The Whip of the God of Basketball

Morey likes Minneapolis more than Boston. The two cities are located in the same high latitude area, and the winter climate is unbearably cold. It will not leave the city until the end of the winter is fully entered in June. However, under the influence of the Atlantic Ocean, Boston is always shrouded in haze. From late spring to early summer, there will be a lot of haze weather, which makes Morey, who prefers dry weather, quite uncomfortable.

Morey was born in Midea, Ohio, on the banks of the Great Lakes. It is also a cold and humid place in winter. Growing up in such an area did not make Morey like and adapt to this environment. To be honest, he hated it. It is planted in a place where the wind blows through the bones and the snow blows for more than half of the year.

And when he arrived in Minneapolis, he felt much better, although the temperature here was colder than Boston, even in the summer morning, he would be shrunk by the cold wind just after getting off the plane. But once you take a taxi into the city, you won't have such worries by hiding in the complexes of Minneapolis.

As a city affected by heavy snow and cold wind all year round, most of the buildings in Minneapolis are connected by closed sky bridges. When you get off the car and enter a building, you can walk most of the way through these sky bridges. a Minneapolis instead of traversing the freezing cold streets.

Morey likes these ubiquitous flyovers very much. Whenever he walks on them from one building to another, he feels that he has completed a beautiful transaction. It seems that he has become a direct flyover between the two teams. None, mutual benefit. This is what Morey has always hoped that he can do, like a real basketball manager, open the channel for trades across the league, and build an invincible team for a certain team.

Of course, he still seems far away from such a dream, especially when he was sent to Minneapolis by Leon these days, just to complete a negligible small signing.

But this time back in Apolis, Morey didn't have time to drink delicious black coffee in the coffee shop in Tianqiao, but immediately rented a car and went to Burt Creek Nursing Home in the northern suburb of Apolis. As the best and oldest nursing home in Minneapolis, it has a beautiful environment and the best treatment facilities. The person Morey is going to meet this time lives in the nursing home.

It happened to be noon when we arrived at Burt Creek. The nursing home is located on the shore of Fish Lake in the northern suburbs. Minnesota, the state of a thousand lakes, is full of icy lakes left over from the ice age. Morey quickly found the ward where the person he was looking for was in a single room on the fourth floor through the front desk.

"Is anyone there? Can I come in?" Morey knocked on the door of the room. Although he was asking if anyone was there, he pushed the door open before waiting for an answer from inside. The door was not locked. Morey saw Malik Seely lying on the bed with one foot dangling from the steel frame.

This is the fifth day after Malik Siri underwent ankle surgery. The plaster cast has been removed, but the foot is still unable to move. It needs to be hung on a steel frame in a special protective sleeve. This kind of life makes him feel bored . Both his wife and son temporarily returned to their hometown in New York, and only the nurse came to check on the situation every day. Kevin Garnett visited him the day after the operation, and no one came after that, including the Timberwolves' management and coaching staff. He knew that he might have been abandoned.

Malik Seely's life has been troubled since the inexplicable attack at a Boston bar two years ago. He missed all games in the playoffs with a dislocated jaw, and then suffered a game in the summer. In a car accident, he injured his ankle, which was not serious at the time. But he is a professional basketball player, and any small injury may cause a devastating blow.

Finally, at the end of this year's season, he injured his ankle again during training and eventually had to undergo ankle surgery. Now he has the last year left on his contract with the Timberwolves. He is currently 32 years old and has begun to enter a career. At the end of his player career, he encountered such a serious injury and major surgery. What he is about to face is likely to be a contract buyout and then lose his job. Either enter the team's management, or start a drifting career in the minor leagues.

During these more than ten days, no team called him, and his agent did not contact him. Like many non-star players in this league, this is roughly the case when his career comes to an end. So when Darryl Morey walked into Siri's room, Siri was surprised, and when Morey introduced him as a player development assistant for the Celtics, Siri thought this guy was here to invite himself to the NBDL of.

"Mr. Sealy, there are only you and me here. Let's open the sky and speak honestly. The Celtics hope to sign you after you are bought out by the Timberwolves!" Morey now speaks more and more in Leon's style. Time followed Leon, and he also began to like straightforward conversations, and when he spoke, he would show the confident look that Leon often had. It would be better if he could have a cigar in his hand.

"What do you want from me?" Sealy is a smart man. He is thirty-two years old and has been in many teams in the league, from Indiana to Los Angeles, from Detroit to Minnesota. He is not like Wang Zhizhi or a boy. The same young chick can be persuaded with a few words, and he wants to know more.

Morey imagined in his mind how Leon would answer such a question, so he hesitated, thought for a while and said: "We hope you can convince Kevin Garnett to join Kyle next season. Special people."

Malik Siri laughed, both for the man in front of him and for the situation he was in. A team signed a player not because he was good enough, but because they needed him to recruit another player. At the same time, Siri also felt that he might only have this use value left. In the Timberwolves, he was Garnett's best friend. When Garnett closed himself in his own small world, Siri gave Garnett Nate was warm and persuasive. Now he's injured, and only Garnett has come over to take a good look at him.

"Where Kevin goes is completely up to him. I can't influence him. He is a superstar. He has the right and qualification to freely choose where to stay. Want me to convince him? Sorry, I can't." Siri refused He accepted Morey's proposal, which made Morey feel a little speechless. Why was Leon able to persuade others with a single movement of his mouth, but was rejected when he opened his mouth? It is obvious that Leon is also a straightforward and straightforward person.

At this time, Morey remembered what Leon had said to him, "If you want the other party to accept your conditions, then you'd better offer him one that he cannot refuse."

"We will give you a three-year, nine million-dollar contract, using our mid-level terms." Morey finally threw out his trump card. Before coming to Minnesota, Leon spent a whole day arguing with Angie to the end How should the team's middle-class clause be used? Angie hopes to find a suitable insider in the free market, while Leon only wants to recruit Malik Siri to prepare for him to compete for Garnett.

In the end, Angie succumbed, because the team's owner Pagliuca expressed his willingness to pay part of the luxury tax for the Celtics, provided that the team must introduce superstars, and Leon's strategy is aimed at superstars.

In the face of the money offensive, Sealy was easily shaken. You must know that his salary in the Timberwolves last season was 1.2 million US dollars a year, which was less than one-tenth of Garnett's salary. Now because of injuries and age, he is likely to withdraw from the league and have no ball to play, but the Celtics are willing to offer him a contract with an annual salary of 3 million, which is a condition that Siri cannot refuse . Don't say let Siri persuade Garnett to join the Celtics, let him persuade the **** to surrender, and he is willing to try.

"Kevin is quite loyal to the Timberwolves...I don't know how...how to persuade him, maybe I can accept your contract and conditions, but I have to speak first, maybe my persuasion will be useless." Siri said His concern, in his view, Garnett is a very loyal person to the team.

Knowing that the matter was more than half done, Morey quickly shook his hand and said, "No, no, Siri, you don't need to persuade him directly, we have our plan. First, you need to reach a buyout agreement with the Timberwolves. But at the same time, you have to express to Kevin that you don't want to leave the Timberwolves. It is best to let Kevin help you to speak and let you stay in the Timberwolves. Second, after you leave the Timberwolves, you must maintain contact with Garnett. We are still friends like in the past, and keep the emotional heat. Third, you need to attack the Timberwolves appropriately, not the kind that tear your face, but some small criticisms, especially about their team building strategies and ideas, in fact You also know that the Timberwolves are really not doing very well in this regard. Finally, the most important point, take care of your foot injury, and nine million is not just signing a lobbyist."

When Morey finished speaking this long paragraph, he instantly felt refreshed. He really wanted to take out a cigar from his pocket and light it in front of Siri, and then quietly wait for Siri's response, but it was a pity that his pocket There was never a cigar in it, nor did he smoke it.

Morey’s words were of course told by Leon. He wrote them down on a small note. Morey read them repeatedly on the way to Minnesota and rehearsed them in his mind. Finally, he finished them all in one go in front of Xili. said it. And the last so-called "most important point" was added by Morey himself. He thought that if Leon heard his impromptu point, he would definitely appreciate it.

Different from Morey's complacent, Sealy fell into thinking, he could feel that the Celtics were playing a big game, Kevin Garnett was the center of this game, and he himself was a small pawn . As Garnett, who has the highest salary in the league and is unprecedentedly high, it is almost impossible to get him through a trade, no matter from which aspect. But compared with other superstars in the league, especially inside superstars, Garnett has a smaller chance of winning the championship than everyone else. This is his biggest loophole and weakness, and it is also the loophole and weakness of the Timberwolves.

And Siri is the vanguard and bridgehead that Leon uses to dig out this loophole and concentrate this weakness.

"Okay, I promise you. But I also want to say that if you want Kevin to join, you Celtics will finally show some signs of winning the championship." Siri said to Morey, and he finally agreed. expensive conditions.