Chapter 391 390. Angie’s Revenge on Society

After training for two days at Laoshan Gymnasium, Zhang Yang moved with the team to the Olympic Village. One third of the people he had just met two days ago were gone, and with him, there were only 24 people left.

The training venue was changed to the training point arranged by the Olympic Village… and the Wukesong Sports Center and other venues for basketball games, mainly the latter. This is when the advantage of being the host country is reflected, as they can familiarize themselves with the court in advance.

Zhang Yang’s rhythm has not changed, high-intensity personal training + running training with teammates go hand in hand.

His tactical training progressed very quickly. He became familiar with most tactics after running them once or twice, and even executed them better than some players who had been in the training camp for several months.

This is not entirely his own achievement.

His good tactical talent and excellent sense of pitch position are one of the conditions;

His personal ability is better than all the outside players in the team. He is the tactical offensive spearhead. His tactical role is not that complicated. The tactical role of his teammates is more complicated. This is the key condition.

Yao Ming also helped him, helping him to get to know his teammates more quickly. He also specially found several teammates with strong tactical and command abilities to help him lead his teammates to cooperate with him in training.

And a very important operation of the coaching team – after the final training list was released and the location was moved to the Olympic Village, the coaching team hired Brad Miller as a consultant for the training team to help him complete “backward compatibility”.

Only when these conditions are combined together can he master the main tactics that the Chinese men’s basketball team will play this year in a short period of time.

He personally didn’t think it was special to receive so much help, but his teammates and coaches on the national team were amazed.

The four head coaches, Jonas, El, Guo Shiqiang, and Nelson Jr. (the son of a mad scientist and general manager of the Mavericks), originally thought that Zhang Yang would not be able to truly enter the state of tactical training until the end of the two-week final training camp. They hoped that Zhang Yang would be able to integrate into the formal preparation stage in the last two weeks, but it took less than a week!
When interviewed, the coaches were full of praise for Zhang Yang, and the word they used most often was “professionalism”.

Jonas commented: “Jack’s joining has brought a new basketball culture to the team, allowing teammates to understand how the best players in the world play.

Yao also has that ability, and he is just as professional and hardworking, but his teammates are too familiar with him and accustomed to his excellence, so he cannot bring the same direct impact to his teammates as Jack, who just joined the team.

Jack’s joining not only gives our team a world-class outside superstar, but also becomes a window for our players to open their eyes to the world. Perhaps this will be an opportunity for our team to move to a higher level! “

Jonas was not just speaking for show this time. Zhang Yang’s training performance really inspired his teammates on the national team.

He personally doesn’t have that awareness and doesn’t think in that direction, but after playing basketball for 5 years, he has become a polygonal warrior with very comprehensive offensive skills. Many of his offensive skills are world-class when taken individually.

When he first returned to the team, he was not familiar with everyone. Everyone was very polite or even afraid of him, after all, that person had a bad reputation.

After a few days of getting to know each other better, everyone became bolder and people often challenged him. Of course, it was not a Mayo-like challenge, but a challenge of a single technique.

The national team teammates knew from the beginning that they were far inferior to Zhang Yang, but they still had a glimmer of hope – with the skills I am best at, it is possible to defeat Zhang Yang.

Pitchers like Zhu Fangyu, Wang Shipeng, and Li Nan challenge him to three-pointers; Liu Wei, Chen Jianghua, and others challenge him to breakthroughs; Sun Yue challenges him to counterattacks… He rarely loses, and if he does, it’s because he’s unlucky and his touch isn’t so good that he misses the shot.

After they were all beaten by Zhang Yang, their level of effort increased visibly!
Although the current batch of Chinese men’s basketball players have shown some signs of slackness, after all, they grew up watching the talented and enterprising national team predecessors from the 1980s, 1990s, and they still have some pride.

In the past, this group of players playing in China compared themselves with each other, and occasionally with players playing abroad, and also with players like Sun Yue who played in wandering teams and low-level leagues. They felt that everyone was about the same and there was no need to be so competitive, and that they could just muddle through.

Now that Zhang Yang was here, they saw the gap that was like a chasm, and they began to curl up, either actively or passively, and could no longer lie flat.

If domestic fans saw that they couldn’t even keep up with Zhang Yang’s rhythm in the game and were dragging their feet, they would be scolded to death. Not to mention anything else, if they dragged their feet in the Olympics at home, their parents would beat them to death.

As a result, the training team’s appearance has undergone tremendous changes!

After training one day, Zhang Yang saw a few pitchers practicing three-pointers. He said to Yi Jianlian, who was leaving get off work with him, “Yi Jianlian, they are not as lazy as you say. Look, they work harder than me.”

After hearing this, Yi Jianlian became even more introverted…

…

While Zhang Yang was working hard and focusing on training in the training team, a lot of things were happening in the NBA.

The multi-party trades among the Timberwolves, Knicks, Warriors and Clippers on draft night ignited the fuse of this year’s free market. After the free market opened, many large and small transactions occurred.

The focus of fans’ discussion – the Celtics.

Ainge can no longer hold on to his many forwards. If he is reluctant to sell them, they will become rotten in his hands. So he started to sell them off in preparation for building a team around Mayo, the top rookie and the most powerful player.

The Magic were the first to reap the benefits, trading veteran Maurice Evans and a second-round pick to the Celtics for Ryan Gomes.

Gomez is a second-round pick in the same class as Zhang Yang, and is a forward swingman.

He performed very well in his rookie year. In his sophomore season, when Pierce was constantly injured, he seized the opportunity and averaged 12 points and 5 rebounds per game. Later, when he accompanied Pierce to resist the management’s bad operations, he was good at receiving shots and post-up singles. On the offensive end, he was very strong against three and very fast against four. Of course, the disadvantage was that he couldn’t keep up with the defense of three and couldn’t stand up to the defense of four, but he was very smart. When he couldn’t defend against the opponent, he focused his defense on protecting defensive rebounds, and did a very good job of blocking the opponent’s outside players from rushing for the ball.

Yahoo Sports commented on this deal – it greatly made up for the Magic’s lack of inside scoring ability at the three and four positions, and provided great help for Howard to challenge the basket guarded by Yao Ming.

The Cavaliers traded Drew Gooden and a future first-round pick to the Celtics for Marvin Williams.

As the No. 02 pick in the 4 draft, Gooden has long lost his reputation as a genius and can even be considered a high-paid, low-skilled player. His annual salary next season will be as high as 700 million, but his actual performance will be at the middle-class level.

ESPN praised the Cavaliers’ high level of operation. Marvin Williams will have the last year of his rookie contract next season, and the media predicted that his contract renewal price would be around 800 million per year. It was definitely a huge profit to trade him back with Gooden.

ESPN used Ainge’s criticism to elevate the Cavaliers management’s operations, but TNT Sports held a different opinion, believing that the Cavaliers did make a profit, but it was not a bad deal for the Celtics.

The Celtics still have Josh Smith and Al Jefferson, and Marvin Williams is redundant for them. They used them to exchange for Gooden, who has a physique of 208 cm and 114 kg and can play center. Gomez and Marvin Williams, who played the main No. 4 position, were sent away one after another, and the Celtics’ lineup structure became better.

However, fans prefer ESPN’s statement, or ESPN’s extreme statement of praising one and criticizing the other is more topical, and fans love to discuss it more. TNT, which analyzes calmly and reasonably, once again lost. Some fans joked that if it weren’t for Barkley’s commentary on the game, TNT’s sports department would have been played to bankruptcy by ESPN.

However, TNT is aware of this, and the salary it pays Barkley is almost catching up with the salary Barkley received when he was at the MVP level during his playing days.

The last team to “rob” the Celtics was the Heat. The Heat used backup guard Eddie House, 07 first-round shooting guard Daequan Cook, and a 09 lottery-protected pick in exchange for swingman Jeff Green.

This was another extremely unequal transaction based solely on the value of the players, and as expected, Ainge was criticized again.

There are voices of reasonable analysis, but like TNT Sports, they are drowned out by the criticism.

Zhang Yang was shocked when he learned that the Celtics had made three trades in five days, clearing out their bloated front line of talented players to only include Josh Smith, Al Jefferson, and Adam Morrison, who could no longer play due to illness.

Celtics new lineup:
Point guard: Farmar, Eddie House.

Shooting guards: Tony Allen, Daequan Cook.

Point guard: Mayo.

Small forward: Szczerbiak, Leon Powe, Adam Morrison.

Power forward: Al Jefferson, Glen Davis, Brian Scalabrine.

Combo forward: Josh Smith.

Center: Drew Gooden, Mickey Moore, Patrick O’Bryant.

There is something special about this lineup, which reminds Zhang Yang of the future championship team.

The overall talent isn’t as good as that team, but the characteristics are similar—there’s someone for every position!

And except for Mayo who has some personality problems, the others are not difficult to get along with. Al Jefferson is down-to-earth and steady, Josh Smith is good at obeying orders, and the others are role players and are very easy to coach.

When Ainge gave up his plan of taking on several superstars in one go to compete for the championship, he was able to quickly put things right!
Regardless of personal feelings, Zhang Yang feels that Anji is truly an excellent general manager, with top-notch team-building plans and operational capabilities!
only……

The Magic, Cavaliers, and Heat are all highly anticipated rising teams in the new season, and they all got a big advantage in the trade with the Celtics…

Zhang Yang felt that the old bastard Anji was taking revenge on society!
Generally speaking, teams aiming to win the championship are more willing to choose teams from the opposite division as their trading partners, even if the price offered by the opposite division is lower.

Ainge’s move this time was different. The West was engaging in an arms race and offering higher stakes than the East, but Ainge chose to trade with the Eastern team…

Zhang San: Is this a strategy where if I can’t live well, I won’t let others live well either?
The reason why Zhang Yang reacted so strongly was mainly because the Bobcats did not gain any advantage.

The disadvantage of Jordan being the team owner was revealed this time!
During his short 11-year career with the Bulls, Baldy Joe made a lot of enemies. His two biggest enemies were the Chuck Daly faction and the Celtics faction.

The Bobcats also wanted Ryan Gomes, but Ainge would rather give him to the Magic for almost nothing than to Jordan.

Although he was a little frustrated, Zhang Yang had never expected the Celtics to strengthen their team and was just complaining about it.

In the West, there is also a team that is as dazzling as the Celtics in the trading market.

The Suns first traded Raja Bell and Brian Skinner to the Kings for Jason Richardson. There was nothing wrong with this deal and many people praised it.

After the season ended, the Kings management had a sudden idea and thought that Jason Richardson would affect Kevin Martin’s growth in the future, so they decided to sell the Slam Dunk King.

That’s right, it’s ‘feeling’, ‘thinking’, ‘predicting’, without considering how well the two play together under Rondo’s leadership.

Fortunately, Raja Bell, who was traded back, is also a solid player, and the addition of Skinner can also supplement the Kings’ weak power forward position. It can’t be said to be bad. It can only be said that the Kings management showed their brains.

As for the Suns, after strengthening their outside positional scoring capabilities, they did not stop and “pursued the victory” by sending Dio away. The team that got Dio was… the Spurs!

The Spurs used Bowen as a bargaining chip to trade for Dio from the Suns!

When the deal was announced, everyone was confused.

Just after sending away 3D pitcher Raja Bell, they immediately traded him back for Bowen? What kind of magical operation is this?
The story doesn’t end here. After the trade was completed, Bowen, who had just officially joined the Suns, asked Steve Kerr for a buyout, saying he wanted to retire…

In other words, the Spurs didn’t pay anything and got Dio from the Suns for nothing!

Ainge and Steve Kerr were discussed together by the media and fans, and there was a heated argument over who was the worst general manager in the NBA.

When Zhang Yang saw Steve Kerr’s series of confusing operations, he was not surprised at all. Being able to be ranked alongside Ainge is the highlight of Steve Kerr’s career as general manager…

It is July 7th, and it has been more than two weeks since Zhang Yang returned to the team. Two days ago, the coaching staff announced the final 20-man roster for the Olympics. He, Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian and Wang Zhizhi were included in the roster without any suspense. After the people from the Basketball Management Center held a swearing-in ceremony yesterday, the last half month of sprint training before the Olympics has begun today.

Another day of training is over. In the evening, Zhang Yang, Yao Ming, and Zhu Fangyu team up to play World of Warcraft.

The little giant guessed correctly. Zhu Ba’s train of thought was in perfect sync with Zhang San’s. After Zhang San returned to the team, he became inseparable from Zhu Ba within two days. He guessed that in addition to their personalities, it was also related to the fact that both of them were good at fighting…

The happy time playing games always passes quickly. Late at night, the three people living in the same room were preparing to turn off the lights and go to bed. At this time, Zhang Yang and Yao Ming’s cell phones rang at the same time. They were both calls from their agents.

The two received the same news – Philip Saunders and Billups joined the Mavericks together!

(End of this chapter)