The Legend of the Hungry Wolf in Basketball

Chapter 10 [Rapid progress]

Gavaris Crittenton is 196cm tall and weighs 90kg.He is not an unknown person. He used to be a high school teammate of "Warcraft" Howard. Later, Howard joined the NBA. In the fourth year of high school, he led the team alone, averaging 29 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists per game. He led Southwest Atlanta Junior College to the championship and was named to the McDonald's All-American High School Team.

After entering Georgia Tech, he was also trained as the core of the team. After playing for one season, he participated in the NBA draft and was selected by the Lakers with the 19th overall pick in the first round.

One week after the start of the training camp, this outstanding player on campus was overwhelmed by a rookie who had played basketball for three months. The number of times he broke into the interior and scored was pitiful, and he could only make jump shots from the outside.

With the help of Brian Shaw, Ye Feng's perimeter defense has made progress next year, and his speed advantage has been fully utilized. The coach arranged for him to directly defend the perimeter. Kobe would also feel uncomfortable, and he could hardly catch the basketball without relying on the pick-and-roll.

He defended well from the outside, and Ye Feng didn't let go of his inside skills.Divac taught him a lot of inside skills, including rebounding, blocking, supporting passes, and small moves.

Ye Feng respected Divac, and he was very serious when studying.

Many players have talents that everyone envies, with a halo of genius on their heads and many expectations. However, after entering the league, they did not perform well. burden.Such as Eddie Griffin, Darko Milicic, and Kwame Brown of the Lakers.But many floor players can become All-Stars, and Divac is one of them.

In the history of the NBA, if inside players compare physical fitness, Divac must be ranked at the bottom, but compared to mind, he should be in the Hall of Fame.The most important quality for rebounding is not bouncing, but strength. As long as you can block the opponent outside and occupy a favorable position, you have a high chance of winning the rebound.Divac has averaged 10+ rebounds per game in several seasons, which shows how clever his style of play is.

He is a pure floor flow, and is synonymous with a supporting center. The main task of this type of center is not to score, but to initiate or assist offense.This type of center forward does not need a non-human body, does not need the ability to average 20+ per game, and their value may never be reflected in the statistics, but when they join, the team's offense will be smoother, and the players will feel that scoring is important. It's so easy, top support centers are more difficult to appear than top powerful centers, because they need to play with their brains, have excellent overall situation and wide vision, perfect pick-and-roll skills, good offensive methods, and a pass comparable to a guard. ball kung fu.

In addition to passing the ball, Divac's flopping technique is also a strong killer.Some people commented on Divac, "He was like a dead fish being grabbed by the tail and thrown to the floor hard." Divac can use throwing, flying, and backwards with ease, and has a rich expression, never dragging his feet.He was like a leaf, floating around among the giants.His falls on the court are simply perfect. For example, if O'Neal is going to dunk, then Divac can realistically fall no matter where O'Neal is.

Players who play with their brains have a much longer peak period than those who play with talent. This is what Ye Feng needs to learn the most.What he can learn depends on the height he can reach, otherwise he will be a spring man who can run and jump, and his end may be as miserable as Swift.

In addition to teaching how to play, Divac also pointed out some problems to Ye Feng every day, such as the height of the body's center of gravity when defending, the weight of the steps when moving, and the change of the pivot foot. He especially liked to say that he wasted too much on his jumping ability.

Ye Feng sometimes gets stuck in the position and can easily get the rebound, but he still has to take off with all his strength. Divac believes that this redundant movement is easy to cause injury.As long as he gets into someone's leg or steps on someone's foot when he lands, he will sprain his ankle and regret it.

Divac said that in his era, every team had a few thugs who would do dirty things and foul the core of the opponent when necessary, although there are fewer such things in the league now , but you can't be careless.As long as I get hurt a few times, my mind will be shadowed, and I can no longer run and jump like before.

Ye Feng remembered that the Lakers played seven games against the Rockets in the playoffs in his previous life, and the players kept doing dirty moves. This made many fans say that the Lakers lacked the temperament of a champion. It is estimated that those small moves were taught by the great immortal Divac.

Divac arranged several tasks for Ye Feng on the court, and in the preseason, he will play like this.First, on the offensive end, he doesn't need to pull up to a high position to cover for his teammates. When he can't make a mid-range shot, coming out to cover will give people an opportunity to play zone defense. Cut the pass.Second, the defensive end resists the opponent's strongest player. If it is an opponent with poor shooting, he must observe the situation and make up defenses to block the opponent's player who breaks into the interior at any time.Third, protect the backcourt rebounds.Rebounding is the last one. He doesn't have to get the rebounds, as long as he keeps people outside so that his teammates can grab the rebounds, the task is also completed.

It is very difficult to obtain data in this way of playing, it is a typical blue-collar coolie, and the dirty work of the whole team is handed over to Ye Feng.In his previous life, he liked super scorers like Kobe, Wade, and James. He often imagined that he could become a scoring master one day and use scoring to solve problems, but now he must obey the coach's arrangement and start from defense.

Ye Feng's daily training is very regular. When the opponent's inside attack, he is responsible for resisting.When the opponent hits the outside line and strengthens the breakthrough, he will be responsible for supplementing the defense.His explosive power made up for his lack of experience, and he vaguely became the person with the strongest defense ability among the inside players.The reason is that one day, he defended Kobe Bryant with 21 of 7 shots, and took the initiative to practice shooting after the game.

Of course, this is not to say that Ye Feng has become Kobe's killer. No one in the league can completely restrain Kobe. Battier, who is known as a defensive expert, has also been beaten by Kobe countless times.How to defend Kobe is a topic that every team is studying.If it's too close to him, he'll drive, if it's too far away, he'll shoot a jumper.Kobe's biggest weakness is his paranoia.When he can't find the touch of the shot, he seldom changes his style of play. He usually chooses to shoot consecutively to find the head.He is not a stable scorer. When he is good, he can score 40 points effortlessly, and his shooting percentage is as high as 70%. When he is bad, he is a blacksmith, making the opposing coach laugh all night.

It's a pity that the improvement on defense can't cover up the garbage on offense.After training every day, Ye Feng would be the last one to leave the arena to practice basic skills and shooting.He was not satisfied with his performance. In the training camp, he only made 8 goals in total. Except for one goal which was a high jumper, the others were all empty cuts or dunks after grabbing offensive rebounds. His free throw percentage Still pitifully low.

Ye Feng felt that it would be difficult to get a contract if things went on like this, but he didn't know that the Lakers uniform team was planning to sign him because he was the only one among the trial players who could make Kobe feel competitive.

On October 10, the Lakers completed the last training session before the preseason, and the coaching staff specially arranged several fringe players to fight.

Ye Feng won a complete victory against Elton Brown.Brown's offense is mainly in the low position, relying on his strong body to enter the inside line and eat hard.Ye Feng is slightly underweight, but his strength does not suffer at all. He has practiced with Bynum for a summer vacation, and he is very familiar with low-post fake moves. Brown, who is as slow as a cow, can't pass him. Barely shot.As a result, he scored no points and received two big hats.

It's easier to deal with Larry Turner. Turner's style of play is too soft, not only can't attack Ye Feng, but also can't prevent the half-baked attack Ye Feng learned.As long as he turned around, Ye Feng could pass Turner and attack the basket.Turner is definitely going to be cut, he has nothing but height.

The other inside players, Cook and Turiaf, also found it difficult to score under Ye Feng's defense, and the outside players also suffered from Ye Feng.

His ability is so different from his performance in the first two days of training camp, everyone finds it incredible.After the training was over, general manager Kupchak called the coaching staff into the office and asked the players how they were doing to decide where to stay.

Jackson reported: "I suggest cutting Brown, Turner, and Carl. These three have limited potential and lack of ability, and they cannot bring much help to the team."

The views of several assistant coaches are completely unanimous.After laying off these three, the Lakers' 15-man lineup is determined.

Kupchak saw Ye Feng's poor performance on the first day of the public training class, and the fans who attended that day even posted online one after another, mocking Ye Feng's amateurishness.In online lineup predictions, no fans think he can sign with the Lakers.But now the coaching staff agrees that he has the strength to stay.For this reason, Kupchak felt very puzzled, and asked: "I watched the training a few days ago, isn't Ye Feng very bad? Why do you all think that he should be kept?"

Jackson smiled and said: "He is a player that must be kept. I have never seen someone with such a strong learning ability. He has improved rapidly and has begun to adapt to the team's offensive and defensive system. His offense is poor, but his defensive ability But he can be ranked among the top few in the lineup, he has huge potential to be tapped, and in a few years, maybe he will become a pillar-level player for the Lakers!"

Divac, who spends the most time with Ye Feng, also said: "His learning ability is really strong. I think he is better than our first-round rookie, and he was a guy who could only foul a few days ago. It's a miracle."

Brian Shaw and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar expressed their agreement one after another, and Kupchak no longer doubted that he was ready to sign a contract with Ye Feng.

(End of this chapter)