The Whip of the God of Basketball

PJ-Brown's experience in entering the NBA is still quite bumpy. He participated in the NBA draft in 1992 and was selected by the New Jersey Nets with the 29th overall pick in the second round. However, the Nets refused to provide Brown with a contract, which made Brown far away. Go to Europe to play in Greece. The short basketball career in Greece gave Brown a lot of things that he couldn't learn in college. The way to survive in the professional league slowly penetrated into PJ-Brown's bone marrow from Greece.

After getting ready, Brown returned to the United States and came to the Nets. In the Nets, he met a head coach Chuck Daly who had a profound influence on him. After leaving the Pistons, Daly coached in the Nets. Failed to lead the Nets to reproduce the glory in Detroit, but this hall-level coach who is good at training players and pays attention to defense has become a good NBA enlightenment mentor for PJ Brown.

After laying a good foundation in the Nets, Brown was traded to the Miami Heat in the fourth season of his career, and met the second coach who had a major influence on him, that is the magician Pat Riley. That was Pat Riley's second season with the Heat, and it was also the season he started to show his strengths on the South Coast. Before introducing Mourning and grabbing Tim Hardaway, he changed in 96-97 Come to PJ-Brown, let Leon completely reproduce the iron-blooded muscle group in New York to Miami.

PJ-Brown has withstood Riley's hellfire-like brutal training test in the four years of the Heat. From a good, rough insider defender, he has become an insider with precise positioning, keen awareness, and enthusiasm for confrontation A defensive machine. When the Heat failed to make a breakthrough for many years and had to trade PJ away in order to seek innovation and change, the Hornets who finally got Brown immediately felt like a treasure, and the Hornets' defensive efficiency this season has improved by a level compared with last season.

At this time, PJ-Brown is no longer a little guy who needs to be honed and grown up. The days of hanging out in the muscle forest in the 1990s and the hard training under Riley's coach made him a defensive master in the league. The reason why no one dared to stand up and refute when he pointed fingers at others and even the coach during the Celtics' first day of training, because he has this qualification and this ability.

Brown thinks he has seen everything on the training ground and has experienced all kinds of training methods, such as Riley's devil training, Daly's joke distraction method, etc., and so on. He has played ten times in the league. Brown in 1999 had never seen anything, so when he heard Leon yelling "off-ball simulation training", he thought it was a simple off-ball formation drill. This kind of thing was pediatrics to him.

But when Dalembert was wearing a substitute training uniform and walked to the court to stand in the middle circle, and everyone else walked to the sidelines, leaving only ten people on the court, Brown realized that something was wrong. This was obviously for a match. Momentum, the starting group, the substitute group, Leon also stood on the sidelines with a whistle in his mouth, but where is the ball? The ball that was used for training just now was thrown aside by Leon, and there was not a single ball in sight on the entire court.

"Stop staring at PJ, stand in the middle circle, you are the center forward of the starting team, and you are about to jump the ball." Leon blew his whistle and shouted to Brown who was still in a daze.

"Where is the ball?" Brown asked Leon in a daze.

"The ball is in your heart." Leon responded, then stood in the middle circle, stretched out his hand without anything, and began to simulate a jump ball...

PJ-Brown soon found out that without the ball, he didn't know what to do on the field, yeah, the ball was gone, he couldn't even figure out which way to attack and which way to defend, so he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to take off with just a jump ball. On the contrary, Dalembert on the opposite side flew up with all his strength, and then he heard Leon yelling "Dalembert touched the ball, Cole got the ball .”

In this way, PJ Brown inexplicably failed the jump ball, and then watched Steve Kerr dribble without the ball in his hand, and carefully crossed the half court under the defense of Arenas.

"Cole pass, Williams, pass...Dalembert, dunk!" Leon used the most concise words to describe the ever-changing situation on the court. After halftime, Cole put "the ball "Passed to Eric Williams standing in the middle, Williams immediately flicked his arm after receiving the "ball" and stuffed the "ball" straight to the inside. At this time, Dalembert was rolling down. If there is really a ball on the court and the players cooperate with each other tacitly, this will be a very good second fast break routine. Using a middle connection point to complete a wall-hitting outside pass, instantly tearing the opponent up. defense.

But there was no ball on the court, and PJ-Brown was completely unaware that Williams passed the ball, and he didn't know that Dalembert cut to the inside to catch the ball and dunked directly. This kind of low-level defensive mistakes Brown rarely Committing, especially in the opening stage when the physical strength is still very strong. Looking at Dalembert who dunked the "ball" empty-handed, Brown spread his hands, expressing that he didn't know what happened.

"They completed a quick inward attack, pay attention to my judgment, pay attention to the positions and movements of the people around, and go back to participate in the attack!" Leon briefly explained, then urged Brown. Leon didn't want to embarrass Brown, but he knew in his heart that only by participating in this kind of training can he quickly understand the mystery of it, and it is meaningless to watch and listen to the explanation.

Brown didn't say a word, and ran across the half court to participate in the offense. This time he had a heart, and after half court, he was in the half-arc position of the free throw line, with his back against Dalembert asking for the "ball". It was Arenas who was lucky to "ball". Obviously, PJ-Brown's position was not the Celtics' tactic, but Arenas hesitated and made a pass to PJ-Brown.

"Arenas passed the ball, PJ-Brown... shot, missed, corner on the right side of the basket...Pierce got the rebound, went to the basket and scored." Leon judged an offense again, and PJ-Brown was halfway from the free throw line. After catching the ball, he turned around and pretended to dribble the ball, and then directly forced his gun to shoot. Anyway, PJ-Brown didn't know how the ball was shot, but he just made a jump shot.

When Leon yelled "missing the shot", Brown felt very unconvinced. He walked up to Leon and shouted: "Why do you think I didn't score this goal?"

Leon put down his whistle and faced PJ-Brown, who was as tall as a King Kong, he held his head up and said: "PJ, your shooting percentage in mid-range this season is 47.5%, and the area with the highest shooting percentage is left and right. The bottom corners on both sides, 51.4%, and the shooting percentage at the top of the arc is only 45%. And your best shooting distance is 10 feet to 15 feet, and your shooting percentage is worse at 17 feet. You just got the ball at 17 feet. Position shot. Then, Dalembert is not air, he forces you to lean your body and shoot with a deformed shooting posture. If you have the ball in your hand, this shot is obviously not strong enough, so it will probably hit the right side of the basket and the backboard. The corner. As a veteran who has played for ten years, do you think my analysis makes sense?"

What Leon said made PJ-Brown speechless, his eyes were no longer so wide, but he murmured for a while and still asked unconvinced: "What's the point?"

This time Leon ignored him and just told him to run on the field, listen to his own words, and pay attention to the running positions of his teammates. This training lasted for half an hour. As an experienced basketball player, Brown slowly got his hands on some tricks. He found that this kind of off-ball simulation training focuses on rituals and movement norms. By the way, basically you will get a positive judgment from Leon. On the contrary, you will get various mistakes, failures and violations.

When the simulation training was over, Brown actually found this kind of training quite interesting, and couldn't help asking Steve Kerr if such training was a daily compulsory course. Cole is the only player on the team who is older than Brown and entered the league earlier.

Cole squinted at him and said: "It has been compulsory since the first day he became the head coach. Let me tell you, when we first conducted this kind of training, we were all confused and didn't know what to do. But after practicing It took a few days to know, and it was actually quite fun.”

"But, without the ball, do you listen to him? What does he say?" Brown looked at Leon who was reading the tactical manual on the sidelines with doubtful eyes.

"Of course! If next time he tells you that your balls were hit by a ball, then you just have to roll on the ground with your crotch on your hands. Don't think too much about it, it's always right to listen to him..." Cole said to Brown with a smile , After speaking, leaving Brown at a loss, ready for the next step of training.