The rest is just noise

The Barcelona Olympics ends on August 9th.

On August 10, Louis, Ewing, and Wilson returned to New York.

There is still more than a month until the start of preseason training camp, so they can take a good rest.

Louis was not completely idle, he also did something in August.

He established a brokerage company, mainly for international students who want to join professional basketball after completing their studies in the United States.

After all, not everyone has the chance to make it to the NBA.

One advantage of completing their studies in the United States is that most of them can get used to living abroad and at least master a foreign language. In this way, even if they cannot play in the NBA, they can still play in Europe.

There is no professional league in China yet, and wages are very low. If you can go to Europe, you will undoubtedly make more money than at home.

Like this year, four of the six students from the first phase of the Road Academy in the United States graduated, and two of them were drafted by the NBA. This is a considerable success rate, but there is still one who failed to be drafted. He was managed by an inferior agent.

, I almost went to Taiwan Province to play ball.

In order to avoid this kind of thing happening again in the future, setting up a professional brokerage company to prepare a future for international students in the Road School is what Louis should do.

It cannot be said that just arranging for them to successfully enter college is enough. As their guide, he has the obligation to plan a better career for them - as long as they are willing, he is always willing to help.

Apart from this, there is nothing else going on in August.

Due to the Olympic Games, Louis did not return to the Road Garden this year to follow up on the preparations for the sixth phase of his trip to the United States.

Louis doesn't take vacations all year round because the NBA season is very long, as well as the preparations for offseason operations, the trip to China, and countless business events... which caused him to be overworked, so he decided to take a vacation for himself this year.

After returning to the United States, he wanted to enjoy life down to earth before the start of preseason training camp.

August 14

There is a new resident in Louis' house.

He is Wang Zhizhi from the fifth phase of Luyuan’s study in the United States.

Before Wang Zhizhi came out, Louis promised his family that he would take him with him until he went to college.

In the five episodes of talented people, Wang Zhizhi is not the only genius, but he is the only certain genius.

He is only 15 years old this year, but his height has reached 2.07 meters. After a year of studying in a language school, he has already initially understood and mastered the local American culture and basic daily language.

"Xiao Zhi, from today on, this is your home." Louis introduced his two children to him, "These are my son and daughter, Lu Wuxia and Lu Wuyan."

Wang Zhizhi was a shy man, so he said hello unnaturally.

"Brother Wang, you are so tall!" Lu Wuxia was curious about Wang Zhizhi, "Are you seven feet tall?"

Although Wang Zhizhi had been in the United States for a year, he couldn't figure out the unit of feet, so he said: "Two meters and seven."

"Whoa whoa!"

Lu Wuxia acted familiar.

"Then you must be playing center!"

"Well, with such a height, I can only play center."

"Can I dunk?"

"Can."

"Ouch!!!!" Lu Wuxia said excitedly, "Brother Wang, I'm going to pass an alley-oop to you!"

"OK!"

There was basketball to play, and Wang Zhizhi slowly let go. He accompanied Lu Wuxia to the comprehensive gymnasium provided by Louis' house.

Louis could only ask the nanny to help put away Wang Zhizhi's luggage.

"Dad, what's so fun about basketball?"

"To them, it's probably like a Nintendo game."

Lu Wuyan couldn't understand that for her, playing basketball was not as fun as dressing up a Barbie doll.

Louis later went to the stadium and saw these two children bullfighting there.

There is a 7-year age difference between Lu Wuxia and Wang Zhizhi. At their age, a one-year age difference has a clear advantage. A 7-year age difference is basically a no-brainer.

The 8-year-old O'Neal would also be beaten to shit if he met the 15-year-old Zhou Qi.

Although there was no intensity in the bullfight between these two people, Wang Zhizhi still showed off Louis with his steps without confrontation.

Sometimes, Louis had to lament that the rhythm of his inside steps was innate.

Louis liked the player Wang Zhizhi very much in his previous life, and at the same time felt sorry for his experience. Even in his previous life, he had a chance to become the Asian version of Luis Scola, but in the end, he looked more like a bankrupt version

Nowitzki.

If Wang Zhizhi had grown up in a competitive environment in the United States, would it have been different if he had been the one to check and point the way?

Louis isn't sure.

A few days later, Louis received an invitation from Wilson.

The Converse shoes endorsed by Wilson will hold an invitational tournament in his name in New York.

This is an AAU city tournament.

Louis thought it was possible, so he selected elites from the children in the road yard to form a temporary team to compete.

In this team temporarily formed by Louis, there are Lin Junwu (fourth period) and Qi Chengyan (fourth period) who are famous in New York State, as well as Fan Helsing and Wang Zhizhi from the fifth period.

There are 10 people in total, and Louis serves as their interim coach.

At first, Louis was worried that this group of children would be defeated by a temporary team composed of elites from all over the country, but the result was unexpected.

The team formed by Louis was called "Morning Star" by him.

Daystar dominated the Wilson Invitational Tournament, with Lin Junwu, Qi Chengyan and Wang Zhizhi attracting the attention of college scouts from all over.

But the reason why they are truly invincible is actually very simple.

They are united and selfless enough.

And this is something you don't see with other AAU teams.

This is what ruined youth basketball in America.

AAU, known as the Amateur Sports League, is a commercial promotion carried out by the sponsors behind Jordan and Wilson in order to discover "Jordan's successors" and "The Next Benj" after the commercial value of a new generation of stars such as Jordan and Wilson took off.

.

In order to discover talents from all over the country, they will hold invitational tournaments and training camps across the United States in the name of stars.

Some unscrupulous AAU team coaches will promise their children's parents that they will participate in such invitational games in large numbers during the holidays to gain attention from colleges for their children to obtain scholarships.

They often do not have long-term training plans and are only responsible for hype and letting their children play selfish basketball games.

Because the essence of the championship is not to win, but to show yourself.

Therefore, in order to attract attention, immature children will ignore the essence of basketball - the team - and only care about whether their own data looks good.

In order to increase their popularity, children must travel with the team.

Some of these trips are necessary and some are unnecessary.

Soon, when some smart kids realize that their team is dragging them down, they will choose to break away from their existing team, usually at no cost, and join a team with other star players.

Did you see it? The seeds for the future popularity of basketball teams were planted here.

In order to play more games, they will despise training.

Because many AAU teams have to play two to three games a day during the holidays, which not only leaves them no time to train, but also increases the risk of injury.

What makes Louis most intolerable is that AAU coaches have no long-term plans for their children, and they only value talented players. They believe that talent is more important than skills.

Therefore, when the Daystar team became the champion of the Wilson Championship and Wang Zhizhi and Lin Junwu were selected for the best team, Louis could not feel the slightest happiness.

He thought that he had wasted a few days.

Wilson can't be blamed for this, he meant well, just like Louis didn't know the nature of this kind of game before he came.

Louis used to be envious of the countless AAU clubs and competitions in the United States, and how their children would play forty or fifty games a summer, but now, he can understand why Kobe hates this organization so much⑴.

After the rise of various AAU training camps, talented players like O'Neal and Webb received a lot of exposure early on.

They have been treated like superstars since high school, and there are countless eyes staring at them wherever they go.

This will make them swell.

The result of the expansion was that they could not stay in college with peace of mind. In the end, they only stayed in college for two years, and used their own successful experiences in the NBA to tell future talented children that playing in college for one year or four years would be enough.

It won't affect your development, so why bother? Wouldn't it be nice to make money early? No matter how much money the NCAA makes, will they give you a dime?

Louis has always been opposed to slow-moving talented players playing four years in college.

In the 1990s, the number of first-year and second-year college students dropped out of school, and this became the routine of "taking one year and then leaving". This was at best a side effect of the AAU mechanism.

Its real harm is to make children impetuous, selfish, arrogant, greedy and ignore the basic rules of team sports.

This incident made Louis realize that in order for the future international students of the Road School to grow up healthily, they must be kept away from AAU basketball, and to do this, he was very busy.

⑴I'll post Kobe's original words - "AAU basketball, horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It's stupid. It doesn't teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring

it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don't know how to post. They don't know the fundamentals of the game. It's stupid."

(AAU basketball sucks. It doesn’t teach our kids how to play, so all you see are tall players who, although they have fancy moves, can’t play in the low post. They don’t understand the basics of basketball. It’s terrible.

madness.)

－－－－－－Digression－－－－－

Chapter 2 arrived late because of typos