Chapter 876 875. Let’s Start with the Mountain Cat

"Ace, let's have dinner at my house tonight." Maddie didn't give an answer right away.

McGrady wanted to calm down his head, but he didn't want Liu Mang to leave. He wanted to go back to the room to clear his head and think about something.

It is not an easy task to increase the average points per game by one point. If it is 26 to 27, it will be easy, but everyone's points have an upper limit. Like this season, Liu still relies on Liu. Mang has scored 40+ points in 10 games, including 50+ points three times, and 61 points among the 50+ times three times. He only averaged 36.1 points per game. It is too difficult to continue to improve!

If it were really that easy, there would have been a lot of 30+ scorers per game. But in fact, the only players who can average 30+ points per game in a single season since the new century are Kobe, Iverson, Tracy McGrady, Among the four Liu Mang, the scoring champions in the 1990s, only Jordan averaged more than 30 points per game.

Better than O'Neal, he won two scoring titles. The season with the highest scoring title was 29.7 points. In the last dozen games, he worked hard to score points. In the first 65 games, he still shot 60% from the field. By the end of the season, only 57% was left, and it only improved from 29.4 points to 29.7 points.

Liu Mang's score has been hovering between 35.9 and 36.1 points recently. Normally, this is the limit.

If there is another wave, the team will only be as weak as Jordan's 37.1 points.

But the Eagles are now No. 1 in the league...

Liu Mang did not refuse and called Levia and asked her to pick up Dinah and Alexia from school and have dinner at Maddie's house tonight.

Liu Mang followed Maddie into the villa.

"Ace, you're here. Sorry, I'm taking care of the child. Tracy, go and make tea for Ace." McGrady's wife, Lelenda McGrady, was changing the child's diaper when she saw Liu Mang coming. Say hello.

"Ace goes to the kitchen and makes whatever he wants to drink. Ace is having dinner at our house tonight. Lelenda, you call a chef to cook. I'll go back to the room." McGrady didn't greet Liu Mang, they were all so familiar. .

Liu Mang didn't think anything was wrong, nor did Lelenda. The two families visited each other not once or twice, but always. When they took their children to Liu Mang's house, Liu Mang also let them take care of themselves. Of course, Levi It’s just that Ya and Alexia are much more enthusiastic than Liu Mang.

When he came to Tracy McGrady's house, since Lelenda had to take care of the child, Liu Mang said, "I'm in charge of myself." He took a bag of black tea, boiled it for a while, put some milk and half a sugar cube, and went to the home theater to watch the Kings. Game video.

…

After Maddie returned to the room, he sat on the toilet in the bathroom. He heard that this was the place where artists got the best inspiration, so he came here to think.

McGrady was shocked by Liu Mang's "arrogance".

The last time McGrady was shocked was in February 1996, when the two of them, one a senior and one a senior, participated in a high school basketball event. Kobe said that he was better than Jordan...

Now, McGrady meets such a guy again.

This allowed McGrady, who has now become somewhat "secular", to rekindle the purest feelings for basketball that he had as a child.

McGrady leaned on the toilet seat and thought about what he was playing for now.

more money?

McGrady felt that there was no way he would be short of money. As long as he wanted to, he would be paid the maximum salary wherever he went. With endorsement fees, he could earn more money than he could spend in his lifetime. He himself was not an extravagant person.

More honors?

I have won it for a while, and I have won the scoring title. As for things like MVP, apart from the individual, luck is the most important. There is a good team and the team can have a good record without too many injuries. The second is the individual.

With McGrady's character, he is not obsessed with this.

More championships?

McGrady is on the road now. As long as he plays well, with a lineup like theirs, they will be the favorites to win the championship in the next two to three years. The championship is within reach.

McGrady was brought back memories by Liu Mang's arrogance and became a little confused. What is he pursuing in basketball now?

McGrady sat like that for an hour, always recalling what happened in high school before he entered the NBA, recalling the purest love for basketball...

In the end, McGrady felt that he loves basketball in order to constantly surpass himself!

Constantly surpass yourself? Those are all for others to listen to. To surpass oneself, how can there be a sense of accomplishment in surpassing the strongest person? Of course, if the strongest person is yourself, that's a different matter.

But there is only one strongest person - the god of basketball, Michael Jordan.

McGrady himself has also tried to lead the team by himself. He has talent that may not be weaker than Jordan, but he was born with scoliosis, which caused an upper limit to his physical fitness. This upper limit also caused him to have to There is physical moderation.

Although McGrady did not suffer a back injury because of Liu Mang, scoliosis is natural and cannot be cured by surgery on the spine. It is another aspect of the human body that modern medicine cannot make major changes to except the brain. In a restricted area of ​​life, there are many people with spinal problems and partial paralysis.

McGrady wants to fulfill his dream of surpassing Jordan alone. Otherwise, like the Magic, the defense will be weak. Unless the team has a powerful inside player and a powerful outside defender, it is best to have There are people to help share the pressure of organizing the offense, as well as pitchers and blue-collar workers...

In the four years with the Magic, he felt despair again and again, and realized that it was almost impossible to have such a teammate to help him. Not everyone has the "luck" like Liu Mang.

And McGrady came to the Hawks, basically giving up waiting.

Liu Mang's wild words this time made McGrady see something in Liu Mang that he didn't have and wouldn't have even if he tried hard.

Arrogant personality, the ability to do what he said, and mainly shameless! This is what McGrady thinks is the most important. He actually had the nerve to ask a player who can win the scoring title to help him score more points and surpass Jordan!

But this is what McGrady admires most about Liu Mang. Except for one thing in common, he and Liu Mang have no similarities in most places. People make friends, and truly close friends, but they make friends with very different personalities, because they need something they don't have.

McGrady saw something in Liu Mang that he could never learn no matter what...

...

...

At 6:30 in the evening, it was basically dark in Atlanta in winter. The chef invited by Lerenda had already prepared the meal. After setting the table, Lerenda called McGrady: "Tracy, it's time to eat!"

"I'm here, thank you."

After McGrady responded, he washed up and came to the restaurant. Seeing that Liu Mang was not waiting anxiously as he expected, but was teasing his son, McGrady felt a group of crows cawing above his head: Really, aren't you afraid that I won't agree? So confident? But even if I don't agree, this guy won't stop, it's 36.1 points... When O'Neal scored 29.4 points, he dreamed of averaging 30 points per game.

"Ace, how much do you think I want for the contract extension?" McGrady didn't answer Liu Mang's question, but said this.

When Liu Mang heard this, a smile appeared on his face, it's done!

"Of course, as much as you can ask! The team is not short of money." Liu Mang replied casually while eating steak. He had to eat back the money for the barrel of oil tonight.

"Ace, you don't need me to take a pay cut? Rashid took a 10 million pay cut to complete the contract renewal." McGrady was surprised.

"I'm getting the maximum salary now. If you renew my contract with the maximum salary, I'll still get the maximum salary. Your pay cut will at most help the team save some money. We're already paying luxury tax, and there won't be any extra space to sign players." Liu Mang didn't mind McGrady's salary being higher than his. This season, McGrady's salary is two million more than his.

"I understand. I'll call my agent and ask him to talk to the team." McGrady didn't ask any more questions and made a decision quickly.

"Tracy, are we going to settle here? Great!" After listening to McGrady, Larenda cheered excitedly, "This place is much better than Orlando, and I don't want to move."

"Of course, your husband is going to make another 100 million!" McGrady said, and he and his wife stood up in front of Liu Mang and kissed across the table.

Liu Mang said "Huh..." in disdain, which made the two of them laugh.

"By the way," Liu Mang thought of something and asked casually, "Who is your agent? I haven't met him yet."

"Charles Banks, you should have heard of him. Duncan and Hill are both players signed by him. We almost worked together." McGrady replied.

So that's it. Liu Mang probably knows why the Magic almost got the Big Three in 2000. If three stars belong to the same agent, they are likely to be manipulated together.

Wait, Charles, Banks, this name... Liu Mang is so familiar!

Isn't it the guy who cheated Duncan of 30 million?

Liu Mang looked at McGrady, thought about it and spoke: "Tracy, I've heard of this guy. I think you should pay attention to your account. He is helping you manage your finances!"

Liu Mang said very tactfully, but the meaning was very clear. McGrady stared at Liu Mang: "Ace, you mean..."

...

...

"Tracy, just think of it as losing money to avoid disaster!" Liu Mang comforted.

In the morning, Liu Mang came to the stadium to prepare for the game against the Bobcats in the evening. He saw McGrady's expression of "no strangers allowed". It was rare that his stingy cousin lost so much money.

"Spend money to avoid disaster? Is that a Chinese proverb? It's quite interesting." McGrady smiled. What else can he do?

"We call it idioms. Read it after me. Eat grace, say... Forget it, just treat it as a dialect or proverb." Liu Mang thought it was troublesome, so he gave up after teaching it.

After receiving Liu Mang's reminder last night, McGrady hired a financial lawyer to investigate his account. He found out that his account had lost more than 3 million US dollars in more than seven years, which was almost all the money McGrady earned from his rookie contract. Of course, the loss was a little bit every year in the past seven years. As the financial management funds increased, the loss became greater.

The reason given by Banks was a financial error, but he did not give the details of the investment. At the beginning, he was short of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and later he signed a big contract with the Magic and was short of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. McGrady did not pay much attention to it, but now the lawyer has looked at the existing investment channels, almost all of which are government bonds and funds, and they are all value-preserving financial products. This loss is unacceptable, and the lawyer bluntly said that McGrady was cheated. McGrady wanted to sue Banks at the time, but the lawyer's opinion was that there was no way to complete the lawsuit quickly. This kind of lawsuit usually takes one or two years, and in the end, he will definitely not get all the money back.

After McGrady called Liu Mang overnight to tell him about this, Liu Mang could only comfort McGrady to change his agent and deal with this matter later. Liu Mang remembered that Duncan spent a whole year concentrating on the lawsuit after retiring, and only got back a quarter of the money, 30 million became 7.5 million.

Liu Mang remembered that McGrady was going to change his agent, but it was not because of this incident, but because his agent and the company that sold the aircraft sold him an aircraft, which led to him being attacked by public opinion. The media also broke the news that his agent took a kickback of 1 million US dollars and was fired by McGrady.

It seems that it was originally in the summer of 2004, but this time McGrady came to Atlanta, which was too far away from the Space City. He did not agree to renew his contract, and his agent could not sell him an aircraft.

Liu Mang felt that McGrady was sometimes really lucky. He bought a plane and fired this vampire. He did not lose 30 million US dollars in his 20-year career like Duncan. It was because his wife cheated on him and wanted to divide the family and money that he found out that he was cheated of 30 million. Otherwise, he probably would not know it when he retired.

"I fired Banks. Feigen, Pelinka, and Falk all called me. Who should I meet with first?" McGrady also put that matter aside and asked Liu Mang's opinion. These three agents are the three most powerful agents in the NBA now.

"Them? Tracy, why don't you meet with Jeff Schwartz? Here's his phone number." Liu Mang was ready. He was excited just thinking about making money from McGrady. He had contacted Schwartz last night and gave McGrady his business card.

"Schwartz? From your agency?" McGrady immediately understood Liu Mang's thoughts.

"He's great." Liu Mang said directly.

It's not to trick McGrady, he was telling the truth. Schwartz is such a great agent, and he has accumulated a lot of experience. Even if he didn't meet him, ten years later, Schwartz would still be the most powerful agent in the NBA. It's not ordinary to have 40 players under his management in 2018. Just say that the agent of more than 20 players with annual salaries of at least 10 million and more than 10 All-Star players can be compared with David Falk, who once controlled half of the resources of the NBA. Only Rich Paul of James' company and Bill Duffy who got a 150 million contract for Conley can barely be compared.

"Okay, let's ask Ace to come to my house tomorrow morning. Let's not talk about this for now. It's sad to think about it. I have known Banks for eight years, and he actually lied to me," McGrady did not agree directly, but decided to make his own decision. He changed the subject and said, "Ace, don't you want to surpass Jordan? Let's start tonight. It's just right to play against Jordan's team."

"Of course, start tonight!"