On January 24, Beijing time, the 27th round of the CBA regular season, Zhejiang team won the Shenzhen team 90-78 to complete the revenge. After this game, the CBA's competition situation this season has become more and more confusing.
In the past many seasons, although the CBA has always had challengers, such as Zhejiang last season, Beijing in the 2019-20 season, and Xinjiang in the 2018-19 season, most of the time, Guangdong, Liaoning, Xinjiang or earlier Beijing (Marbury era) are absolute championship competitions. Every season, the gap between the CBA 'First Group' and "Second Group" teams is basically very obvious, that is, the advantage between the top four or even the top teams in the regular season is very prominent compared to the teams behind the rankings.
But this season seems different. Up to now, except for Liaoning, which is strong and strong, and the competitive advantage is extremely obvious, other teams, including the defending champions, have not been so competitive this season.
Take the two sides of this game, Zhejiang and Shenzhen, for example. Last week, Shenzhen just narrowly defeated Zhejiang with a 6-point advantage, and in this game, Zhejiang completed its revenge with a 12-point advantage, and Zhejiang once led by more than 20 points in the game, and the advantage was extremely obvious. Although Shenzhen lacks the main striker Gu Quan, but this is not the key reason for their loss, the double foreign aid Salinger and Booker's sluggish performance a total of 10 points, the last time he defeated Zhejiang to get 34 points and 13 rebounds, Salinger was severely limited to only 8 points in this campaign, which is the main reason for Shenzhen's loss.
The two teams played a draw with each other, while Zhejiang and Shenzhen each extended outwards, and their record against other teams was also mutually winning. Zhejiang has defeated Guangdong, lost to Beijing, but also won over Guangdong, great victory over Beijing, in the opponents that have been played, especially the teams close to their ranking, the only obvious disadvantage of Zhejiang is to be killed by Shanghai double, but the loss score difference is also in the single digits.
Shenzhen has beaten Shanghai and Beijing, and has played with Shanxi twice to achieve a draw, and the two matches with Guangsha have also won the next one. At the same time, Shenzhen was killed by Liaoning, but in the second meeting, they defeated Liaoning by 2 points in the absence of Shen Zijie, and it was in the case of He Xining's desperate three-point miss. The only thing that Shenzhen was at an absolute disadvantage was to be killed by Guangdong, losing 23 points and 16 points in both games, but those were the first stage of the regular season, when Shenzhen was not as competitive as it is now, and Guangdong was not as difficult as it is now.
In teams ranked close to Zhejiang and Shenzhen, such as Shanghai, in addition to the above-mentioned confrontations with them, they have also lost to Beijing and won over Beijing; and Shanxi, they have beaten Liaoning, Guangdong, Beijing and Guangsha, and have also lost to Liaoning, Guangdong, Beijing and Guangsha. As for Beijing, they have beaten Liaoning and Guangdong, and they have also lost to Liaoning and Guangdong, and the disadvantage is most obviously killed by Guangsha. The defending champion Guangdong, after encountering the overstretch of the rotation lineup in the second stage of the regular season, also suffered many defeats, and being killed by Liaoning and the first double kill by Guangsha in the history of the team was the worst loss they suffered.
It is not difficult to see that in addition to the leader Liaoning, the CBA's current 2nd to 8th ranked teams basically do not have an absolute advantage to pull apart other opponents, which has caused them to frequent serial killings between each other, which is also an important reason why these teams are relatively similar in ranking. At present, Liaoning is 3 wins ahead of Shanghai in second place, but the 2nd Shanghai, the 3rd Guangsha and the 4th Zhejiang have the same win difference, the 5th Guangdong is 2 wins behind Zhejiang, the 6th Shenzhen is 1 win behind Guangdong, the 7th Shanxi is 1 win behind Shenzhen, and the 8th Beijing is 1 win behind Shanxi. If you are not careful, especially if you lose to a competitor, the ranking of these teams may change. If it is affected by injuries, then the ranking may also fall sharply. In the second stage of the regular season, Guangdong and Shenzhen were the most obvious and largest teams with the impact of injuries.
However, the Liaoning team has also encountered some difficulties at present, with Han Dejun, Zhang Zhenlin and Guo Allen all suffering from injuries. Zhang Zhenlin's foot is relatively not so serious, but Han Dejun's fracture still needs some time to recover, and Guo Allen is said to have left the Changchun Division to return to Shenyang for rehabilitation due to injuries.
To this end, although the second phase of the regular season has come to an end, by the time the third phase of the regular season may start a month later, the remaining 10 rounds of the regular season are likely to create a more hot competition scene. In addition to some teams will also add new foreign aid, the final 10 rounds of games are related to the qualification of the playoffs, whether you need to participate in the 12-in-8 playoffs, and the playoffs against the first-line teams to pick the opponent in advance layout, so the game will be more intense.
That's exactly what fans want to see. It must be admitted that although the CBA has emerged some quite competitive teams in recent years, such as Zhejiang last season, in general, there are not many new forces that can shake the traditional giants or strong teams in the past, which has also caused the CBA to have serious differentiation in the past, playing around, and finally the world of traditional strong teams, like the Beijing team of that year, which is a strong turmoil and has won the championship for many years.
This season, when Guangsha and Shenzhen make a comeback, when Shanghai finally rises, when Xinjiang's competitiveness declines after losing Zhou Qi, when defending champion Guangdong encounters the biggest difficulties in recent years, the CBA competition has become more suspenseful, and even from the current point of view, it may be the most suspenseful season in history. And no longer a monopoly or the competition of double dragon play beads will also make the competition in the CBA more benign.