From today on is the king

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 hair. As for why his height has increased by 20 centimeters, he is 1.9 meters three.

Liu Mang, the English name is Ace Liu, the English name was given to him by the college coach, which means that his shots pierced opponents like ice skates. The new memory added is that he was born on August 1982, 8. He is now 26 years old. The items are ball control and three-pointers, which are regarded as non-mainstream styles of play in this era, and even the second round of the draft is difficult...

The current time is November 2001, 11. 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 in this age without internet and convenient transportation, even survival would be a problem.

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, the Internet only had one or two megabytes of broadband, and 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". Friends who make appointments to sing songs are still the kind of karaoke that they line 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 90s 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 4000 million. Ratliff, the team’s number one insider and the league’s shot-blocking king, plus team boss Rahim, retired Kukoc, and good man Mohammed, have a combined salary of 3900 million. .

Liu Mang’s salary in his rookie season was $46. The Atlanta state tax rate is not high, only 5.00%, but the federal tax rate for those with an annual salary of more than $20 but less than $50 is 20.00%.

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 the 30.00% tax and the 46% player union dues, the first year's salary of 30 is less than $[-]. As for the second year's non-guaranteed contract, it is still unclear whether it can be obtained.

30 US dollars, the purchasing power in the United States is indeed not low, but is it possible to just sit and eat with this 30 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 1.9 meters three, which is taller than most NBA point guards in this era, but the draft evaluation in his memory wrote: 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 Mang. Although he knows how to 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 one with particularly good physical fitness, not even excellent. It can only be described as mediocre. When playing in the NCAA, the coaches generally pay more attention to technology and tactical execution, so the "self" in Liu Mang's memory can perform fairly well in the NCAA.

As for being able to enter the NBA purely because the last two drafts were really bad, there are only a few worth watching, especially after the devilish 2000 draft, the second round pick in 2001 is equivalent to picking someone to guard the drinking fountain, not Popovich. The No. [-] pick in the summer league couldn't beat the undrafted college students.

This made Liu Mang just because Stern was vigorously developing the overseas football market, especially the Chinese market, and there happened to be a local Chinese college student participating in the draft. His spot-up three-pointer was not bad. For some reason, the Eagles spent the second-round pick in this super draft year to select him back.

Now Liu Mang doesn't know whether he is a dove occupying the magpie's nest or what 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 two abilities of ball handling and shooting in this body, and even because of his height, he was at a loss when he got a "smaller" basketball, and he was not used to it at all.

With this feeling, Liu Mang knew very well that his shooting was absolutely unreliable, and he might throw the ball away because of the stronger strength brought by his height of nearly two meters "giant" and the completely different visual angle now...

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 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 during the intermission that the reason why he had the opportunity to play in the first half was entirely because the Rockets had a point guard who was too strong, and it could even be said to be the first such strong point guard in history so far. There has never been such a strong 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.

In the past, there were probably three types of point guards. The most common ones were Kidd and Stockton. They organized the offense and controlled the rhythm. They didn’t necessarily have good statistics, but those with good statistics must be super point guards. This was the consensus of the previous era.

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 he is not that good, he can also get six or seven assists per game. He can score like Iverson.

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. Unlike Iverson, who was changed to the shooting guard position by Larry Brown in the 2000-2001 season, Francis "occupied" all the work of the two positions of shooting guard and point guard from the beginning. He dominated the team's rhythm and also became the team's scoring leader.

Francis wants to do this, and the Rockets 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 game in the half, and they both got 3 fouls on their backs. In addition to Jason Terry’s two fouls at the shooting guard position, Francis made critical attacks again and again against the Eagles’ weak defense line.

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...

(End of this chapter)