Chapter 488: Yao Ming's Rookie Wall

All-Star weekend is over!

The carnival in Atlanta is still going on. The All-Star Grand Slam won by Liu Mang created a record in NBA history, allowing Atlanta fans to see what a rising young superstar looks like.

Generally speaking, no matter how well a low-ranking rookie plays, they will be said to be capable of immediate combat and have no talent, just like last season. People speak highly of Liu Mang's rookie season, but various media However, the evaluation has a feeling that a rookie is the pinnacle.

However, a slam dunk king was won, and Liu Mang was immediately crowned the title of the most talented player in the 2001 rookie class.

On February 17th, which is the morning of the second day of the All-Star Weekend, Liu Mang drank skim milk and made oatmeal. Looking at the comments about himself in the news, Liu Mang felt that these media were really weird. He took a dunk king, Does that mean talent is good?

However, Liu Mang felt pretty good about becoming the leader of the rookies in the same class.

It's a pity that it's hard to enjoy this kind of leisurely breakfast time of drinking milk, oatmeal and eating vegetable salad again for a while.

In the afternoon, Liu Mang will go to Houston with the team to continue the cruel and unsolvable schedule.

Liu Mang thought that this leisurely breakfast might be the last leisurely breakfast for the next month or so, and suddenly felt a chill in his heart.

But watching the news, I suddenly felt that Liu Mang was very strange, as if something was wrong.

By the way, Uncle Ben is going to play the Western Sixers, and the Dinahs! Shouldn't you come to sell a cute gift or something, why is there no one in the early morning?

When I was just making cereal, I saw this little loli sneaking up and down the stairs.

Liu Mang went to Dinah's room to check, but there was no one there. He went to the kitchen, but there was still no one... Finally, he found this little loli in a room that was originally thought to be empty.

I don't know when this room was "reconstructed" into an honor "museum". Liu Mang's All-Star Weekend trophies, Best Rookie, Best Sixth Man trophies, etc. were all neatly arranged , and there is a card placed in front of the trophy, with some similar comments written on it in crooked Chinese.

Seeing that little Lolita was writing something carefully in front of the slam dunk contest trophy she just got two days ago, she didn't even notice when she came in, that kind of serious look... Sure enough, the serious little Lolita is the cutest !

Liu Mang looked at it quietly for a while, then closed the door gently, ready to get out of the way without disturbing the serious Dinah.

...

...

After the seven-day All-Star weekend break, the Eagles started a wave of six consecutive trips.

First of all, the Eagles came to the aerospace city of Houston. The first game of the six-game streak was an away game against the Rockets.

The Rockets have been doing well recently, gaining the upper hand in the competition with the Suns for the eighth place in the Western Conference. Although Yao Ming has been in a downturn recently, that's the case for rookies. Rookie game.

However, Francis and the old cat Mobley are in good condition. It seems that the Rockets have hope of returning to the playoffs this year.

With Yao Ming and Stoudemire having similar statistics and team records, it is basically certain that whoever enters the playoffs will be the best rookie. The entire voting is because the Suns entered the playoffs In the first game, Stoudemire won the best rookie, and the difference between the two was less than ten first votes.

In Liu Wei's memory, the Rockets have always been a miraculous team. They obviously didn't deliberately try to be a bad team, but inexplicably there were high-ranking stars, and the reconstruction was completed before they knew it, and they became a competitive team. team.

Just like now, the trio of Francis, Lao Mao Mobley, and Yao Ming has both talent and strength.

…

The night the Eagles came to Houston, Yao Ming came to the hotel and took Liu Mang to his home.

Yao Mingzheng is a standard domestic tycoon. He is diligent and thrifty. He bought a villa. He actually bought it in a middle-class villa area in Houston. The price was 450,000 U.S. dollars. The room has two living rooms, a kitchen and a dining room, plus a bathroom that Americans inexplicably love.

The house is generally big, and there is no yard or anything. Just a flower bed at the door, it is more suitable to say that it is a single-family house rather than a villa. The flower bed is the flower bed of the next door...

Liu Mang thinks this kind of life is also very good, mainly because he has neighbors and is closer. Levia's home is good, but Yao Ming's life like this is more suitable for Liu Mang.

But... If Liu Mang was asked to change, he would not be willing to kill him.

Just kidding, everyone will feel a little hypocritical, just like Jack Ma hypocritically said that he prefers the life of being a university teacher and receiving a salary every month, it is purely pretending to be hypocritical.

But it's nice to feel this life once in a while.

Yao Ming is really a standard domestic single man, he actually treats guests to order takeout, this is simply... too much for Liu Mang's appetite, they are all old men, and they don't have a girl, it's embarrassing to go to that kind of high-end restaurant, ordering takeout is too suitable Chinese people are used to it.

Liu Mang asked Yao Ming to order a vegetable salad for himself.

While eating takeaway, the two chatted.

After Yao Ming experienced the rookie wall in January without knowing it by his compatriots, he fell into a period of confusion. Whether he should gain weight to increase his ability to block and dominate the low post; or should he develop a flexible foot and a tall pitcher As your future development direction?

This needs to be decided by Yao Ming himself. Yao Ming asked Liu Mang. Although Liu Mang is young, he has a lot of ideas, and he entered the NBA a year ago. Yao Ming attaches great importance to Liu Mang's opinion.

Liu Mang would not directly tell Yao Ming what he should do hastily. He just analyzed the pros and cons of the two development directions for Yao Ming and let Yao Ming make his own decision.

Gain weight, with Yao Ming's height and his amazing flexibility and touch, he can have a strong dominance in the interior and rebounding ability second only to O'Neal, becoming a dominant center.

But the disadvantage is that it is vulnerable to injury. It is best to rest a dozen games in the regular season every year, just like O'Neal.

Except for world-class competitions, that is, the Olympics and the World Championships, other miscellaneous Asian competitions are not played, so as to ensure health.

This is Liu Mang's analysis of Yao Ming's original career.

Yao Ming's continuous reimbursement and retirement before the age of 30 is definitely not just a problem of the national team, nor is it just a problem of the team.

It's a question of how to use it.

Liu Mang didn’t know how to give advice to Yao Ming, so he directly referred to O’Neal to give advice to Yao Ming. Yao Ming trained harder by himself. If he could participate in some irrelevant games like O’Neal, he would not be under the hands of Adelman, the first generation of Thibodeau. If you are devastated, pay more attention to rest, even if your career will definitely last longer.

And the second development direction is similar to that of Gasol and Nowitzki, without gaining weight, and playing flexible offense from the outside. Yao Ming can play. He is playing that way now, and this style of play can have a long life. It is not a big problem in his career, and it is estimated that playing the national team game is not a big problem, just like Gasol Nowitzki has played almost all times in the European Cup, World Championships, and Olympics without serious injuries. This style of play is not easy to get injured.

But this style of play basically has no so-called dominance, and Yao Ming does not have Gasol's organizational ability, so he may become a better scorer who can play both inside and outside, but he is just like Dirk Nowitzki and Gasol all the year round. Like being called a softie, there is no dominance at all.

Liu Mang shared his views on the two development directions with Yao Ming. Among them, the pros and cons, and how to choose mainly depends on Yao Ming himself.