Chapter 29: The Eve of the Draft
What can a person do if he is determined enough?
Lost 12 pounds in 25 days!
Zhang Hao looked at the ruthless man in front of him who had obviously lost a lot of weight, and couldn't help sighing in his heart - he was worthy of being a big shot who could survive after being stabbed dozens of times.
10 jin! That's a lot of pork! I managed to lose weight.
Too cruel!
Regardless of whether it would affect his health, Zhang Hao looked at Pierce and felt that Pierce was more energetic.
"Haha, what's wrong? Are you shocked? I told you, I want to lose weight, and I can do it in minutes. This is just the beginning. You go to the NBA and wait. When I come to the NBA, we will lead the Lakers to win the championship together..."
As soon as Pierce opened his mouth, all the ruthlessness that Zhang Hao had felt from him before disappeared in an instant.
The chatterbox is still the same chatterbox...
After seeing Pierce, Zhang Hao felt much better. The confused future had made him feel pretty bad in the past few days. He was always thinking about what to do if he was not selected. The key was that he had to watch his lifespan decreasing day by day.
"Axel, when are we going to New York? This is my first time to Madison Square Garden, it's the holy land of basketball..."
Facing Pierce who was talking again, Zhang Hao ignored all the nonsense and answered directly: "The flight is at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning."
“…”
Today is June 25th. Zhang Hao has 367 days left to live. The day after tomorrow is the draft.
He felt it was quite a coincidence, as if the day of the draft would be a new chapter, and it just happened to return to 365 days, the remaining lifespan when he had just merged his memories.
But he had no way of predicting how this new chapter would develop.
However, he has thought things through in the past few days. No matter how confused and hesitant he is, time will still pass day by day. It has come to this point, so he will just take whatever happens in the draft.
At this time, Zhang Hao finally understood what "major decisions in life" meant.
It is true that the decision was made hastily at that time, but now that the decision has been made and we have embarked on this path, there is no turning back.
What he has to do now is to wait for the results to come out and then consider the future based on the results. It is useless to regret the original decision. He can only hope that the results will make him not regret it.
What comforts him a little bit is that no matter how confused or hesitant he is during the process, he always gives his all every time he participates in a draft, regardless of whether the team that tries out for him values him or not.
Next, just go to New York and wait to be selected.
…
The 94-95 season that just ended was considered a legendary season by fans.
First of all, Jordan is back!
Then, Jordan was hit by Pence.
Then, Olajuwon led the sixth-ranked team in the Western Conference to a comeback all the way to the finals. They had no home-court advantage throughout the process, but they swept O'Neal in the finals and won two consecutive championships.
This championship directly established Olajuwon's position in the top ten of history.
After the finals, the draft and the subsequent free market became the focus of fans.
The first thing is definitely the draft.
Joe Smith, Antonio McDyess, Rasheed Wallace, Damon Stoudemire, Jerry Stackhouse... The quality of this year's draft is still quite high. Although Duncan is missing, it is also a pretty good draft year.
The whereabouts of these players is currently the focus of fans' attention.
The high school rookies who were once very popular during the playoffs, are not mentioned much when it comes to the draft.
In the eyes of fans, high school students participating in the draft is just a gimmick. Not many people think that they can directly adapt to NBA-level games, because many high school geniuses can't even adapt to the college league. The gap is too big.
Garnett, Zhang Hao and others are just "topics"; but the group of geniuses who graduated from universities are "hot"!
Even for a player as famous as Garnett, there are teams that have said, "I'd be stupid to use a lottery pick to select him."
On June 26, the day before the draft, sports media gathered in New York, and the top young basketball talents from the United States and even the world also gathered in New York.
Zhang Hao and Pierce came to the Big Apple together, found a cheap hotel, booked a standard room, and stayed there.
These days the NBA is not as rich as it will be in the future. Except for the group in the green room, other rookies have to take care of their own food and lodging during the draft.
The money earned from the previous dunk contest has been almost spent.
Now Zhang Hao is waiting for tomorrow's draft and is looking forward to it coming soon.
Either the young model club, or...
Anyway, if he was selected, Zhang Hao felt that at least he wouldn't have to worry about his livelihood for the time being.
The two were poor boys and had no money to go out and play. The small hotel didn't even have a TV, so Pierce brought his Famicom.
But when you come to the Big Apple, you naturally have to go for a walk. Pierce suggested going to Madison Square Garden first to see the way tomorrow. Although in fact, whether the participating players can go to the scene on the day of the draft will not affect the draft, nor will it affect whether they will be selected, but if you want to experience the NBA draft in your basketball career, you only have one chance, so of course you have to go if you can.
They just left without saying goodbye, leaving their valuables behind... They didn't have many valuables, so they just put their cash and driver's license in their pockets and went out.
Although the hotel is shabby and small, there are still many people staying here. In other words, this cheap hotel not far from Madison Square Garden is full of players participating in the draft.
After all, there are only so many people in the green room. There are hundreds of people participating in the draft, most of whom are American players. College students don’t have much money, so they basically look for such cheap hotels to stay in.
When Zhang Hao came out of the elevator, he saw several players he had met before.
"Michael, what a coincidence, you live here too!" Zhang Hao greeted Michael Finley, who looked mature.
Michael Finley has an extremely gentle personality, so gentle that he was not impatient even when he couldn't catch the ball during the tryout. As candidates who mainly don't have the ball and are terrible with the ball, and both are predicted to be draft picks in the late first round and early second round, they were grouped together during the Pistons' tryout. Then they had the bad luck of meeting a candidate named Corey Alexander, who would never pass the ball, and both of them could only stare at each other.
The two people who shared the same suffering got along quite well during the Pistons' tryout...that is, they just sat there without saying a word, and both thought the other was pretty good.
"It's you, Aix. How's it going? I heard you tried out for a few teams later. How was it going?"
"Not bad. What about you."
"I can still do that..."
Although we got along well, we weren't that familiar with each other. After exchanging a few pleasantries, we parted ways.
Zhang Hao naturally had an impression of Michael Finley. It was precisely because he saw that Michael Finley, a future star, had a similar experience to him during the draft, that most of the candidates were in similar situations, and it was difficult for most of the candidates to get a tryout opportunity...so Zhang Hao did not lose his temper. He gradually understood later that it was thanks to the slam dunk contest and Adidas training camp before the tryout that so many teams he called and took the initiative to apply for a tryout would they approve it. Most of the candidates would not necessarily pay attention to them when they came to tryouts.
There was nothing wrong at first, so I walked for nearly an hour to get to Madison Square Garden. The exterior was... just average, like an ordinary NBA stadium, and it was quite old. It was said that it was almost time for renovation.
This stadium was built in 1968 and has poor road planning. The main road is directly outside the main entrance of the stadium. There is a huge star poster above the main entrance, which is a photo of gorilla Patrick Ewing holding the ball with both hands.
Walking does have its advantages. There was a traffic jam at the moment. Zhang Hao and Pierce arrived at the entrance of the stadium smoothly. There was a window at the ticket office, "Rookie Registration Office". Zhang Hao took out the draft registration receipt he brought with him and successfully entered the stadium for free with his "agent".
To visit the stadium, one either has to buy a ticket or get a city-wide pass from the New York City Tourism Development Corporation. When Zhang Hao was bored and tried to learn about this, he discovered something incredible: the individual ticket prices for some New York attractions were almost the same as the price of a city-wide pass.
Pierce started talking nonstop as he entered the stadium, and was surprised at everything he saw. However, Zhang Hao had been to many NBA stadiums recently and no longer had any curiosity.
I spent more than half an hour walking around, spent $15 to take three photos, and will pick them up at the photo shop in the stadium tomorrow, and then I am ready to leave.
"Aix, you go to the NBA first and wait. I'll come back in two years. Do you think the Lakers will choose you? I think they will..."
Zhang Hao listened to Pierce's "Lakers Dream". He really wanted to tell Pierce that if the Lakers successfully get the OK combination next summer, he would have no chance of being selected by the Lakers in the future. With O'Neal, how could he have a chance to get a lottery pick? In exchange for Kobe, they also sent away Divac, who had the highest trading value. Although Van Exel and Eddie Jones are good, it is difficult to exchange them for a top ten draft pick.
In that case, just listen to Pierce's chatter quietly.
Just as the two were walking towards the exit of the stadium, suddenly, Zhang Hao heard someone say his name.
"Look, isn't that Xiao Zhang..."
Zhang Hao had never heard of this address before . The key point was that it was Mandarin. He immediately turned around and saw several Chinese faces, one of whom he had met before: Xu Jicheng, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency.
The person who said his name was not Xu Jicheng, but an older middle-aged man next to him.
"Aix, are you being called?"
"Yes, journalists from our country."
Zhang Hao explained and took Pierce to greet the people who were walking towards them.
This time it was Xu Jicheng who spoke first: "Aix, I finally found you. It's so hard to meet you..."
Zhang Hao heard a strong sense of resentment in the tone of this grown man Xu Jicheng.
Without waiting for Zhang Hao to reply, Xu Jicheng introduced enthusiastically: "Mr. Jiang, you have a very good eye. I haven't even seen Xiao Zhang yet, but you saw him at a glance. You are not mistaken. This is our country's talented basketball high school student Zhang Hao. His English name is Aix... Aix. This is Mr. Jiang Xiaoyu, the editor-in-chief of the Sports News Department of Xinhua News Agency.
This is the editor-in-chief of the basketball news department of the Imperial Sports Channel...
Who is this……
(Switched to English) Axel, the person next to you is Paul Pierce, a talented high school student from California, right? Hello, we are from China..."
Through Xu Jicheng's introduction, Zhang Hao got to know some leaders of two major domestic media giants.
I also learned that domestic reporters have been trying to collect information about him over the past period of time.
Pierce is used to being interviewed, as he is a high school star player.
A Chinese high school student is participating in the NBA draft, and his prospects of being selected in the late first round to the early to middle second round have attracted great attention from domestic sports fans.
And unlike in the United States, it has been more than a month since Zhang Hao announced his participation in the draft, and his popularity in China has not diminished at all!
Although various problems caused by factors such as "there are all kinds of birds in a big forest" and "there is nothing to do after eating" have gradually begun to appear in many aspects in China, what the Chinese people lack more at present is confidence.
To what extent do Chinese people need confidence?
If there is any aspect of the country that is not good enough, people will feel that their country is still very poor.
In terms of military, we have to compare with the United States; in terms of romance, we have to compare with France; in terms of rigor, we have to compare with Germany; in terms of hygiene, we have to compare with Japan... We want to compare with the best in every aspect.
In terms of sports, Chinese people naturally hope that their country will be strong in all aspects. Basketball has a relatively wide audience in China. After so many years, a domestic basketball player finally has the opportunity to step onto the NBA stage, which has triggered a strong basketball craze in the country.
However, there is no news report in China!
Some media went to the Blue Association to see if they had any information, but they were asked by the Blue Association not to report on Zhang Hao... However, under the leadership of Xinhua News Agency, not many media paid attention to this bizarre request of the Blue Association.
Since there was no news in China, we went to the United States for interviews. However, on the one hand, there were not many media in China that had obtained permission to interview in the United States. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and based on multiple reasons, our country had become the biggest imaginary enemy of the United States.
Secondly, for some reasons, they were unable to get Zhang Hao's contact information from the NBA. Every time the NBA headquarters sent a message saying which team Zhang Hao was going to try out for, when they got there, Zhang Hao had already finished the tryout and was heading to the next city.
It's like this every time, always a day or two off.
After many times, they realized that the NBA just wanted them to report on the draft tryouts that they hardly reported in previous years.
Let alone the draft tryouts, these mainstream media rarely even report on the draft.
But the situation is different now. If Zhang Hao really entered the NBA, they had planned to gradually increase their coverage of the NBA around Zhang Hao as a breakthrough point, so it wouldn't matter if they did it a little earlier.
Everyone takes what they need.
