Chapter 9 Logo Man's Attention
The group of people met up to have a fast food meal, and the relationships between those who were not so familiar with each other became more familiar.
Zhang Hao also knew that Carter was not that arrogant, but when it came to dunking, Carter always had that "I am invincible" attitude. When he came to participate in the dunk contest, he regarded everyone as "a scapegoat", so he looked very arrogant. But after he had a recognized opponent, Zhang Hao, he became like an ordinary high school student, at least when dealing with Zhang Hao and his group.
What Zhang Hao didn't know was that the reason why Carter came to make friends actively was related to what he said to a few people around him at the end of the tryouts. At that time, Carter was really preparing to run over to provoke them, but after hearing what Zhang Hao said, Carter, who came behind Zhang Hao and his group, smiled so hard that his mouth corners almost reached his ears. There was no more provocative aura in his mind, and he quickly ran away.
After dinner, Zhang Hao and Pierce sent the two female classmates back to their apartment. Both of them lived in Pierce's apartment.
After sending the two back, Zhang Hao and Pierce naturally had to go back to the hotel to stay. It was indeed more comfortable to stay in a hotel.
However, on the way back to the hotel, Pierce felt a slightly resentful look from the person next to him.
"Axe, what's wrong with you? Didn't you eat enough tonight?"
"What was the name of the girl with April? I think her name was Chris? She wanted to see your room, why didn't you agree?"
"My room is such a mess, why should I take her there? Send her back to the apartment as soon as possible. I still need to play games. I just secretly bought the latest version of MapleStory, and I have to finish it while I'm staying in the hotel. If I take it home, my mom will scold me..."
"I wish you stay single forever!"
"crooked?"
The two returned to the hotel and went to their respective rooms. One very generous thing about McDonald's All-Stars is that the rooms they arranged are all single rooms, so there is no awkward situation of rooming together with strangers. According to Pierce, the Adidas training camp only provides double rooms.
In fact, Zhang Hao doesn’t care, as long as his roommate is not too sloppy.
After taking a shower, Zhang Hao saw that he had 395 days left to live... He hoped that he could get a perfect dunk in the dunk contest final the day after tomorrow.
But this is just Zhang Hao’s bottom line goal, he wants to win the championship now!
champion!
Of course I have to fight for the championship!
My opponent is Carter! If I can beat Carter in a dunk contest once, I can brag about it for the rest of my life!
The next two days will be the preparation time for the dunk contest, and they can go to the Great Western Forum to prepare. The Lakers will leave for Seattle tomorrow, and the first game between the two teams will be on the 27th.
Zhang Hao looked at the goal of the task before going to bed. Sure enough, he had not completed it because there was no reminder before. A unanimous vote in the selection round did not count as a full score dunk.
Nothing happened that night, and the next day, Zhang Hao came to the Great Western Forum alone to practice shooting.
It feels very different to train in an NBA team's stadium.
Zhang Hao had already prepared for how to dunk in the finals. What was more important for him now was to fully develop the effect of the mid-range investment growth card before the start of the Adidas training camp, and then strive to enter one of the two elite teams in the Adidas training camp!
Since you are ready to start as a player and move towards a coaching position, you must first do well as a player. Only then can you stay longer in the professional or semi-professional arena, cultivate more connections, and then you will have the opportunity to become a coach.
NCAA, Development League, European League...he is not picky.
Before, Zhang Hao had only trained with his own high school team. When he saw that his teammates in the lower grades needed the coach’s supervision to train well, he didn’t have much idea.
Now they came to the Great Western Forum for training. There was obviously a game this afternoon, but Zhang Hao didn't see many people coming to train. The Lakers' huge home team training ground was empty, with only a few kittens.
Zhang Hao deeply felt that those players with excellent skills after entering the NBA may not have developed their skills simply through training during college, but the difference between them and other players can be seen from the beginning.
Like Pierce, although he has an uncontrolled diet and is now as fat as an NBA center, nicknamed the high school version of Barkley, he is never vague in training. It's just that he doesn't have the concept of controlling his diet yet.
Zhang Hao feels that the geniuses participating in the McDonald's All-Star Selection this time may really have great talent for playing basketball, but there is a gap between them and truly outstanding players in these details. Slowly, after a few years, when they have finished college or entered the professional arena, the gap will be extremely obvious.
There were also differences in attitude among the players who came to the training ground for training today. Coming early or late is one thing. Some players practiced for a while and it seemed that they didn't even get into the training state, and the training was already over.
From the beginning to the end of Zhang Hao's training, there were two players who stayed on the training ground the longest. One was the future white devil Mike Bibby who seemed to always wear a headband, and the other, which surprised Zhang Hao, was Carter!
Mike Bibby was practicing long two-point shots, Zhang Hao was practicing mid-range shots from any position, and Carter was practicing three-point shots. It can be said that the three of them were practicing in completely different directions, but as they practiced, they began to compete with each other.
They were all surprised at each other's shooting level!
Mike Bibby didn't expect that the two best dunkers yesterday were both such good shooters. He thought that these two players relied on their athletic ability to play in high school, because there are many players who can play very well in high school purely by relying on their running and jumping abilities, but these two are very different from ordinary sports players.
As for Carter, he had heard of Mike Bibby 's basketball skills. This player, who won the New Jersey Basketball Player of the Year award for two consecutive years with his skills, had a very high level of shooting, but he did not expect that Zhang Hao's shooting was also very good.
As for Zhang Hao, he was not surprised at all that these two had a good shooting foundation. Both of them would be NBA stars with mid-range and long-range shooting as their main scoring means in the future. However, he also had the idea of competing with them.
Zhang Hao keenly felt that although his skills were not as comprehensive as those two, he would not be worse than them if he only looked at the basics of shooting. As for his strengths, he would definitely be better than them in one area, and that was mid-range shooting!
…
After a morning of training, the three of us didn't achieve anything special after competing with each other. It's just that if you practiced a set, I also have to practice a set. If your set is accurate, I must also be accurate in my next set.
What the three of them practiced were quite different. Mike Bibby practiced shooting after dribbling; Carter practiced spot three-pointers; and Zhang Hao practiced shooting from any position within the mid-range, and he had already passed the spot training stage.
So there is really no way to directly compare which one is better.
Unlike Carter, Mike Bibby is not a very friendly person. He has always been proud of his good skills. Although his basic skills are definitely better than Zhang Hao and Carter, and he is definitely the best among the three in terms of skills, Mike Bibby was quite unhappy when he saw that Zhang Hao and Carter, two players with outstanding running and jumping skills and tall physique, were actually better than him in shooting in some areas. When he saw Zhang Hao and Carter finish their training, Mike Bibby, who was competing with the two, just left.
"He's really difficult to get along with, Axel. I was planning to invite him to have lunch together, but forget it, what are we having for lunch?" Carter couldn't help pouting as he spoke.
There must be rest times during training, especially for Zhang Hao. After every one or two hundred shots, he can feel that there are some shortcomings in his shooting and he needs to think about how to improve. The key is to find out what is not good enough, and then use his own training over the years and what he has learned under the guidance of a professional basketball coach in the past three years to improve it. This is also the key to his rapid progress in recent times and the powerful effect of that growth card.
The other two would also rest, but during the rest time, it was usually Carter and Zhang Hao who chatted. The two high school students didn't talk about anything else, just exchanged training experiences with each other. Carter is a player who can play with the ball or without the ball, and Zhang Hao is a player without the ball. The two of them got along well, mainly because after their dunks yesterday, they both felt a sense of mutual appreciation.
But Mike Bibby, as rumored, has a very bad temper. It is said that he was a guy who liked to trash talk anyone, including the spectators on the sidelines, in high school. He did not spare any of them, including his opponents, teammates, and even the caddies who volunteered to help him train in school.
He is hated by everyone, but he is a great basketball player, which makes him have a lot of fans in school. Not only does he have a bad personality, he is also very arrogant...
During the break, Mike Bibby ignored the two "jumping guys whose shooting exceeded expectations" in his eyes, and now they just left without even saying hello.
"I think he is very good. Good people always have some quirks. He is very accurate in two-point shots. His physical fitness and off-ball skills are not as good as ours, but he may be better than you in offense with the ball. But your three-point shots are really good." Zhang Hao never hesitates to praise someone with whom he has no real grudges.
Mike Bibby, who had just walked to the exit of the training ground, didn't care about Carter's words at all. There were so many people scolding him, so who was Carter?
But after hearing Zhang Hao's praise, Mike Bibbitt's mood suddenly improved a lot. The reason why he was unhappy again was that he met two peers who were much more athletic than him, had better physiques than him, and had some better skills than him. This made him very indignant. He worked so hard, but still lost to talent in many aspects.
But after Zhang Hao said this, Mike Bibby felt much more comfortable.
Mike Bibby walked away without stopping , but after leaving the two people's sight, he actually took small steps, revealing his inner joy.
"He's a very good basketball player," Carter didn't think there was anything wrong with Zhang Hao saying that Mike Bibby's ball handling attack was better than his. He was quite honest in this regard. He was really good. He smiled and said, "Don't worry about him. How did you practice your mid-range shot? I don't think many people who play in the NBA are better at mid-range shooting than you. Let's have a competition this afternoon to see which one is more accurate, your mid-range shot or my three-point shot!"
"Oh, ok, I want to try it too."
Zhang Hao did not refuse and agreed. However, he didn’t know if it was his illusion. Carter didn’t seem to care much about who was stronger, but was simply interested in the “duel”?
Just as Zhang Hao described Mike Bibby, "Geniuses all have quirks." Carter gave Zhang Hao a completely different feeling from other geniuses. This guy seemed to have no desire to win!
It seems that for Carter, whether it is a dunk contest or something else related to winning or losing, Carter seems to be "interested" and works hard for it, but he doesn't care that much about winning or losing... He definitely cares, but it's far less than his interest, and far less than other equally talented people's obsession with winning or losing.
…
In the afternoon, Zhang Hao and Carter continued training, while Mike Bibby went to play a game. He had a game this afternoon, and tomorrow would be the McDonald's High School All-Star Game. After today's game, more than 2,000 fans on the scene would vote to select 18 All-Star high school students.
But Zhang Hao didn't care about this, and neither did Carter. The two of them competed in shooting duels, each time with 50 balls. Zhang Hao shot mid-range and long-range shots, Carter shot three-pointers, and occasionally Carter would shoot mid-range shots. Carter had a good foundation in mid-range shots, but compared with Zhang Hao, who specialized in mid-range shots and had made rapid progress recently, he was indeed far behind.
This made Carter more interested and he decided to work hard in this area.
The next day, it was the day of the McDonald's High School All-Star Game. Neither Zhang Hao nor Carter planned to watch it. The strength of the players on the field might not be inferior to theirs. At this stage in high school, physical fitness is the first priority. Therefore, technically outstanding geniuses like Mike Bibby are particularly concerned by those universities. Because of their special status, there are really a lot of them with good physical fitness.
But the game itself... was really unremarkable.
While the two were focusing on individual training and occasionally trying to compete against each other, someone in an office on the second floor of the Great Western Forum would occasionally watch their training from the window.
"Jerry, are you watching that high school student again?" A middle-aged man in his 40s entered the office and said to the team's general manager Jerry West, who was in his 50s, at the window: "That guy named Carter is very good, right? We can wait until he graduates from college and try to draft him."
Publicly, not many people knew Carter, who was still a high school student. But for NBA team management with many scouts, Carter's talent had long been recognized. After all, he was the best high school student in Florida and had received a full scholarship from the famous basketball school North Carolina. After two or three years of college training, under normal circumstances, he would definitely become a very outstanding professional player.
Jerry West smiled and responded, "Yes, Mickey, Carter is very good. Maybe he will be part of our future revival plan."
The Lakers have a lot of high-quality chips, but lottery picks in the next few years are not easy to exchange for. They have to spend a lot of money, and they may even have to use a center to get them.
There will definitely be many teams vying for a genius like Carter. From the information Jerry West currently knows, he judges that the draft in the next few years will be very hot and some teams will be in serious trouble. Talented college students like Duncan, Iverson, and Olowokandi are too attractive.
The Lakers' record is definitely not that bad. They have Divac, an All-Star center, and they have used mid- and low-ranking draft picks to scoop up so many outstanding players in the past three years. They are still a sure bet for the playoffs. However, it is basically impossible for them to get a lottery pick in the next two or three years.
Of course, we still have to pay attention to what we should pay attention to. Jerry West already has a revival plan and has begun to lay out in the media, but he still lacks an outside line.
Carter is one of Jerry West's targets. He reminds Jerry West of a young Dominique Wilkins.
He initially paid attention to Carter's visit for training, and did not go to Seattle with the team. They definitely have no chance of winning the championship this year. Although Eddie Jones and Van Exel have the strength to be on the verge of an All-Star, and Divac is also on the verge of an All-Star, it will be difficult to win the championship relying on these three people...even if all three are in their peak period. So after Jerry West failed to gain anything at the mid-season trade deadline, he has been focusing on the future.
By the way, Jerry West paid attention to a Chinese high school student and the talented white point guard from New Jersey. It was originally just because the Chinese high school student showed amazing running and jumping abilities in the dunk contest trials two days ago. McDonald's has stepped up its publicity efforts in the Chinese community in the past two days, and Jerry West has an impression of it.
But he discovered that this Chinese high school student not only had excellent athletic ability, but also had exceptional shooting skills!
Jerry West has observed Chinese players. Theoretically, these players have good shooting talents, but their shortcomings are more obvious. They lack mobility and confrontation.
The same goes for Zhang Hao. If there is a shortcoming, it is that he is too thin. It doesn't matter in high school, but in adult competitions like the NCAA, it may be exposed.
Another thing is that it is often said that the ceiling of Chinese players is not high. This is mainly because Chinese basketball is basically confined to China. Chinese basketball is a product of the system, and players are rarely allowed to play in European and American leagues. Chinese basketball has developed abnormally. Almost every player has grown tall since childhood and has played center from the beginning. The basic skills of inside players are relatively good, but the basic skills of outside players generally begin to concentrate on practicing outside techniques after their body shape is finalized, but by then it is too late.
He watched Zhang Hao training these two days and discovered something surprising.
In terms of technology, Zhang Hao cannot compare with Mike Bibby, and is far behind Carter.
But in terms of mid-range shooting, Zhang Hao, who is still in high school, has already reached the NBA level! Maybe he is not particularly outstanding in the NBA, but he is definitely qualified, even excellent!
Mike Bibby and Carter didn't have much idea and just thought Zhang Hao's mid-range shot was amazing. But Jerry West, who worked in the NBA for more than 30 years as a player + manager, saw more.
That’s not all. Jerry West keenly noticed the differences in details between Zhang Hao’s training on the second day and on the first day. In other words, Zhang Hao was able to complete an effective summary after one day’s training!
Having the awareness to summarize every time you train and being able to summarize something are two different things.
Zhang Hao's talent in mid-range shooting shocked Jerry West! Mid-range shooting is the most difficult of all shooting techniques. Mike Bibby only specializes in the long two-point shot from the free throw line to the three-point line. Although Carter's shooting made Jerry West feel his comprehensive shooting talent, his talent in mid-range shooting was not as amazing as Zhang Hao's.
Zhang Hao reminded Jerry West of a player - Andrew Toney of the former 76ers, the mid-range shooting champion of the championship team that defeated them in the finals more than a decade ago.
Jerry West specifically asked a scout to collect some information about Zhang Hao. Since Zhang Hao was a high school student in Los Angeles, the information was not difficult to collect.
The results he collected made Jerry West wonder why a high school student like him was not interested in college?
Jerry West even believed that Zhang Hao went to the United States to study, and then became interested in basketball and started practicing, because he could see something very special in just these two days...
However, Jerry West thought carefully and realized that even he, the general manager of a local NBA team in Los Angeles, didn't know Zhang Hao, let alone those universities? Even he, in the past season, only focused on Pierce among the local high school students in Los Angeles.
After all, every year there are so many high school students entering college, and every year there are so many college students participating in the draft. However, after the reform of the draft, only 54 players enter the NBA through the draft each year. For the student group, the only way to get into the NBA is through the draft. As for the attention paid to high school students, it is indeed the best players in each state that deserve the attention of the NBA.
After paying attention to Zhang Hao, Jerry West kept this high school student who might have been a missed gem in his high school years in mind.
Even if Zhang Hao cannot play in the NCAA's first-level league, or the secondary league... Jerry West doesn't think there is anything wrong with it. He may get the most resources and performance opportunities because there are no other talents. The disadvantage is that the NBA doesn't pay as much attention to the secondary league. Although there will be some attention, and every year there are a few NCAA secondary league players selected by NBA teams, but this is what Jerry West wants. If Zhang Hao's draft pick is too high and he has lottery talent, then he will have no chance to pick up the treasure.
Of course, it depends on whether Zhang Hao can continue to improve in college. He is a high school student with top off-ball talent...
Jerry West was very happy to have discovered a how good Carter was, he couldn't be better than Mike Bibby, the future No. 1 pick candidate, right?
…
On the evening of April 27, the McDonald's All-Star High School Game came to an end, and the final MVP was won by a strong senior forward Devin George.
As expected, there was no big splash. The next morning, when Zhang Hao was looking for this news in the sports newspaper, he found a very small space on the sub-page that talked about Devon George's statistics and winning the McDonald's High School All-Star Game MVP.
And below the headline of the Los Angeles Times, which was the news after the Lakers defeated the Supersonics, was a preview of the McDonald's High School Slam Dunk Contest to be held tonight!
It also posted news about the American cable TV station's live broadcast of the game, as well as the participating players, etc.
Zhang Hao has been training for the past two days. He realized later that he was being used by McDonald's to attract the Chinese community to watch the show. This made him very happy. Which basketball player doesn't want to be noticed?
In his opinion, the unnamed flying devil from Wake Forest University has created a persona of "I don't care about popularity", but all he does is to attract crazy fans.
This year, the Clippers, 76ers, Pistons... several teams played badly for him, but he didn't come. Zhang Hao estimates that another group of teams will lose their temper next year.
