Nagoya Diamond Dolphins made nine straight wins look almost routine on Friday night, drilling 17 three-pointers in a 104–69 demolition of Shiga Lakes at IG Arena. The 35-point margin was striking enough. The way Nagoya built it — 60 first-half points, 27 assists and a three-point percentage above 50 — was the more worrying message for the rest of B.PREMIER.
The official B.LEAGUE box score records Nagoya hitting 17 of 33 attempts from deep (51.5 per cent), against Shiga's six of 23 (26.1 per cent). Nagoya took the opening quarter 31–20, stretched the advantage to 60–38 at half-time and won the third 24–13. By the last change, the contest was 84–51. There was no late escape route for the visitors.
Keita Imamura led Nagoya's scoring with 17 points, while point guard Taketo Kato supplied six assists. Neither number screams one-man takeover. That is precisely why this attack is difficult to contain: the Dolphins generated 27 assists as a team and shot 52.9 per cent from the field. Their lead reached 36 points. An opponent cannot simply load up on a single scorer and hope the rest go quiet.
Shiga's problems ran beyond the shooting gap. The Lakes committed 23 turnovers, six more than Nagoya, and conceded 22 points from those mistakes. Zach Auguste finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds, while Ai-Che Yu had eight assists, but those contributions could not compensate for the possessions Shiga surrendered. A team that had beaten Nagasaki and Kobe in its previous two home games suddenly had very little room to operate.
The crowd of 13,322 at IG Arena watched Nagoya turn an unbeaten start into a convincing statement rather than a narrow survival act. The Dolphins had already beaten Utsunomiya 98–69 and Tokyo Sunrockers 96–85 in October; Friday's result added another emphatic win against a western-conference opponent. The club's results and fixture page confirms the 104–69 score and the next meeting, while independent result coverage also records Nagoya's 9–0 start.
The immediate question is whether Shiga can make Sunday's return fixture a contest. The sides meet again at IG Arena on 1 November at 3.05 pm Japan time. Shiga need cleaner ball-handling and a better plan for Nagoya's perimeter movement; Nagoya have a chance to show that 17 made threes were not the only route to controlling this matchup. Friday was spectacular shooting, but the nine-win streak rests on something sturdier: opponents keep running out of good answers.
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