One Year Left to Play-Chapter 149: No Game Experience
The training match continued, but in the time that followed, the main players were not put back on.
Zhang Hao stood on the sidelines watching his remaining teammates playing aimlessly... quite a few of them were really weak, weaker than he had imagined.
"Although my ability rating is only 69, that’s because my skills are really too one-sided, so it’s only 69. In terms of athletic ability, I’m probably not the best on the team, but I wouldn’t be out of the top three. And my mid-range shot is the strongest—I have two abilities that are top-notch on the team!"
Thinking of this, Zhang Hao got excited again.
"Apart from me, Anderson, Chales, Edwards, Williams, Gilliam, Brown, these six teammates are not bad, but our main force is too small, only six people..."
There’s no way around the lineup situation!
He tried sticking his butt out to see if it could make him formidable... but in the end, it was just a change of position to pass gas, and that’s all it was.
Also, Zhang Hao had previously thought about what it meant to evaluate ability based on what’s shown during the game, and now he finally understood.
The ability evaluations of other players are divided up in a very complex way. If you want to say there’s a specific metric—it’s the ability that can be consistently shown on the court?
Anyway, Zhang Hao knew his ability evaluation is simply based on physique, skills, and shooting.
And it doesn’t include defense. If he doesn’t want to defend, even a perfect score of 100 is useless.
...
The result of the training match doesn’t matter; what’s important is that the training match has significantly changed Zhang Hao’s image in the minds of his teammates.
Over on Jason Williams’s side... Zhang Hao felt his fiery gaze...
Zhang Hao really wanted to say to him: "I didn’t expect you to be this soft, push up against you and you can’t get hard..."
Anyway, the competition has already begun, Zhang Hao doesn’t care how angry or upset the other party is.
If he really steals the other’s playing time, the other person will definitely be upset.
But he has to compete!
Unfortunately, the other person didn’t give the chance, and as soon as the game ended, he ran off.
Zhang Hao returned to the apartment, took a bath, lay down to rest, and reminisced about the feeling of scoring over NBA players... it was wonderful! Even though it was just an intra-squad training match.
"But this is just a training match, playing well only means playing well in the intra-squad match, my defense is truly terrible..."
"I just came out of high school, back then defense was all about using the body to bump, while they’ve played for five years and are from the 90s draft class."
"I haven’t formally learned how to defend yet..."
"Okay, I still have some pride, how can I say this out loud."
Zhang Hao gazed at the stars at a 45-degree angle, trying not to let tears fall.
Weak is weak!
He opened the subtitles, looking at the task ’Set Sail’, one of the rewards of this task he really wants to win.
"Relying on training to improve quickly is really hard... I think I’ve reached the stage where I need games to hone my off-ball playing style, I can’t miss out on the rewards of the golden finger...".
Muttering in his heart to enter learning mode, he soon fell asleep.
At the first second of the next day, Zhang Hao opened his eyes and returned to that familiar room again.
A TV, a sofa, a desk... the arrangement is still so simple.
He picked up the book on the desk— "Positioning Master".
"When can there be more things to learn? Forget it, bite off more than you can chew, better fully understand the things I know first, matches and training, and memorizing things are clearly different."
"I have to change my learning angle, before I kept memorizing, feeling that remembering was enough, now I should base my learning on our team’s tactics, integrating my memorized positioning knowledge into team tactics, finding more space for myself to play, exploring more possibilities.
Our team’s tactics are lousy, but this is the tactics we have to follow. If I don’t follow this, I won’t have good opportunities, it’s more important to master this tactic than learning more positioning within other tactics!
Moreover, even if the team’s tactics are mediocre, it’s still a tactic isn’t it... better than being in a purely rubbish team with no detailed tactics, where ball handlers are just playing aimlessly!"
...
After the training match, the Brooklyn Nets’ training camp officially started.
The training with the Brooklyn Nets is very relaxed, aside from necessary team training and personal training for the players who are being specially developed by the team, everything else is purely up to the players to have self-awareness.
On October 4th at noon, Zhang Hao finished today’s layup training and was preparing to shower and have lunch, Butch Baird found him.
"Coach, what’s up? I’m so hungry that my stomach is about to collapse."
Having been with the team for this long, Zhang Hao was very familiar with the two coaches; Randy Whitman is generally responsible for being strict, while Butch Baird would occasionally chitchat with the players.
"Aix, I want to talk to you about your training."
Zhang Hao was quite surprised, that the head coach was actually getting down to business!
With business to attend to, Butch Baird didn’t ramble on like usual, and directly said: "Aix, you are working hard, and we are very happy about that, but now you should adjust your training intensity, your training load is too heavy."
Upon hearing this, Zhang Hao wanted to spit out all his objections—when has hard work been wrong? Was knowing too much wrong before, now even training too hard is wrong? So what, should I debut with a single?
