The Whip of the God of Basketball

After watching Iverson's crazy night performance, Arenas couldn't calm down for a long time. He sat in the private room of the cafe and kept reminiscing about the plot of the game. Iverson's emergency stop jump shot, Crossover dribble, and The layup, the breakthroughs in the face of O'Neal, and the moment when he crossed Tyronn Lue, his figure was deeply engraved in Arenas' mind. A fire began to burn in his heart. He imagined his situation after entering the NBA, invincible on the court, breakthroughs, shots, fast breaks, three-pointers, destroying opponents with scoring like Iverson.

Then, Fox Leon and Daryl Morey came. They had already made an appointment to meet tonight, but Leon's first words poured cold water on Arenas. This made Arenas very uncomfortable. This boy from a single-parent family and brought up by his father has an angry face and a stubborn temper. His basketball career has been filled with underestimation and then comebacks, because he always fought with anger.

His father once created an amateur basketball team, but Arenas was always a substitute in his father's team. Angrily, he left the team to join another team, and then played well against his father's team. Performance.

The high school coach told him that was your ceiling, and Arenas was furious again. He practiced from morning till night, transferred to another high school, started and became the best player in the league.

When he arrived at university, Arenas, who was born in Los Angeles, hoped to join the famous school UCLA, but in the end UCLA thought that the opponent Arenas had faced was too weak, so he gave up on him. Arenas therefore angrily left Los Angeles, went to Arizona.

In college, he was also not a starter. There were outstanding players like Richard Jefferson and Luke Walton on the team. Arenas used the opportunity of the summer unofficial game to beat the starting competitors and get the starter. Location.

At this moment, when Fox Leon told him that not many teams were optimistic about him, Arenas became angry again. He stared at Leon and Morey with big round eyes, and then said in a low voice : "If you don't like me, then don't choose me, and then you can regret it slowly."

Leon was unmoved by Arenas' anger. His style of conversation has always been outspoken, and he quickly entered the core topic instead of doing boring pleasantries. Leon took out a stack of documents from his briefcase and handed them to Arenas, then said: "This is the scouting report I gave you a week ago, and you should have attended a small training camp in Los Angeles at that time. , with tyson chandler, eddie curry, randolph, et cetera. before my scouting report came out, your draft pick was... probably mid to late first round Position. Let's see part of what a scouting report says about you, 'Small size, mediocre defense, as a shooting guard he's going to have a hard time facing his man with his strength and length.' Also here , 'Great pull-up jumper, but average shot selection, wouldn't be a good team player.'”

Leon took out another stack of documents from his briefcase and flipped through them. This is the scouting report of other scouts on Arenas. It is not a secret in the scouting circle. Of course, it is handed over to the football team. Of course, there will be some differences in details between the team's report and the public one, but the overall evaluation of the players will not differ too much.

After reading these few sentences, Leon could feel the anger on Arenas. He clenched his fist with one hand and the coffee cup with the other. But he calmed down quickly, took a sip of coffee and said, "Tell me about your evaluation of me, and how has my draft position changed since you gave me the scouting report?"

This time Leon didn't speak, and it was Morey's turn to speak, because Leon's scouting report was compiled by him. After Leon conducted on-site observation and writing, Morey collected and processed Arenas' games from high school to college Data, and commissioned Vogel to conduct a video analysis, and finally released the Celtics version of the Arenas scouting report.

"Our evaluation of you is actually not too different from other scouts. After all, we are all people on earth. But we don't agree with their evaluation of you on two points. The first is your height. Rookies often falsely report your height in order to increase their draft picks. Leon also thinks that you have falsely reported your height after watching your game. He visually judged that your height is 6 feet 3 inches and 1/2. And you're reported as 6-foot-5, which is short for a shooting guard ... But we don't think you should play shooting guard. We think you're more suited to point guard."

In most of the scouting reports for Arenas, they all think that Arenas is suitable to be a shooting guard. His outstanding offensive skills are indeed amazing, but the premise is that he is really 6-foot-5. Leon's visual height ability is also excellent in the NBA. He can tell at a glance that Arenas is not 6-foot-5 at all, but his evaluation of Arenas has not dropped but has risen, because he believes that the height of around 6-foot-3 is important for scoring. Too short for guards, but tall for point guards. Since Arenas' height cannot be changed, it is better to change his position.

Arenas shrugged his shoulders and said, "The point guard is not a problem for me."

Morey continued: "The second question is about sharing the ball. Many people think that you play a bit alone, but we don't think this is a big problem. If you can score points, then you can score two points with your teammates. There is no difference. The only question is, do you aspire to be a great player who can make your teammates better, and if so, I think you will change. I'm done."

Morey's words were full of provocations and challenges. For Arenas, these things will never be lacking in his life, which is why he chose No. 0.

The conversation between the two sides was not pleasant, but it was efficient and effective. Arenas, a kid who grew up in Los Angeles, has begun to have an interest in Boston. Maybe some teams will be interested in him and make various promises and benefits, but there is nothing that attracts him more than arousing his anger, especially at the end of the conversation, Arenas asked Leon: "You have three first-round picks, which one will you use to select me?"

Leon replied without thinking, "Of course it's the last one."

…………………

Time passed quickly. After meeting Arenas in private, Leon and Morey traveled to several cities and got in touch with other super rookies or their managers. Some of them had already made their selections. The top ten guys in the draft should be ready to go to a certain city without accident.

Of course, the NBA is always full of surprises, and the draft is no exception. Just as the Philadelphia 76ers broke the Lakers' undefeated streak in Los Angeles, anything could happen before Stern stepped onto the stage to read the results.

So, while the San Antonio Spurs fretted over their 28th pick, everything went perfectly fine until Fox-Leon and the Celtics were interested in Tony Parker. Although international players continue to flood into the NBA, and some have shown a very high level, they are all big men like Divac, Kukoc, Schrempf or Nowitzki, but not a single one. Small guys from Europe, especially point guards, have really proven themselves in the NBA. Those NBA general managers are convinced that Europe can't produce point guards suitable for the NBA.

Buford, the Spurs' assistant general manager, thought so at first, but he began to change his mind during the 2000 Nike Challenge and field trips in France, while also convincing Pop with tape and scouting reports. Vichy, Popovich with a unique vision also believes that this is a rare talent and a choice worth cultivating at the point guard position of the Spurs. Although this is a gamble, Popovich is willing to gamble.

In trying to win over the Celtics with Chris Anderson and be ready to pay a price for further contact -- such as a future second-round pick -- for the Celtics' promise not to steal Parker early, they took To the Celtics slap hard. New York big mouth king Pete - Vickers broke the news that Auerbach is interested in Tony - Parker, and that this is a very good point guard. Auerbach's vision was known to everyone in the United States, so Tony Parker suddenly became popular. News reports and scouting reports about him began to increase, and his projected draft pick also soared.

Popovich almost had to shave his hair to deal with such a complicated situation. From now on, it is not only the Celtics who may rob Parker, but almost all teams in the league. Popovich had to use all his connections to communicate with managers of teams in the league who were likely to win Parker, using both hard and soft tactics to hope that they would not win Parker in advance.

From the beginning of wanting to make a fortune silently, now they have to go to war. They paid the price for a wrong show of favor. On the other hand, Leon and the Celtics are making arrangements without haste, quietly waiting for the big gamble in the draft.