▲ Heo Hoon roars
Heo Hoon (left). Yonhap News In the end, the fate of professional basketball teams Changwon LG and Suwon KT, which ended in a final game, rested on the fingertips of each team’s ace guards Lee Jae-do and Heo Hoon. LG, who is a ‘hard shield’, needs Lee Jae-do’s blow to explode, and KT, a ‘sharp spear’, needs to increase the intensity of the pressure to prevent him from winning.
Regular season runner-up LG and 3rd-ranked KT will decide who will win the championship game (4 wins out of 7) in the 5th game of the 2023-24 professional basketball semifinals (3 wins out of 5) held at Changwon Indoor Stadium on the 24th. Up until last year, in the matches between 2nd and 3rd place, the top team advanced to the next round 9 times and the bottom team advanced to the next round 13 times, and it was the same this year .
The key characters are Heo Hoon and Lee Jae-do. Heo Hoon scored 18 points in the 4th home game on the 22nd, when the team was on the verge of elimination with 1 win and 2 losses, leading KT to an 89-80 victory. Heo Hoon, who stepped on the court in place of Paris Bass, who committed three fouls at the end of the first quarter, scored consecutive points after receiving a screen from Michael Eric. The success rate of the shot from outside was only 11.1% (1 out of 9), but he scored a shot by shooting from close range and induced foul from the opponent by breaking new ground. Heo Hoon was also the player who recorded a decisive interception with 7 minutes and 48 seconds left in the game and then sent ‘LG pillar’ Assem Marey for five fouls ▲ LG Lee Jae-do. pictures | KBL
Lee Jae-do On the other hand, Lee Jae-do seems to struggle against the strong defense of KT Jeong Seong-woo. Like Heo Hoon, he only hit 1 out of 9 3-point attempts inside the rim and failed to make any 2-point shots, leaving him with 9 points. At least he scored 6 points with free throws. Lee Jae-do, who replaced Yang Jun-seok with 5 minutes and 14 seconds remaining in the third quarter, remained on the bench throughout the fourth quarter. Yoon Won-sang, who scored a dramatic final buzzer beater in Game 3, also went scoreless in the next game, putting more pressure on the shoulders of starting pitcher Lee Jae-do. However, after scoring 21 points in the first game on 16th, they have not managed to find a breakthrough with an average of 7.7 points in three games.
LG coach Cho Sang-hyun lost the fourth match and said, “I was pushed by Heo Hoon in the previous fight. “This is something we have to overcome,” he said “We’re trying to design an attack that (Lee) Jae-do is good at using the screen.” However, if your shooting success rate drops, you must overcome it with confidence. “The key players must solve this problem,” he stressed.
Reporter Seo Jin-sol
#game #championship #game #line #Heo #Hoon #Lee #Jaedo #performance #key
