One Year Left to Play-Chapter 69 - 22: Rising Fame
But, a comeback is even more exciting!
The local students in California are much more familiar with Zhang Hao; quite a few people came from Los Angeles to San Francisco to watch the game.
"It’s such a pity that Pierce didn’t attend the Adidas Training Camp. It would have been great to see Pierce and Aix team up to challenge all the other top high school players in the nation."
"Yeah, I’ve watched both of them play. They’re so strong; no other school in California is a match for them."
"But Pierce and Aix are both so amazing that if they both participated, Aix might get overshadowed by Pierce..."
"That’s true, but Pierce would definitely help Aix stand out."
"Exactly, so it’s still a pity. But aren’t those colleges regretting now? I feel like those coaches must have sea water in their brains! The strongest shooter in California...no, in the entire nation, the strongest dunker in the country, yet they didn’t let Aix join!"
The Adidas Training Camp held in San Francisco is almost like a home game for Zhang Hao. Whether or not the California high school students had heard of Zhang Hao before, they all became the most knowledgeable about him now.
As for the students from Los Angeles, they’re even more enthusiastic, making exaggerated claims as if they’d seen things firsthand.
In the past two days, Adidas has been giving away the remaining tickets, but there was a catch: you had to buy specified sports gear or shoes to qualify for a ticket. The specified items weren’t junk; they were popular products. Adidas played it smart by only releasing a fixed number of free tickets in each store...selling shoes was secondary; the main goal was to create a scene of high demand.
San Francisco City Hall Ballroom has a total of 15,622 seats, 4,000 of which were given out to various schools in San Francisco, around 600 tickets to major media, scouts, college basketball clubs, and local dignitaries...the remaining 12,000 tickets were given away with shoes and sports gear, all gone in just two days!
As a player from California, Zhang Hao basically had a home-court advantage in this game, but the main crowd buying shoes to get tickets wasn’t students; it was locals from San Francisco, Chinese, Chinese-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Asians.
...
"X...X...X..."
At 3 PM, when Zhang Hao, having completed his warm-up, walked into the court behind Garnett with Bibi, he was startled by the enthusiastic cheers from the fans.
Upon closer look...at least a third of the fans shared his skin color!
Plus, this is a California city. Some students do support other high school players, but most still support "their own."
However, Corey Benjamin, who could also be considered one of their own, was ignored...
This scene took Zhang Hao by surprise; he didn’t expect the fans to be so enthusiastic about him.
He also followed the news but mainly focused on national-level media as his goal was to enter the NCAA. During his daily breaks, he would look for national-level sports news to see if he was mentioned, occasionally finding one.
He didn’t realize that, locally in California, his fame was already quite high, even surpassing Pierce.
This was related to Adidas’s strategy. There are a lot of Chinese, Asian-Americans, and Asians here in California, providing a market expansion opportunity. They merely supported Zhang Hao because they felt he was worth it, a conclusion drawn from observing the training camp, which they then implemented without hesitation.
Listening to these cheers, Zhang Hao felt his heartbeat accelerating—he loved this feeling!
The scene turned into Zhang Hao’s home court, with varying thoughts among the high school players.
Some were envious, some were jealous, and others, like Garnett, clearly understood the reason and knew this was essentially home court for California high school students.
The most peculiar was a certain genius who didn’t want to reveal his name.
"That bastard is actually more popular than me now!"
Kobe had a particularly unique train of thought. He always liked to compare his weakest aspects with others. For instance, despite his comprehensive skills, he liked to compare his mid-range shot with Zhang Hao and Hamilton. After painstakingly catching up to Hamilton in mid-range, Zhang Hao appeared as a super mid-range shooter, putting a qualitative difference with all other high school players, making Kobe feel his mid-range was trash, driving him to train even harder.
Originally, he didn’t care about popularity, but now seeing Zhang Hao, a fellow high schooler, enjoy the cheers of thousands, he started to feel envious and jealous.
Kobe’s thinking was very simple—"I have to win! These cheers will all be mine!"
For most high school players present, having such a large crowd of fans was a first, even though some had participated in the McDonald’s All-Star Game before. But there were only 18 participants in the main game after the selection, and the three-point and dunk contests combined had just over ten participants. Most of them had already been eliminated during the Adidas Training Camp, like Bibi, who was eliminated in the McDonald’s All-Star selection game.
After feeling some envy and jealousy towards the cheers Zhang Hao received, most players felt excitement!
Competing under the watchful eyes of so many fans, it felt really different.
