The Whip of the God of Basketball

In the week after coming to the Suns, Leon put all his thoughts on the Suns' training and getting along with the Suns players, while keeping a distance from the Phoenix media. Phoenix is ​​not a big sports city. Unlike New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, where there are a large number of senior sports commentators and reporters. The only influential sports media in Phoenix is ​​the "Arizona Republic" and the rest They are some small media or TV stations that report some sports news part-time.

After Leon moved into the Suns, Paul Colo, the top NBA reporter of the Arizona Republic, has always wanted to conduct an exclusive interview with Leon to understand some of Leon's thoughts on the direction of the Suns next season, because now many Suns fans I'm worried that Leon will transform the Suns into a defensive team like Boston.

Phoenix is ​​different from Boston. There is not such a deep sports soil here. Although the Suns have a long NBA history, their team history is far from as glorious as Boston. For Phoenix fans, they don’t have any historical glory or baggage. They just want to watch beautiful games and beautiful offenses, starting with Paul Westphal in the 1960s, to Larry Nance, and then to Kyle Vin Johnson, Charles Barkley, Jason Kidd, until Steve Nash, they have never attacked or died.

In the past three years, the entire league has been shrouded in the defensive shadow of Boston's green, while the sun has been blocked by the black shadow of the Spurs, without even a chance to advance to the Finals. Now that the guy from Boston has come to the Suns, the fans are naturally mixed. They hope that the team can win and break out of the Western Conference, but they also don't want the Suns to become a team with an ugly style.

In the past few days when Leon was coaching the Suns in training, reporters kept coming to the training hall at the American Airlines Center to ask for interviews. However, every time they went there, the Suns' training opening hours were very short, and they would not conduct tactics when reporters were around. Training is just simple shooting and confrontation exercises. This disappointed reporters hoping to glean some information from the training.

Therefore, Kolo wanted to arrange an exclusive interview with Leon, hoping to rely on the connections and reputation he had accumulated in the Suns to ask the best coach in the NBA to talk about his plans to fans in Phoenix.

Of course, his invitation was ruthlessly rejected by Leon, and then Kolo contacted the Suns' top management, the owner, the director of the Human Resources Management Center, and the director of the external publicity department, but to no avail.

"I'm sorry, you can interview anyone on the team, but not Leon. Don't ask me why. You can't even ask Stern to invite him." This was the reply given to Kolo by the Suns' publicity department. There is nothing I can do. Leon is considered one of the most famous coaches in the NBA at the moment, and he is highly appreciated by boss Savo. Kolo, who has served the Suns for many years, really has nothing to do.

However, in this era of developed media, reporters are all communicating with each other. So Kolo immediately thought of Yahoo reporter Woj, who has become famous for various revelations in the past two years, and it is said that Woj and Fox-Leon are very good friends, and many of Woj's revelations were provided to him by Leon. It's just that the two never admitted it in public, they just said they knew each other.

Kolo immediately contacted Woj and wanted to ask him if there was any news about Leon and what direction the Suns would take next season. Kolo sent a text message directly to Woj on the weekend. He knew that Woj was always on and working 24 hours a day except on the plane. Soon Kolo received Woj's reply, but the content disappointed him: "I can help you in other aspects, but to be honest, let me know Leon's information, it is better to let me tell you where the President of the United States is. "

If Woj can't hear what Leon is saying, the only way left is to break through from inside the sun. Find assistant coaches, find team trainers, team staff. But that would cost Kolo a little money. Finally, he found a masseur who was engaged in muscle relaxation and stretching after player training in the team, and wanted to get some information from him.

Finally, Kolo found some breakthroughs in his work here. The trainer told Kolo three very valuable pieces of news. First, the Suns players spent a lot more time relaxing their muscles after training every day. However, Their training time has not become longer; secondly, the Suns' main training focus is still on offense; thirdly, Fox Leon seems to often say to Steve Nash, do you want to win a scoring champion?

The first and second messages Kolo felt were normal and he was relieved, indicating that after Leon came to the Suns, the team's training efficiency has become more efficient, and they will still be an offense-oriented team. Team. But what is the third item? Let Nash win a scoring title? Khloe felt that this must be a joke between Leon and Nash, but that was not the joke.

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Leon has had a very fulfilling time in Phoenix, and he is much busier than when he was in college. When he was at Davidson College, before and after training every day, he would have a lot of time to go fishing, take a walk in the countryside, or go to Los Angeles to spend time with his wife. During that year, Leon thought about a lot of things related to basketball. He could put aside the complicated affairs and off-court issues of the NBA and focus more of his energy on the court.

He originally wanted to last longer like this, wait until his child is born, have more time to accompany him, grow up with him, win a few championships in the NCAA, and then think and experiment with more tactics and ideas. But when Steve Kerr invited him, he was still moved. The reason is simple. The Phoenix Suns are the best testing ground for his new ideas.

Just like Leon captured the general trend of three-pointers in the league after coming to the Boston Celtics in 2000, in 2007, Leon had already smelled the signs that the entire league would undergo major changes in the style of play. As a coach who used strong defense to stifle the entire league in previous seasons, Leon knew that such a team style was not suitable for the league. No team will ever have as many defensive players as the Celtics did in the 2004-2006 season, and they also have the most versatile and intelligent defensive core. They are nuclear submarines carefully built by Leon to swim against the current. After all, Still have to disappear in the water.

After coming to Davidson College, the biggest problem Leon faced as the team coach was that no one in the entire college could defend as he asked. For those children, the basketball environment they grew up in was completely different from that of the players born in the 1960s and 1970s. They loved offense more, dribbling, three-pointers, and subtle and complex offensive tactics.

Every time Leon explains various complex and clever tactics to the students in the tactics course, those children will pay close attention, much more seriously than when they take the cultural class. Because they think it's cool to use beautiful passes, gorgeous dunks in fast breaks, and missile-like three-pointers to defeat their opponents, just like the Phoenix Suns. From that moment on, Leon knew that this was not just the case in a small place like Davidson College, but in every school in the United States, such children would be the mainstream.

This is the trend, this is the process of history. Leon clearly understands that no one can fight against time and history, including him, a person who traveled through time and space. Leon knows that the era of offense and three-pointers will eventually come. Those players who entered the NBA in the 1990s are still at their final peak. They can still dominate the league for a while, but this time will not be long.

The reason why Leon wanted to go to Davidson College to teach was actually very simple, because he wanted to take economics classes at Davidson College, but several Ivy League universities in Boston refused to let him attend, which made him very annoyed. Davidson College in North Carolina was very tolerant in this regard. When Leon agreed to become the school's basketball coach, it gave him a class attendance pass, and he could audit any course in the school when he was free.

The courses he takes most often are finance and organizational anthropology. His solid foundation in economics and finance has benefited him a lot. At the same time, organizational anthropology has opened up his ideas in team management. This year, he led the little-known Davidson College to the NCAA quarterfinals, which shocked the United States. The personal ability of team player Stephen Curry was greatly highlighted.

If Kolo carefully studied the performance of Davidson College and Stephen Curry in the NCAA competition in March this year, then he should be able to understand the meaning of the phrase "Let Nash be the scoring champion." It's a pity that Khloe didn't realize the inherent meaning of this sentence and just thought it was a joke. Then in the Arizona Republic's NBA column on Monday, he wrote an article describing the Suns' blueprint for next season, believing that the Suns will continue to uphold the banner of offense, and at the same time their offense will be more efficient.

As for letting Nash become the scoring champion, it was treated as a joke and completely ignored.