Chapter 7: The Little Brother Finally Gets the Point
When Pierce went to be interviewed, Zhang Hao looked around. There were more than 70 people participating in this year's McDonald's All-Star Weekend training camp. In the end, 18 high school All-Star players, 6 dunk contest participants, and 6 three-point contest participants will be selected. One of the players may participate in all three events.
Some people registered and got the room card and left, while others stayed.
After Zhang Hao got the room card, he looked at it and saw that it was room 404. This room number would never appear in China, but in the United States, it is usually room 513, not room 513.
After looking around, I saw that most of them were black high school students, some in groups of three or five, some alone, and I knew almost none of them... But there was one familiar face, and it was the case that he was familiar with others but others didn't know him.
Coach Lu!
After thinking for a while, Zhang Hao took the initiative to come to the side of the small Tyronn Lue and exclaimed in a low voice: "Tyronn Lue! Wow, it's really you!"
Tyronn Lue was waiting for his good friend, the talented center Nazr Mohammed, who had already confirmed that he would join the University of Kentucky, to report. He was distractedly thinking about whether to go to the University of Nevada or the University of Kentucky when his name was suddenly called. He looked up and saw... a Chinese person he didn't recognize.
Before Tyronn Lue could ask any questions, Zhang Hao smiled enthusiastically and said, "Hello, I watched your game when I was traveling in Mexico City before. You are amazing. I believe you will be able to enter the NBA one day!"
As the saying goes, don't hit someone who smiles at you. When Tyronn Lue heard this, he thought, "Is this a fan?" No, but at least he is a high school basketball talent who appreciates him!
Almost all those who can be here are the top high school basketball talents in each state.
"Brother, I also think I can make it to the NBA..."
Tyronn Lue was confused just now, but as soon as he was happy, they immediately became brothers. This did not make Zhang Hao feel strange, because most black people were like this.
Zhang Hao took the initiative to find topics to talk about and quickly became familiar with Tyronn Lue.
"Brother, next time you go to Mexico City, you must look for me. Look at you, you went to Mexico City and got lost. Do you know why it is called Mexico City? Do you know Mexico? It's a no-man's land... I'm here, and I will definitely take you to the most fun places..."
When Tyronn Lue said this, his expression revealed a hint of vulgarity, especially like Suneo Bonekawa in Doraemon, with an expression that all men can understand.
When Pierce came back from the interview, he saw Zhang Hao chatting so enthusiastically with the Missouri State Basketball Player of the Year... This kid finally got it!
Pierce has always been worried that Zhang Hao would be bullied if he went to college. In this world, the weak may not be bullied, but the arrogant will definitely be isolated.
If it weren't for Pierce's constant support, it would have been really difficult for Zhang Hao to survive in the school team. With Pierce's help, Zhang Hao had the opportunity to gain recognition from his teammates based on his strength.
However, Pierce still felt that Zhang Hao was too aloof, because the person Zhang Hao was chatting with was one of the dozens of most famous high school basketball players.
For various reasons, Pierce believes that Zhang Hao is only enthusiastic about people with strong abilities.
But this is much better than being completely introverted. Those who can enter the NBA are the top talents in the world. Similarly, those who can enter the NCAA are the top talents among high school students. In this way , Pierce is much more relieved about Zhang Hao's future after entering college. At least, this guy is willing to interact with strong people.
Seeing Pierce coming over, Zhang Hao nodded as a greeting.
Tyronn Lue also recognized Pierce. Among the high school geniuses, except for the dazzling super talents like Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, even geniuses like Vince Carter are not well-known outside of Florida, and this unknown refers to the general public.
Among high school basketball players, the Basketball Players of each state are still very famous.
For example, Paul Pierce, who is known as the high school version of Barkley, although Pierce refuses this nickname.
Tyronn Lue is nicknamed Little Hardaway, referring to Tim Hardaway, the king of the crossover dribble, rather than Penny who started in the All-Star Game and was selected to the first team in his sophomore year.
The two are the best high school basketball players in their respective states. They have met each other, although only once, at the Adidas training camp last year. But both of them are the kind of future talents who are good at making friends, and they quickly got along well.
Zhang Hao also saw that Tyronn Lue could become an NBA head coach in his 30s in the future. He knew that this guy had extremely strong communication skills and was definitely the type who could make friends easily...Except for those coaches with outstanding talents, other coaches are almost all the kind with good interpersonal relationships. Whether it is the NBA or the NCAA, there will always be some coaches with average abilities but who can always find jobs.
Zhang Hao’s goal is to become a head coach in the future, whether it’s NCAA, NBA… or CBA, and his goal is to live until he dies.
Therefore, it is very important to build good connections. Those who can become head coaches in the future may be a little naive now and just show their good communication skills, but they will have extensive connections in the future. Take the Celtics legend McHale for example. Wasn't it because of his good communication skills that he was able to find a head coach job more than ten years later?
Networking with people is also considered networking... Saying a few words proactively won't cost you anything...
In other words, Zhang Hao is not famous now. If he could have the fame of the future son of Akron in high school, he would definitely make good use of it. But now, he has the opportunity to get acquainted with some future NBA players in his impression...
If you really have the opportunity to enter the NBA in the future, it will not be a bad idea to establish good relationships with more NBA players in advance. For example, if you go to a team and have two or three teammates you know, when you play together, they may be more willing to pass the ball to you.
If something has the potential to be beneficial, then do more of it!
As they were chatting, a black-haired guy came over... Really black! Even though Zhang Hao had seen so many black people, he rarely saw one as black as this one. It looked like he was of South Sudanese descent.
This is a very enthusiastic person. It was Tyronn Lue or Zhang Hao who took the initiative to approach him, and the darkest basketball player in the audience was the one who greeted Zhang Hao very actively and enthusiastically.
Nazir Mohammad.
Zhang Hao has an impression of this. This is a future veteran who has played for many years and can hardly play. However, he can still get a contract close to the middle-class level during his two years of retirement. The reason is that he has a strong ability to lead the locker room!
"There are so many basketball geniuses in the United States... But this is probably because this is the McDonald's All-Star Weekend for high school students. Although the focus is only on the dunk contest and the universities don't care much about it, in the minds of high school students, the McDonald's All-Star should be a very high honor. After all, those invited are the best high school students in each state..."
With so many people around, Zhang Hao didn't have the chance to chat more like when he was alone with Tyronn Lue, but it didn't matter since they were just getting to know each other anyway.
The four of them went to a nearby hotel together, and after arriving at the hotel, they got to know a lot of people.
I met Vince Carter who was being interviewed outside the hotel. Although Carter is not well-known in Los Angeles now, his dunks in the high school league are very famous in Florida. McDonald's is promoting him as a selling point for this dunk contest. No media in Los Angeles is interested in Carter, so McDonald's has to pay them to report on him.
Because McDonald's is sure that as long as Carter shows his dunking ability, it will definitely be a big hit! Even if this dunk contest is far inferior to the NBA dunk contest, the audience range is very limited, even if it is only popular among students...but their main customers are those students, aren't they? This is what they are doing.
McDonald's originally invited Kobe Bryant from Philadelphia, a talented rising star who broke Chamberlain's high school record at the age of 16, but was rejected.
Since everyone was still teenagers, even if Zhang Hao knew some of the future NBA players, he could hardly recognize them. However, Pierce's popularity was even better than Zhang Hao had imagined. Many well-known senior and junior players in the high school basketball world knew Pierce.
Zhang Hao also met several future NBA players whose names he remembered, including Desmond Mason, one of the two favorites to win the dunk contest, and Ricky Davis, who shouted, "James was chosen to assist me."
Zhang Hao didn't know most of the geniuses that Pierce mentioned. Maybe they were just high school geniuses. For example, the future son of future head coach Doc Rivers, "the real No. 1 high school student" Rivers Jr., might not seem so talented in college. Just like Zhang Hao, among the high school students in California, he was so strong that his body could even suppress most of the centers... but he was just a high school student after all.
Today's high school rankings are disorganized and not very authoritative in the minds of fans. Unless one's performance in high school is as good as that of Garnett, Bibby, and Kobe, one can become truly famous.
In the evening, Pierce, who had received a sum of money from his mother, invited some talented high school players with whom he had a good relationship to have dinner together, and Zhang Hao was naturally among them.
Pierce's main purpose of participating in this event was to see if there was a chance to get to know more people. It just so happened that Zhang Hao was going to participate, so they decided to come together.
Seeing that Zhang Hao became more talkative than before, which seemed to be because everyone was a "genius high school student", Pierce felt very relieved. Zhang Hao had the idea of actively communicating with others. When he went to college, he would not be so easily isolated, right?
At only 18 years old, Pierce has already felt the difficulty of being a big brother...
Although he got to know a lot of people in a day, Zhang Hao once again felt the inconvenience of this era. It is one thing to get to know people, but it is actually very difficult to keep in touch in the future!
Mobile phones are luxury goods these days, not to mention these poor high school students... Many black high school students basically cannot go to college if they don't get scholarships. Do Americans no longer rely on their parents after they turn 18? Zhang Hao really wants to beat up those public intellectuals in China! They all brag about Europeans and Americans as if they were their fathers.
Even many NBA players are reluctant to spend money on mobile phones, which are as expensive as bricks...
Zhang Hao believes that this may be the reason why the media is more likely to create a situation of confrontation between two stars these days, because most people now only have channels to passively receive information and have no way to actively learn more.
The next day, Zhang Hao, Pierce, Tyronn Lue, Nazir Mohammed and a group of four came to the Great Western Forum again.
Although I met a lot of people, it was still the four people who had the most fun chatting at the beginning who got together and became closer.
In fact, other people are just like Zhang Hao. They don’t know most of them. Some of them have heard of their names and seen videos or photos, but most of them know even less about some future stars than Zhang Hao. This is not much different from domestic students hearing about a certain academic master, but this group of people are all considered semi-public figures, so the possibility of them understanding each other is higher.
Even Pierce, although he can chat happily in any group he is in, he actually doesn't know many people, most of whom he met at the Adidas training camp last year.
When they arrived at the Great Western Forum, under the guidance of the staff, the four of them each received their own competition number tags. They prepared their own competition uniforms and all of them brought their school team uniforms.
There are very few people participating in the three-point contest, only 6 people in total. All of them advance directly and just need to prepare for the competition on the evening of the 28th.
There are a total of 25 participants in the dunk contest. The preliminaries will be held this afternoon. Each person will slam dunk twice. Retired players will be invited to serve as judges to decide which 6 players will participate in the final on the evening of the 28th. The next 26th and 27th are for preparation.
There are a total of 45 high school All-Star candidates, who will be randomly assigned to five teams according to position. Each team will play two qualifying games today and tomorrow. After tomorrow's games, local Los Angeles student audiences invited to the scene will vote according to position, and a total of 10 All-Star starters and 8 substitutes will be selected. Finally, according to the voting results and position, they will be divided into two teams.
Two of the high school All-Star candidates participated in the dunk contest, one was Carter, and the other was Tyronn Lue!
Zhang Hao only participated in the dunk contest, and Muhammad only participated in the All-Star qualifiers.
The slam dunk contest was still formal, but Zhang Hao felt that McDonald's was just joking about the All-Star selection, as if it was just for the sake of putting together a competition. This was far from the professional selection method of the Adidas training camp that Pierce had told him about! No wonder Pierce refused the McDonald's All-Star for two consecutive years, and only came to join in the fun when he was invited to participate in the slam dunk contest this year.
After Tyronn Lue received his All-Star tryout number, he came to the other side to get his dunk contest number, but he unexpectedly saw Pierce!
Tyronn Lue asked in surprise: "Paul, are you participating in the dunk contest?"
"Yeah, what do you mean by that look?" Pierce saw the look that made him angry again!
"Did you drink too much last night? That's not right! We didn't drink." Tyronn Lue was really surprised.
"Do you also think I can't dunk?" Pierce snorted coldly.
Tyronn Lu nodded honestly.
Pierce was very unhappy and said with a snort, "Don't be fooled by my size. I do this to maintain my strength. I have great jumping ability. Just wait and see if you don't believe me! I am a top candidate !"
"Oh? Really? Then I will definitely watch your game carefully."
"No, it's because I'm too strong. I don't bother to participate in the competition among high school students. I just came to accompany Axe, so I chose to withdraw."
“…”
Chatty + funny... This is completely different from the Pierce in Zhang Hao's future memory!
So, this guy's personality changed drastically after being stabbed dozens of times? Just like Mr. Sa's personality changed drastically after being stabbed millions of times by Jack Ma?
Zhang Hao felt that it would be better for him to be a quiet handsome man next to Pierce, so that people wouldn't think they were the same!
Yes, the noisy Pierce withdrew from the race just after receiving his race number.
However, Zhang Hao really didn't have much expectation for Pierce's participation. It would be embarrassing for this talkative friend to participate. It seemed that Pierce had lost weight in college, but now he is really fat! It's better not to participate.
Pierce withdrew from the competition but did not leave. He still wanted to stay in the hotel for two days. As long as these players accepted the invitation and reported, they could stay until the 29th and check out, because except for a few events where the winners received a little prize money, everything else was equivalent to "free labor."
Even though Pierce has the aura of a boss, he is still a high school student and he is simply here to take advantage of the hotel by staying there.
Zhang Hao came to the training ground to prepare for the game. Except for him, the other 23 people were all black. He didn't know most of them. The only ones he got to know yesterday were Desmond Mason, Ricky Davis, Tyronn Lue, and Carter. Among them, only Tyronn Lue became familiar to him.
Zhang Hao wanted to get to know more "geniuses". Who knows some of them became NBA players but were not famous and he didn't know them. But after thinking about it, he gave up.
Yesterday, Tyronn Lue was alone, so it was easy for him to strike up a conversation and get acquainted with people. But now there is a group of people, including him, a person of a different skin color... just treat them normally.
Regarding things like the dunk contest... Zhang Hao is very confident!
He has always had good jumping ability. He was spotted by Scott Collins because of his ability to judge the ball's landing point and his excellent jumping ability. He was just a freshman in high school, so what could be seen in his skills? He caught Scott Collins' eye because of his athletic ability.
Looking at it from the perspective of future memory, he was surprised to see his jumping ability was 93, but he was used to it because in his present memory, he had always been able to jump that well.
As for his jumping ability, which was not very famous in the California high school world, it was because he did not want to cause trouble for Pierce. When he first started playing in the league, he also liked to dunk. Once, he got excited and dunked directly through the opponent's center, and then he was fouled by the opponent. Then Pierce led his teammates to fight with the opponent...
Later, Zhang Hao rarely dunked. Also, his personality was another factor. He liked dunking at first because he was too excited about entering the American high school league. Later, the desire to dunk hard gradually faded. A dunk is two points, a layup is also two points, and sometimes dunking over the opponent's head will cause a fight, which is really unnecessary.
Even though Zhang Hao had memories of the future, he still felt that his past self did quite well in terms of his on-court behavior and playing style. He was not weak, he just didn't want to cause trouble.
If it were Zhang Hao now, he would think that showing off in the game is not important, playing well is more important. However, if he has the opportunity to dunk, he still has to show off and demonstrate his athletic talent.
A layup is two points, and a dunk is also two points, but the problem is, dunks are cool!
Previously, he had caused a fight when he was dunking over an opponent. At that time, he did not realize that dunking over an opponent and dunking an empty basket are two different things.
However, his dunks in the past were really nothing fancy. Like other domestic players, his playing style was very simple, cutting in, receiving the ball and shooting, blocking out for rebounds, and doing it one by one. Although he was called a small forward, he actually played like a power forward or even a center. Domestic players, as long as they were tall, all played like a center.
But in a high school game, unless there is an inside player like Jermaine O'Neal or Garnett, the double inside combination of him and Pierce is invincible.
After completing warm-up preparations under the guidance of professional trainers hired by McDonald's, the 25 participating players began to undergo physical tests.
The three-point contest and the All-Star Game do not receive much attention. Inviting so many people is just to make the scene bigger. Now their All-Star Game is not very valuable, but they also want to make the game like the Adidas training camp. The entire testing process is still quite professional.
The jumping test is the difference between the standing reach and the running reach.
These 25 high-spirited teenagers went all out in the test to show their physical fitness...
But when Zhang Hao jumped, many people were surprised, a 43-inch running jump! That is 109 centimeters!
There are three people taller than Zhang Hao: Desmond Mason, 45 inches, or 114 centimeters; Carter, 46 inches, or 116 centimeters; and there is a 16-year-old high school sophomore named Corey Maggette, who has a running jump of 45 inches.
The jumping ability of the others was not bad either, reaching at least 40 inches, or 100 centimeters. There were quite a few who were as good as Zhang Hao, which made Zhang Hao feel... that there were animals everywhere around him!
It was just Zhang Hao's skin color and his bounce that really surprised others. Due to the large number of Chinese people, Chinese people or Chinese people can be seen in every country. In terms of athletic ability, Zhang Hao is indeed different from what they expected.
Of course, that’s all, the others also have good jumping ability.
Zhang Hao observed these opponents, and what caught his attention in particular was Corey Maggette. But looking at this sophomore boy with thick hair and a thin body, Zhang Hao really didn't recognize that this was the super muscular man who could compete with James, Artest, Anthony, Pierce and others before 2010.
As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. In just two days, many future famous basketball players were seen. Zhang Hao understood this very well. If he had not participated in such events, he would not have had the opportunity to come into contact with these people at this time.
