Pistons still had Rodman guarding Gan Guoyang, which was already Chuck Daly's best solution.
Using Rodman to defend, at least they could entangle Gan Guoyang, preventing him from receiving the ball.
Letting Melvin Turpin or Lan Bi'er defend would only lead to an even more disastrous outcome.
This defensive strategy to prevent ball reception started to show some effect at the beginning of the third quarter.
Rodman kept cutting in front, continuously using small movements to harass Gan Guoyang while receiving the ball.
In the first half, the referees' whistles were slightly in favor of the Trail Blazers; in the second half, they balanced out a bit, relaxing the standard of physical contact.
Both teams' confrontation became extremely intense, and scoring became very difficult with clashes and shoving occurring frequently.
But no matter how intense it was, the players' moves were clean, pure basketball confrontations.
