The Trail Blazers’ rotation has shortened, but the Knicks don’t have many cards left either.
Van Gundy is not a coach known for using surprise players or tricks; instead, he is famous for his ability to study various tactical routines.
Unlike other NBA coaches who are either former professional players or have high-level college coaching experience, Van Gundy is an anomaly.
He didn’t play in professional leagues, lacking the talent, so he first went to Yale, then transferred to Menlo College, and eventually went to Nazareth University, a school whose players hardly have a chance to enter the NBA.
In 1984, when Gan Guoyang was leading Gonzaga University to create an undefeated miracle and gaining fame across America, Jeff Van Gundy’s achievement was merely leading Nazareth University’s basketball team into the NCAA Division III tournament finals.
He also hadn’t served as a head coach in any high-level basketball academy; after graduation, he coached in high school and later went to Providence College as Pitino’s assistant, then through Pitino’s introduction, came to the Knicks as an assistant coach.
After assisting several head coaches at the Knicks, Van Gundy finally turned the tide and won the trust of the management to become the head coach.
Van Gundy lacks the keen intuition of a player-coach and the capital to make friends with players, nor does he have the rich experience and qualifications accumulated by academy coaches.
His main path to progress is work hard, work hard, work hard, research, research, and research again.
Van Gundy is a typical bookworm, immersed in the basketball world every day, studying a large amount of text data and statistics.
Like a scholar, he continually innovates theoretically and researches practically, creating various tactical routines and mindsets to build his ideal roster and play style.
This path is destined to be extremely arduous, because basketball inherently has a lot of irrational areas belonging to talent and inspiration, especially at the higher levels of leagues.
The painstaking carving and accumulation of craftsmen cannot compare to the momentary brilliance of geniuses.
Specifically in games, the tactical routines you designed with great effort and trained repeatedly have a lower success rate than an opponent’s super center scoring from an offensive rebound and subsequent put-back.
This is the reality that coaches like Van Gundy must face; how can an ordinary person achieve success in a field filled with talent?
After enduring the agony of many failed seasons, Van Gundy and his group of gifted players finally stand on the stage of the finals. But true talent stands in their way; it wasn’t just Gan Guoyang, the emergence of Kobe as number 8 was completely unexpected for Van Gundy.
He thought Sprewell could offset Kobe, possibly even suppress him with experience.
But in fact, Kobe didn’t fall behind at all, and in Game 4, he delivered a phenomenal performance, leaving the Knicks in a dilemma.
There were no relevant plans in Van Gundy’s pocket card, and he didn’t have more resources to cope with Kobe.
The Knicks reaching the finals itself involved a certain element of luck; they were fourth in the Eastern, and their hard strength was only average.
With the Chicago Bulls gone, leaving no super team in the East, anyone could reach the finals.
The New Jersey Nets died from internal strife, the Celtics died from being too young, and the Pacers from their main players being in poor form.
The Knicks, who had the best and most stable playoff state, stood out, but still lacked confidence against the Trail Blazers.
During a pause, Jeff Van Gundy tried to make tactical adjustments, shifting the defensive focus to the outside line, demanding more stack on the strong side to cope with Kobe’s sharp cuts.
Assistant coach Tom Thibodeau reminded Van Gundy, "Be careful of Ah Gan, he..."
"I know, Tom, I know, but we have no choice; we can’t handle it all."
"I think we better stick to the strategy." Thibodeau offered his suggestion.
He believed that no matter how the situation changes, the strategy should not be changed easily.
This is a major dilemma often faced by NBA head coaches, whether the predetermined plan should change.
There is no definite answer to this question because it’s difficult to predict how the situation will develop.
If you don’t change, let the problem expand, the wound festers, the situation worsens, and you lose the game, fans will criticize you for not being adaptable.
But if you do change, the original problem isn’t solved, new problems arise, the situation gets even worse, and you lose; fans will criticize you for not being persistent, for flip-flopping.
Ultimately, whether to adapt or be steadfast often comes down to a coach’s simple choice.
As for how to decide, some coaches base it on rationality and experience, while others follow their intuition.
Van Gundy lacks intuition, so he relies on experience, but experience tells him that if you relax your guard on Ah Gan, he will definitely punish you.
But at this moment, Van Gundy didn’t follow experience; he decided to take a gamble, betting that Ah Gan would be in poor form, would decline, and would deliver low-efficiency offensive performance.
Clearly, his unnoticed perception of Ah Gan’s decline in the previous three games guided him.
In everyday life, there are many such "psychological cues," a thought, realization, or discovery that inadvertently crosses the mind can significantly influence a major decision later on.
The voice inside tells you that you’ve identified the crux of the problem, seen the essence of things different from the past.
But soon, reality might give you a slap, telling you that the moment of enlightenment wasn’t the wisdom deity descending, but merely a random thought.