

“Then what about on defense? You can’t exactly run away there too,” Smith said.

“But at least you’d hear a lot less trash talk.”

“Should I take that to mean you’re admitting your cousin’s trash talk is effective?”

At the other end, the Suns pushed the pace, and the Clippers hurried back.

The most basic key to dealing with Phoenix’s run-and-gun was simple: get back fast, avoid giving up easy men, and force them into a half-court game.

With Nash orchestrating, the Suns’ half-court offense was not bad by any means, but it never had the same bite as their breakneck pace.

Dunleavy had drilled that point before the game.

But knowing it and doing it were two different things.

Kaman, dragging his heavy frame, simply could not outrun Diaw.

Before Kaman had even gotten properly set, Diaw had already carved out an excellent scoring position.

On another team, that position would not have mattered much, because the ball-handler would still have been back there in the rear.

But on the Suns, there was a soul at the center of everything: Nash.

He fired a long pass, and the ball dropped into Diaw’s hands with the precision of guided ordnance. Diaw slipped past Kaman and finished the layup without trouble.

Kaman had contributed nothing on that possession, and now he had to lumber back the other way to attack.

Fortunately for him, the Clippers’ strategy was to control the tempo and avoid running with Phoenix.

So Kaman did not need to rush.

“I heard Kobe used to bully you?”

When the Clippers came down on offense, Xinghui finally had his chance to spit some trash at Bell.

Back when Bell was still a rookie, Kobe had absolutely torched him in a matchup, and there was a good chance Kobe had also used an elbow or two.

Rookie or not, no one cared enough to call the fouls.

In short, Bell disliked Kobe quite a bit.

Otherwise, he would not have locked down Kobe alone and nobody else. He was not Bowen; he did not play dirty.

Bell shot Xinghui a glare and said nothing.

“Come on, when he was bullying you, why didn’t you swing at him? Or were you actually just soft?” Xinghui said.

“I’ll give you a punch in a minute, and then you’ll know whether I’m soft,” Bell finally said.

Xinghui smiled.

Bell was angry.

While they were having their friendly exchange, Maggette’s drive to the rim failed.

Marion, relying on his freakish wingspan and a bit of luck, somehow snatched the rebound.

At once, Xinghui retreated on defense.

Against Phoenix, the worst thing was missing a shot and then having to face their counterattack.

The other Clippers were also racing back, while Marion had already flung the ball ahead to Nash for the break.

The Suns were sprinting forward too, the floor descending into utter chaos, like a pickup game on the asphalt.

That kind of chaos suited Phoenix perfectly, because Nash could always find the teammate in the best spot amid the mess.

On this possession, the ball found Thomas.

Thomas attacked the rim, and only Brand stood between him and the basket, while Kaman and Maggette were still coming back.

Unfortunately for him, Brand stopped him cold.

Thomas was still just Thomas; he could not magically become a Little Emperor.

If that had been Stoudemire on the play, it would have been a thunderous dunk on the roll, and Brand would not have been able to stop it.

“What a pity. If Stoudemire weren’t injured, the Clippers would not have a chance,” Barkley said regretfully.

As a Suns legend, he still very much wanted Phoenix to win a championship.

Brand secured the rebound, and the ball went back to Cassell, who slowed the pace and brought it up.

Xinghui held out a hand for the ball. He intended to isolate Bell, score on him, and humiliate him.

Only then would his next round of trash talk carry real weight.

If he failed to score and Bell completed the defensive assignment, Bell would not be nearly as easy to rile.

Cassell passed it over. For the Clippers as they were now, an isolation by Xinghui was itself a set play.

Xinghui caught it in triple-threat, then immediately drove. Bell stayed glued to him, and Xinghui changed direction at once. Bell mirrored him, never losing position.

But all those repeated movements had already unsettled Bell’s footwork.

Xinghui seized the moment with a huge step-back, creating space between them and pretending to shoot.

Bell had no time to recover; he could only lunge at him.

No one noticed the faint, wicked smile at the corner of Xinghui’s mouth.

He rose into Bell, released the shot, then leaned into him after the attempt and fell to the floor when Bell crashed into him, drawing a three-point foul.

It was a classic move, the kind Harden later made famous: after jumping to shoot, he could land a full yard forward, manufacturing contact with the defender.

Xinghui’s version only advanced a little. It was child’s play.

The key was that the league did not yet have anyone like Harden, so Bell had very little experience dealing with that sort of thing and paid a silent price for it right there against Xinghui.

Xinghui made two of three at the line, and as he retreated on defense, he pointed at Bell’s head.

The meaning was clear: Bell had no brains.

Not much damage, but deeply insulting.