On January 16th, Beijing time, it has been a long time since we last saw Guo Ailun. However, his return after 45 days is heart-wrenching as he finally comes back but in a state of depression, leading the team to lose without scoring a single goal.
Guangzhou men's basketball team is still not a strong team. In this Guangdong derby, Guo Ailun has returned. He played for 30 minutes and 46 seconds, shooting 0 out of 7, with 0 out of 3 three-pointers and 0 out of 2 free throws. He missed all his shots and scored 0 points, grabbing 5 rebounds and making 7 assists with 2 fouls. Although his rebounds and assists look comprehensive, he didn't score a single point and had two fouls that were unacceptable.
More importantly, Guo Ailun's plus-minus value of -21 was the worst among all players in the game. It's really touching that he lost 19 points in 30 minutes, which makes people feel that he is really old and useless, and indeed not good enough. In fact, Guo Ailun's Guangzhou teammates played well in this game, but he himself did not perform well.
The teammates have already scored crazily. This McCaw scored 24 points and 6 steals, which is very powerful. There is also Yuan Zhaoyao on the bench who scored 15 points. However, Guo Ailun missed all his shots 7 times, which is really helpless. He had many open positions, but wasted more opportunities.
What's even sadder is that Guo Ailun can't just score now, his speed is gone too. His passing is fine, and his experience is still abundant, which is not a problem. His assisting skills are still there, but he doesn't have the previous super-fast breakthrough ability, nor does he have the super-scoring power to step over the opponent's defensive players.
In the past, he could tease Guangdong and explode Xu Jie, but now he can't even shake off Xu Jie with continuous crossovers under the basket, which is the gap. Finally, Guo Ailun's three-point shot has never been accurate. The disadvantage of three-pointers actually existed when Guo Ailun was still a Liaoning player, and now it seems to be getting worse.
His three-point shots have always been inaccurate, which is fatal for him with declining physical fitness. With such a poor three-point performance and no other contributions, how could they not lose the game? To be honest, Guo Ailun was really an important reason why Guangzhou lost the game. Plus-minus values don't lie, and scoring data doesn't lie either. If he had scored 2 to 3 goals, Guangzhou could have played, but he didn't score enough.
Moreover, at the last moment, he was directly hit by Xu Jie with a three-pointer that killed the game from a position not far away, and Xu Jie made a Curry-style celebration move. Guo Shao had no temper at all. It is indeed touching that a fallen tiger is bullied by dogs. In the past, if someone dared to celebrate like this in front of Guo Ailun, he would have counterattacked long ago, but now he can't do it.