The Whip of the God of Basketball

Leon learned two of the most useful things in the USC training camp, one is discipline and the other is freedom.

The former was taught to him by the old Bibby. During the time when he was an intern assistant coach at the University of Southern California, the most work that the old Bibby gave Leon was making plans, arranging the training of the players and even evaluating the players' life style. The leftover work has given Leon a lot of work experience. Although the old Bibby was not a good father, he was a good coach with strict discipline, which made the Trojans, a team with no outstanding talents, have a strong combat effectiveness.

The latter was taught to Leon by the old Winter. Although Winter is famous for the triangle offense, in a few weeks, Winter never instilled Leon with the specific tactics of the triangle offense. Discuss the offensive philosophy of basketball with Leon and discuss the basic laws of tactics. Winter believes that a set of basketball tactics is by no means a planned roadmap for players, but to give players full freedom to reflect their own court value within the established framework.

These are two diametrically opposed concepts, one applied off the court and the other on the court, both of which inspired Leon a lot. But when he wanted to put these concepts into practice and apply them to the Celtics, he found that everything was not so feasible.

At the beginning of October 2001, a few days before the preseason, the Celtics' training camp was held in Waltham again. After the trade and draft, the Celtics ushered in another big change in personnel. The old oily guard Anderson has left Memphis, and the team has added three new young players. The average age of the team has dropped again, and it has become a veritable youth army. But the Celtics did not hold adaptive training camps for young people in August and September. Owner Gaston was reluctant to pay more for training camps because he was about to sell the team. Even their press conferences were a bit shabby. , just a random number unveiling ceremony was held in North Shore Garden.

So when most people arrived at the training hall at 8:30 in the morning, the hall was a little deserted, and no one spoke much. The three young people were naturally bored, and the old players chatted on their own. The trainer and assistant coach were silent. Prepare training equipment. O'Brien came early, but he was talking to Vogel all morning, regardless of the players. And Dennis Rodman hadn't even arrived yet.

Leon changed his clothes and appeared on the court, holding a folder board with his prepared training plan on it. Starting from this season, Vogel will be promoted from a training assistant coach to the team's offensive tactics coach. He has already Qualified and capable of making suggestions for O'Brien. The team's video editing work was mainly handed over to Jimmy Young, while Leon had to share the work content of Vogel's training plan in the past. He needs to analyze the video results compiled by Jimmy Young, share the analysis results with the head coach and players to find out the problems, and make targeted rectifications in training.

Because today is the first day of the training camp, the work of the assistant coach is not heavy, there are not many videos to sort out, and the training plan given by Leon is not specific, it is all simple and basic training content. Leon looked at the lazy atmosphere of the players in the stadium, and couldn't help but frown a little, but O'Brien didn't want to say anything, and he didn't want to do it for him. A coaching meeting was about to be held, and Leon felt that O'Brien should resume after the meeting. Tune up the players.

The coach meeting is a small exchange meeting between the coaching staff and trainers before each training session. At the exchange meeting, the head coach will arrange the videos, training plans, various problems, and the content to be carried out today, and exchange with the assistants Opinions, determine the training goals and directions for today or in the recent period, and lay a good start for everything.

Leon also participated in such small coaching meetings when he was a scout before, but he was not qualified to give opinions on the training content and goals at the meeting. His main responsibility was to analyze and evaluate the problems of certain players and give some suggestions for improvement , has no say in the direction of the entire team. Now as a training assistant coach, his responsibilities and powers are much greater, as long as it is related to the training content, he must participate.

At 8:45, O'Brien looked at his watch and called all the coaching staff to the physical therapy room in the locker room, where today's small meeting will be held. Because it was the first day, O'Brien chatted with each of the coaching staff about summer fun, such as Vogel's return to Kentucky to participate in a baseball game, Hart's visit to Washington to witness the National Day Parade, and of course they must have talked about the horrific 9/11 incident , and then Michael Jordan's comeback.

"That guy named Wojnarowski became famous. He predicted Jordan's second comeback a few days after 9/11. At that time, many people thought it was a fantasy, but a few weeks later Jordan Just really say 'I'm back,'" Ed Reisert, the team's athletic injury protection specialist, said on the subject of 9/11. In September, Wojnarowski finally trusted Leon. Before any news came out, he directly broke the news that Michael Jordan would come back for the second time, and it was finally confirmed. Jordan officially returned on September 25 and joined the Wizards as a free agent. This made Wojnarowski, who was still unknown at the time, come to the fore because of this incident, and began to attract the attention of the sports public opinion circle.

"That guy's name is really hard to remember. In my impression, he is Leon's friend and a member of the Development League scout team." Vogel said that during the New York draft, Vogel learned about Leon and Voy Narowski's relationship, and was impressed by the ups and downs of the two during the draft.

Leon just nodded, his mind was not on these gossips, he was holding today's training plan in his hand, which he had already formulated based on a large number of video materials, data analysis and personal experience when he returned to Boston, and referred to Auerbach's opinion. Of course, he didn't discuss with O'Brien before, so he wanted to take the opportunity of the coaches meeting to communicate with O'Brien, and hoped to provide some opinions on the team's tactical direction.

"Okay, let's stop gossip and focus on training. Leon, show me your training plan. You should have shown me earlier instead of waiting until the training camp is about to start." Aubrey Ryan said and took the folder board in Leon's hand, complaining in his mouth. Leon wanted to say that he called O'Brien a few times to make an appointment to discuss this issue, but O'Brien had been in Orlando some time ago and only returned to Boston when the preseason was about to start. The two of them had no chance to communicate at all. .

O'Brien flipped through a few pages of Leon's training plan, which contained not only today's training content, but also the setting of the team's training and tactical direction throughout the season. The content was very detailed, not only concise and clear text, but also Supported by various charts, it can be said to be a very good training guide. As long as the specific situation of the team is realistic, then using such a training plan will help the team a lot.

But O'Brien just glanced at it briefly, threw the training plan on the player's massage table, and said: "This is a good plan, but I think your way of playing against the Celtics , The player configuration is not well understood. We will not play fast and offensive tactics, but continue to strengthen defense, and improve efficiency instead of speed in offense. This is the right way for a team to recover. Fortunately, I am here There is also a backup training plan, today we will train according to this plan, the intensity will not be too high, and we will practice more fully after the official start of the preseason."

Speaking of which, O'Brien took out a few pages from his folder and handed them to Leon. On them were the plans that O'Brien had worked out after staying up late these days. You must know that as Pitino's assistant coach in the past, O'Brien He is also in charge of team training.

O'Brien's words made the atmosphere in the conference room drop from the joy just now to freezing point. Everyone could see that O'Brien didn't want to adopt Leon's opinion, and the method he used was very simple and rude, half with orders Way to get Leon to adopt his plan.

After Leon came to the Celtics, all the staff, including the players, had the same impression of him: this guy is very nice, but I don't know why I am a little afraid of him. Danny-Ainge is no exception.

So when O'Brien finished speaking and handed the plan to Leon, everyone's breathing could be heard in the physiotherapy room. Leon's complexion was naturally not good-looking, and O'Brien also looked a little nervous. Everyone knew the story of this guy. He knocked Siri over with a punch and got Rodman in Sydney. Now they are all afraid that Leon will punch him Knock O'Brien into the spa.

The silence lasted for three seconds. Leon reached out and took back the folder board that was thrown on the physiotherapy bed, then clipped the plan book O'Brien gave him, licked his lips and said: "I see, I will Use your training plan. But I think it is necessary to clean up the discipline of the team, otherwise the players will not want to play according to your set, it will be bad."