Chapter 2 2. Career Crisis
Chapter 2 2. Career Crisis
Inside the bathroom of the home team's locker room at Phillips Arena, where the Eagles play.
Recalling the gradual fusion of clear memories in his mind, Liu Mang stared at the mirror in a daze...
There is no doubt that the person in the mirror is himself. Liu Mang knows better than anyone else the face he has looked at in the mirror for more than 20 years. He pulled up his pants and looked at the mole in the middle of his second brother’s fur. It has become 20 centimeters taller, and it is 1.93 meters.
Liu Mang, English name Ace Liu, the English name was given to him by the university coach, which means that his shots pierced the opponent like ice skates, the new memory was born on August 26, 1982, now 19 years old, China A college student studying in the United States, participated in the NBA draft after his sophomore year at Georgia Institute of Technology, and was upset by the owner of the Eagles, who wanted to follow the footsteps of President David Stern in exploring the Chinese market. He was selected with the thirteenth overall pick. In basketball, his strengths are ball control and three-pointers. In this era, he is regarded as a non-mainstream style of play. Even the second round of the draft is difficult...
The current time is November 1, 2001. Liu Mang is a second-round rookie of the Eagles. The game just finished halftime is the opening game between the Eagles and the Rockets.
Liu Mang once thought about what would happen if he traveled back in time, but one day he really traveled back in time, and found that he knew nothing, and it was even possible that even survival would be a problem in this era of no Internet and no convenient transportation.
He now finds that he really doesn't have any capital to survive in this era except for a two-year contract with the Eagles that is not fully guaranteed.
In 2001, the Internet was not yet popular, and the Internet only had one or two megabytes of broadband. Mobile phones had just eliminated mobile phones. The only online game in the United States was the web version of the first generation of "The Sims", and the only online game in Asia was "Legend of Blood". ", when friends make an appointment to sing, it's still the kind of karaoke that queues up to sing...
He is very desperate now, he doesn't know any lottery numbers, and the method of buying lottery tickets to make a fortune doesn't work.
As for investment, it is simply nonsense, even if he really remembers that there will be a period of time before the economic bubble period, the stock market will skyrocket for no reason, but there is no money! Moreover, the bubble crisis in the 1990s has just ended, and there will be at least five or six years until the next round of story crisis!
As for the way to make money... the first thing that comes to Liu Mang's mind is the salary of the team, but he is only a second-round pick, how much salary can he get?
It is now 2001, and the NBA salary cap has just exceeded 40 million. The team's top insider, the league's block leader Ratliff, the team boss Raheem, the pensioner Kukoc, and the good old man Mohamed add up to 4 people. It has reached 39 million. Other players have a salary of hundreds of thousands to more than one million, and none of them exceeds 2 million. Terry, who averages 20+3+6 per game and is now regarded as a future superstar, is only 150. In case of a one-year contract.
Liu Mang’s salary in his rookie season was $460,000. Atlanta’s state tax rate was not high, only 5 percent, but the federal tax rate for those with an annual salary of more than $200,000 but less than $500,000 was 28 percent.
Since he didn't have a draft market at all before, no agent found him before the draft, and he still doesn't have an agent now, so he doesn't have to pay the agent a commission.
This is also a good thing, because the agent is usually the closest to the player. If an agent is found to be abnormal, it will be troublesome to explain.
But after deducting 33% tax and 3% player union dues, the first year's salary of 460,000 is less than $300,000. As for the second year's non-guaranteed contract, can I get it? Both said two things.
300,000 US dollars, the purchasing power in the United States is indeed not low, but is it possible to just sit and eat with this 300,000 US dollars?
Play well and get a contract?
Liu Mang was desperate for this matter. Although the height of a large NBA point guard became 1.93 meters tall, which is taller than most NBA point guards in this era, but the draft in his memory What was written in the evaluation: excellent ball control and excellent shooting.
To him there is no such thing at all.
And the original evaluation of this identity is that he has excellent ball control and excellent shooting, that is to say, his physical fitness is really average.
No one knows himself better than Liu Wei. Although he can play basketball and loves to watch the NBA, he plays the ball with sincerity. It’s okay to play three-on-three half-court games with classmates in China. Playing in the NBA? Nonsense!
This body is not the kind of body with particularly good physical fitness. It is not even considered excellent. Only the "self" can perform fairly well in the NCAA. Georgia Tech was upset and entered the top 8 in March Madness this year, and only then did it become well-known in Atlanta.
As for being able to enter the NBA purely because the drafts in the past two years are really bad, there are only a few worth watching, especially after the devil-like 2000 draft, the second round pick in 2001 is equivalent to choosing someone to guard the drinking water Opportunity, not Popovich, it is impossible to ensure that a real capable player will be selected outside the lottery zone this year. We can only gamble, because the talent in the past two years has been too bad. Kobe, McGrady and others high school Entering the NBA right after graduation has ruined the atmosphere to a certain extent. No, the Wizards' No. 1 pick in the summer league this year can't beat the undrafted college students.
This makes Liu Mang just because Stern is vigorously developing the overseas football market, especially the Chinese market, and there just happens to be a local Chinese college student participating in the draft. His fixed-point three-pointer is not bad, and the Eagles spent this for some reason. The second-round pick in the super draft year brought him back.
Now Liu Mang doesn't know whether he is a dove occupying the magpie's nest or something went wrong when he crossed over and grew so much taller, because his appearance and even some "birthmarks" on his body are the same as his original self, but one thing is certain, he has not "Inherited" the original ball-handling and shooting abilities of this body, and even because of the taller body, I was a little at a loss when I got the "smaller" basketball, and I was not used to it at all.
With this feeling, Liu Mang knew very well that his shooting was absolutely unreliable, maybe because he became a "giant" with a height of nearly two meters, he must have stronger strength than before and a completely different vision now. The angle directly throws the ball away...
The intermission time was not particularly long. Liu Mang was thinking wildly in the bathroom for a while, the time for the break had passed, and he could already hear the voice of the team staff calling his name to tell him that the game was about to start.
Liu Mang responded, tidied up his jersey, and prepared to go... then guard the drinking fountain...
The Eagles lineup is not bad. How can they get him as a second-round rookie in the regular time, and he is a second-round rookie in the draft year. If there is no accident in the second half, they will continue to guard the life of the drinking fountain.
He already knew at halftime that the reason why he had the opportunity to play in the first half was entirely because the Rockets had a point guard that was too strong, and it could even be said to be the first such strong point guard in history so far. Point guard, there has never been such a powerful point guard in NBA history --- Steve Francis.
Francis can be called an epoch-making point guard. Although he may not be comparable to those MVP or best team-level point guards, his appearance is epoch-making, letting people know that point guards can also play like this.
There are three types of point guards in the past. The most common point guards are Kidd and Stockton. They organize the offense and control the rhythm. They don’t necessarily have good statistics, but those with good statistics must be super point guards. Wei, this is the consensus of previous ages.
The second type is scoring point guards like Allen Iverson, Havlicek, Assassin Isaiah Thomas, Marbury and others.
The third type has only one person - Magic Johnson...
And Francis is different from these three types. He can organize the offense like Kidd, although not as good, but he can also get six or seven assists per game. He can score like Iverson, although not as good. But he can also score more than 20 points per game, he can still be as versatile as the magician, and he can get six or seven rebounds per game, but it is difficult to get a triple-double.
He has a strong body like a small forward, and the ability to dominate the air like Jordan, Carter, and James Worthy.
Describe Francis with a word that often appears ten years later-combo guard!
Francis is the first true combo guard in the history of the NBA. He played with Iverson until last season, that is, in the 2000-2001 season, when he was changed to the position of shooting guard by Larry Brown. Francis was from the beginning Just "occupied" all the work of the two positions of shooting guard and point guard, leading the team's rhythm while also being the team's scoring leader.
Francis wants to do this, and the Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich is willing to let him do this, which shows his strong strength.
Francis's impact is beyond the era of the point guard position, and now no one in the entire league can match it. The two point guards of the Eagles did not finish the halftime, and they both committed 3 fouls, plus the shooting guard position Jason Terry sent two fouls, Francis faced the Eagles' weak defensive back line again and again, and gave the Eagles 8 fouls outside the halftime...
Facing such a cruel opponent, Liu Mang felt that it was impossible for coach Ron Kruger to send him on the field.
However, Liu Mang had a feeling that coach Ron Kruger seemed to care about him, but that part of the memory seemed to be still in confusion, and he couldn't remember it for a while...