Chapter 42 Genius! Absolute genius!
Butch Baird was a scout and consultant, but he was not that good as a head coach. The team's better coach was Randy Whitman.
But he has good analytical skills and vision, which can be seen from the Nets' drafts in the past seven or eight years. The players he recommends for the Nets to select in the first round are usually not bad, and there are rarely any washes... The one in the second round doesn't matter, he loves gambling.
Reggie Theus had previously received an invitation to watch the Adidas Training Camp Elite Competition, and he was amazed by Zhang Hao's performance in actual combat.
Top athletic ability + extremely stable shooting in actual combat, just these two points made him regard Zhang Hao as a draft target.
Although he did not send a tryout invitation to Zhang Hao, he really investigated Zhang Hao carefully and clearly understood Zhang Hao's characteristics during the draft.
The small forward has top mobility, excellent jumping ability, and accurate mid-range shooting. His flaws are that he is thin and his skills are monotonous. It is doubtful whether he can adapt to the confrontation at the NBA level...
However, if it is just a No. 9 pick, just a pitcher trained in the direction of Reggie Miller, as long as Zhang Hao can become a top-level mid-range shooter in the NBA, this draft pick will not be lost! After all, being thin can be improved. Zhang Hao is only 18 years old.
Moreover, Zhang Hao has excellent athletic ability, which can lead to him being the dunk champion among high school students.
All in all, Butch Baird initially believed that Zhang Hao had the potential to become an All-Star level player.
Therefore, Butch Baird decisively took Zhang Hao at the 9th pick. Later, when the Lakers wanted to trade Ceballos for Zhang Hao, he tried hard to make the team reject the deal. They have Almon Guillem, an impact player of the same type as Ceballos. As long as Zhang Hao can play well, his role in the Nets and in future team building plans will be much stronger than Ceballos.
A shooter with excellent athletic ability and off-ball play will be wanted by any team as long as he can perform well in the NBA.
An All-Star level running pitcher can be even more powerful than having more than one ball-holding superstar on a strong team!
But Butch Baird didn't expect that Zhang Hao grew taller this summer when he was 18, by almost three inches, and his speed was not affected at all!
That's fine, growing taller doesn't affect speed, so although it's surprising, it's not a very rare thing.
But Zhang Hao's strength also improved, and it increased to such an extent that Butch Baird suspected that the weight of the barbell was wrong.
The standard bench press is 185 pounds, or 84 kilograms. The average number of bench presses performed by this year's 58 rookies during the draft was 9.2 times. Both the weight and the number of times are not very impressive. After all, the players participating in the draft are between 18 and 23 years old and have not yet undergone real professional athlete-level strength training. Some players are even still growing.
During the tryout, Zhang Hao's bench press test was 6 times, which is far lower than those forwards who came out of college, but it is not particularly bad. There have been cases where high-ranking rookies could not even lift the 84 kg bench press once.
The key is Zhang Hao's bench press test just now, the number of times is 20! It seems that there is still strength to spare!
At this point, Butch Baird was already worried that Zhang Hao's playing style had completely changed, but in the following shooting training, Zhang Hao was still as good as ever.
I grew taller, my strength increased, but my athletic ability and shooting were not affected too much!
In terms of shooting, Zhang Hao practiced hard to maintain his shooting without being affected by changes in strength, or it could be said that it was already affected, but he relied on training to eliminate the impact.
In terms of athletic ability and flexibility, the most buggy aspect of the Growth Card was revealed - during the use of the Growth Card, the negative effects that should have been brought about by strength improvement, height growth, etc. were all reduced to the minimum or even eliminated!
Possessing strength, speed, flexibility, and shooting touch... Zhang Hao's talent made Butch Baird unable to stop marveling!
Although his ball control is terrible among NBA-level outside players and his skills are terrible, especially the fact that he can't hold the ball, Zhang Hao cannot become the core of the team alone.
But as a shooter, whether or not you can control the ball is not particularly important.
Not every player on the team has to be able to hold the ball.
On the contrary, no team needs a player who doesn't need to hold the ball.
genius!
A true super genius!
Butch Baird's hands were shaking when he saw Zhang Hao's physical test report.
Admittedly, Zhang Hao's current strength is still relatively average, and he has the defect of never playing in an adult match and has a serious lack of competition experience.
This is my first time playing professional basketball, but I was able to enter the NBA directly...
Judging from all aspects, there is still a high probability that Zhang Hao will not be able to play.
Not to mention a No. 9 pick, even this year's No. 1 pick may not be able to play well.
But Zhang Hao already has the conditions to succeed!
The odds of hitting it were far higher than Butch Baird had initially expected.
Butch Baird was just gambling at first. He likes to gamble. Compared with most of the players participating in the draft this year who have a clear ceiling, players like Garnett and Zhang Hao have a more uncertain ceiling. Although the lower limit may also be ridiculously low, he thinks it is worth the gamble.
Now, there is a high probability that the bet is right!
…
Butch Baird needs to calm down a bit.
Zhang Hao was in a good mood after the test . He showed all his strengths. This was the best situation for him. At least he did not perform poorly.
Seeing that there was an opportunity for teammates to come, Zhang Hao already knew who these teammates were from the information given by Pelinka.
The team's core players include Kenny Anderson, backup shooting guard Greg Graham, backup veteran Vaughn Fleming from the 84 golden generation, and backup power forward Jason Williams.
These four teammates returned to the team ahead of schedule. Among them, Kenny Anderson's image was different from what Zhang Hao knew. He was very fat...
"Why is it another fat kid? Can the difference between photos and real people be so big these days?"
After complaining in his heart, Zhang Hao took the initiative to go up and say hello to several teammates.
Among them, Greg Graham and Vaughan Fleming gave Zhang Hao a friendly hug.
Graham is a very introverted young guard, 193 cm tall, thin, only 83 kg. He was a first-round pick in the 1993 draft year and is about to start his third season. He is of average strength, good athletic ability, good at off-ball defense, and has only a sporadic shooting ability on offense.
After the lockout, because Graham signed a five-year rookie contract that year and was not well received by the 76ers, the Nets asked Graham back when they traded Coleman and prepared to scratch lottery tickets. Graham will be 25 years old at the end of November. Some players may have a breakthrough at the age of 25, and Graham's rookie contract is not expensive anyway.
Fleming is also a player signed by the Nets after the lockout. He is 33 years old and close to retirement. He played for the Pacers for the previous 11 years. He has never been a star, but he is experienced and good at catching the ball and jumping shots.
These two people were quite friendly to Zhang Hao. In his opinion, since everyone was new here, they naturally had to stick together for warmth.
However, Jason Williams, the tough power forward, was not so friendly to Zhang Hao. He greeted Zhang Hao with a cold expression and left first, making the excuse of going to training.
The two new players were friendly to Zhang Hao, and Jason Williams seemed to dislike Zhang Hao... Zhang Hao could guess the reasons for these two situations.
But Zhang Hao was confused about the other one...
"Zhang, Aix, right? It's Aix, right? I'm Kenny. From today on, I'm your big brother! I'll protect you! Don't pay attention to that muscle block. He's jealous of you. He's worried that you'll take away his playing time. But I'm jealous of you too. How did you train your shooting? And you can actually do 20 bench presses! Tsk tsk, I can't believe it..."
Kenny Anderson came close to Zhang Hao and spoke in a low voice. He stretched out his hand and patted Zhang Hao's shoulder while speaking.
From the beginning, Kenny Anderson was very interested in the high school rookie selected by the team.
No good or bad intentions, just interest.
Because there is no competition between the two. On the contrary, he heard that Zhang Hao is a rookie who plays without the ball and has excellent shooting skills. He thinks Zhang Hao may become his right-hand man, so he came to see Zhang Hao's test.
A high school rookie must have his strengths, otherwise the team would not choose him.
But even though I was interested, I didn't expect Zhang Hao to be so accurate!
Zhang Hao's shots while moving, catching the ball and shooting, and some mid-range shots that require him to accelerate and then turn around to catch the ball and shoot, are all very accurate!
Kenny Anderson has never had a teammate who can shoot mid-range shots as accurately as he does!
He seemed to see a mid-range shooting version of Reggie Miller!
Moreover, Zhang Hao's bench press is so good, which means that he is not bad in confrontation! It is very likely that he will be able to perform at a high level in the game.
He was extremely excited about this! With such a pitching helper, he felt that he had a chance to become the assist king!
Having averaged 9+ assists per game for two consecutive years, he has enough ambition to compete for the assist title. He has indeed been considered a favorite for the assist title in the past two years.
However, after Kenny Anderson entered the NBA, he thought his playing career was not as smooth as others imagined.
His teammates got worse every year. Although he always had Coleman, a teammate at the best team level, Coleman was a typical player who became extremely undisciplined when he made money. He drank and drove, fought, gambled, and took banned drugs...
Coleman has been suspended for more than 40 games due to non-injury reasons so far in his career.
This summer, Coleman was sent to the 76ers. In the multi-party trade, the Nets acquired a lot of role players, but these players are all role players. None of them can become a top player, otherwise they would not have been used to trade Coleman, the notorious thorn in the side.
However, the high school students selected by the Nets this year have the potential to become top players!
Zhang Hao obviously didn't expect that he would still be so valued for his mid-range shots in the NBA, because his two advantages, athletic ability and mid-range shots, are directly visible, no matter how many flaws he has.
He thought of himself as a weak rookie compared to the hundreds of best basketball players in the world playing in the NBA.
Also, he couldn't guess what Kenny Anderson was thinking.
But this is not a problem. The core of the team is so enthusiastic, and this core is the absolute ball holder of the team. Zhang Hao showed an innocent smile: "Thank you, boss!"
Anyway, Zhang doesn't want to be the boss, at least not now. What he wants now is how to live to old age, so he shouted so straightforwardly.
Boss!
This title made Kenny Anderson feel comfortable from head to toe.
After he entered the NBA, although he had a season where he was second in assists and started in the All-Star Game, when he entered the NBA, the team had the 1990 No. 1 pick Coleman.
Coleman entered the NBA at the age of 23. In his rookie year, he averaged 18+10+2+1+1, a definite superstar in the making. He has always been in Coleman's shadow, especially in the past three years, when Coleman averaged 20+10+3 for three consecutive years, and his position as the boss is unshakable.
Even though Coleman is gone now, the media has never said that Kenny Anderson is the new boss of the Nets.
He also understood that he needed to prove that he could lead the team alone before he had a chance to become the boss. Although Coleman had a bad reputation and a bad record, no one had ever doubted his ability. The Nets were able to make the playoffs for three consecutive years from 1992 to 1994, and Coleman was the biggest contributor.
Kenny Anderson's goal is to lead his team into the playoffs, and he likes to be called the boss.
"Haha, no need to say thank you, you'll be following me from today on! From now on, you can help me carry my bags, and no old players will order you around... Oops, the coach is coming, I need to go lose weight, damn, how come the lockout is over so soon, I haven't even succeeded in losing weight..."
Looking at Kenny Anderson who was running back to the gym, and thinking about what Kenny Anderson had just asked him to carry the bag, Zhang Hao thought to himself what a good relationship!
He was already prepared for the rookie to be ordered around by the veterans. These days, it was common for rookies to be bullied.
Although he is not the type of person who can tolerate bullying easily, he is prepared for what he has to go through.
However, since he came to the team and has the support of recognized core players, he is naturally happy.
After thinking about it carefully , Zhang Hao believed that it was the benefit of his playing style of being an off-ball shooter who would not steal the ball. Just like Klay Thompson in the future, no one would refuse to cooperate with a player who plays like him, especially the core player with the ball.
However, Zhang Hao obviously did not realize how shocked Kenny Anderson and the coaching staff were by his strength after using the mid-range shot growth card and the static confrontation growth card, as well as his age.
Because what he saw was his ability rating of 69 based on his hard strength in terms of technique, physical fitness, and shooting...
…
Butch Baird returned to the office and confirmed Zhang Hao's bench press results with the trainer who conducted the physical fitness test on Zhang Hao. The result was not that Zhang Hao was struggling, but that Zhang Hao still had some strength to spare. It was just that the trainer was worried that Zhang Hao wanted to show off too much and he had been pushing so hard so many times, so he didn't let Zhang Hao continue to test the bench press... Butch Baird became even more upset.
At this time, Zhang Hao, who had just finished taking a shower and changed into casual clothes, came to Butch Baird's office again. Butch Baird asked, "Axel, do you want to live in the apartment arranged by the team or find a place to live on your own? Of course, you have to pay the rent for the apartment arranged by the team, but it is closer to the stadium and safer..."
The key point is safety. Zhang Hao has been in the United States for several years and knows the security situation in the United States... Especially for Asians like him who are neither black nor white, the security situation is even worse. The town of Rutherford is incomparable to the city of Inglewood.
Without hesitation, Zhang Hao responded: "Coach, I live in the apartment arranged by the team. I want to come to the team for training early every day."
The character must be established well!
Being diligent and hard-working is the character that Zhang Hao wants to establish.
This kind of thing cannot be done quietly by yourself, you have to let people know.
For example, Kobe Bryant. Maybe Kobe himself did not have the idea of showing off his crazy efforts, but he had a father who loved to show off his son everywhere, and he had already established Kobe's hard-working image.
But Kobe's father didn't know that Kobe was very disgusted with this kind of thing.
After arriving in the NBA, Zhang Hao's thoughts during the McDonald's All-Star Game and Adidas training camp have changed. At that time, he needed to be in the spotlight. Now, he needs to show his efforts to the team and keep a low profile to the outside world...
Butch Baird was very satisfied with Zhang Hao's efforts. The only thing he felt was a pity was that he really had no coaching ability. Otherwise, he would be happy to have such a player under his command. He could definitely set an example!
However, knowing that he does not have very good coaching ability, Butch Baird is very calm. He knows that Zhang Hao is still young and a big tree attracts the wind. Now he should let Zhang Hao develop slowly and set an example. He should hold back and wait until Zhang Hao performs well.
Whether it is the players you choose yourself or the players you have worked hard to persuade the management to choose, even if it is a gamble, you always have to give them extra care. Just like love, the one who gives always cares more.
Also, if Zhang Hao hadn't played well and set an example early on, he would have looked like a fool...
