The Whip of the God of Basketball

Tex Winter's basketball life experience is as complicated as his triangle offense. He made his debut at the University of Southern California and began to work as a basketball coach after graduation. In the following decades, his coaching footprints have spread throughout Kansas, California , Washington, Texas and Michigan. Of course, he is most famous for the triangle offense that accompanied the Chicago Bulls to win six championships. Now he continues to follow Phil Jackson in the Lakers, moving towards another three-peat dynasty.

Just three days ago, he was invited by Bill Sharman to guide the offensive tactics of the University of Southern California. From Sharman, he learned about Fox Leon, who has become a little famous in the scouting circle in recent years. However, Winter, who was born as a player-coach, was quite disdainful after hearing that Leon had been a scout for a year and was about to change to a coach. He said that Leon would have to work as a scout for at least another ten years before he could find the head coach. the door.

Bill Sharman couldn't deny this, but he took him to the Memorial Stadium early in the morning, and met Leon at the door. For a famous assistant coach like Winter, Leon naturally knows him, but Leon has only heard about the problem but never seen it, so when he saw Leon with curly long hair like a street artist in Los Angeles , some couldn’t believe that this was a basketball worker, and not only taught: “If you want to be a basketball coach, learn to cut your hair first, don’t say like Pat Riley or Chuck Daly , at least a little bit."

It seems that unlike Sharman, Winter is not so polite and fond of Leon, but Leon doesn't care, just smiled and nodded, and then entered the gym. A day's training begins with the training plan. As an assistant coach, Leon is responsible for the weekly training plan. Although his memory does not require paper forms at all, he still carefully made a clear and concise plan. In the lecture before the training, he will give everyone a form, and then briefly explain today's training plan.

"Today is Friday, and tomorrow there will be a day of rest, so today is a tactical training day, and physical fitness and strength will be put on next week. Of course, I have no objection to your training after the end of the training. We will collectively watch for half an hour in the morning. The game video, the content, last year's first round game against Oklahoma State. Starting at ten o'clock, there will be five-corner pass, four-corner pass, three-on-two fast break, three-on-three side attack and full-line offense. This will last for two hours. Prepare physically, and the whole team will do it together. After the whole team training is over, individual technical exercises will begin. I have written everyone's item classification on the form, and you can watch it yourself. In the afternoon, there will be confrontation training, five-on-five full-court confrontation, quick attack and defense conversion practice, position attack change practice, and today we will practice the cracking tactics of the zone defense. This is the main content of today's training, get ready, kid Guys, get your clothes ready and get ready to see your performance last year." Leon stood in front of the team and smoothly finished the tactical arrangement for today, he didn't even glance at the schedule, and his tone of voice seemed familiar For twenty years.

"This kid has a terrible memory. We all call him 'Copier Leon'." Bibby said to Winter and Sharman who were watching from the sidelines, and Winter's impression of Leon has also changed, at least he was arranging a training plan just now He was still very coachable when he was young. It's just that compared with traditional American coaches, he is a little less passionate and a little more calm. He seems very reluctant to yell at players like those college coaches. In Leon's words, he doesn't think the decibel level of the voice can determine the effectiveness of information transmission. At the same time, for the players on the field, a calm coach can stabilize people's hearts more than an excited one.

Winter began to look forward to what kind of performance Leon would have in the next tactical training. He heard from Sharman that this kid had excellent memory and mathematical ability, and he could memorize all tactical content as long as he wanted, but Auerbach always disagreed with him learning and memorizing tactics.

After half an hour of video viewing and analysis and warm-up exercises, the morning tactical training began. Training begins with passing practice, the simplest four-corner pass, players are divided into four groups, stand on the four corners of the half court, and then perform a cycle of diagonal passing and running. This is the practice of player passing. The most basic practice of ball accuracy and ball prediction ability. These players have been doing this simple exercise since elementary school, and it can be said that they are very familiar with it. This can also be regarded as the warm-up part of tactical training.

Originally, Winter was not interested in this part, but he soon found that Leon was standing aside and kept repeating some words, such as "take a longer step, Buck, your pass is too hard, Farmar, slow down." Slow down appropriately." Leon gave advice to the players like a fine-tuner, and soon Winter discovered that Leon was not just talking casually, because as the training progressed, the players passed the ball faster and faster. It is getting smoother and smoother, almost reaching the ball to the person. But when Leon stopped reminding, the pass was obviously slowed down for the first time.

After the four-corner pass training, Leon said to the players: "It is impossible for me to remind you of the essentials of passing the ball on the court, so I hope that everyone will also pay attention to the most basic training in the future. Well, let's start the next one. Let’s take a rest first.”

"Wonder boy, really terrible observation, looks like I'm going to change my opinion on him. But if he can only do that, he will be a very good trainer or offensive assistant coach, not He's an excellent head coach," Winter said to Sharman, sitting in the audience on the sidelines.

"Like you, Tex?" Sharman joked to Winter with a smile.

"Hahaha, maybe, a coach like me who can only be a college and high school coach, NBA, no. You know, until I met Phil, I didn't really understand that a guy like me, and an NBA head coach, especially great What kind of gap does the NBA head coach have. I think you should know better than me, Bill."

"This is just a small stage, and it can't fully show the energy of this kid. You know, I've been paying attention to him for a long time. No one is more like Arnold than him, but he is completely different from Arnold."

"I don't know, I don't know about red heads, not everyone like you can eat in Los Angeles and Boston. Let's see the confrontation training in the afternoon and ask Bibby to give him some command. If this kid is good, I will work hard Share with him what I have learned and learned. If he is not suitable for this path, then you’d better go back and persuade the red head to let him give up.” As the assistant coach of the Lakers, Winter was not so friendly to Auerbach , he came to help Leon purely for Sharman's face.

In the afternoon match, Bibby divided the team into groups. The freshmen hadn't entered the team yet, and the team was just enough to be divided into two complete teams. Bibby divided the team into two evenly matched groups, but at this time Winter raised objections. He said: "Leon has no coaching experience at all. It's not fair to let him and you lead a team that is evenly matched. In this way, it is divided into the main group and the substitute group. Leon leads the main group, Bibby, you lead the substitute group. This is interesting. "

Winter actually came up with a "bad idea". Of course, he did it on purpose. Although the strength of the main team is definitely stronger than that of the substitute team, the coach of the substitute team is the team's head coach Bibby, not to mention that Bibby has great influence on these players. How well understood, from the heart point of view, the substitute team will definitely do their best to fight against the main team. The main team, under the leadership of a temporary coach, might just be lazy, and finally capsized in the gutter. Winter saw this kind of situation a lot when he was a coach.

Winter felt that he had dug a hole for Leon, but he didn't notice the helpless expression on Bibby's face. Soon after the match started, Winter found that everything was completely different from what he had imagined. As the coach of the main team, Leon did not make any tactical arrangements before the start of the game. He simply asked everyone to play hard and relax. After that, he sat on the court completely motionless, like an old monk in meditation.

And the game also showed a one-sided situation, the main team slammed the substitute team from beginning to end, although Bibby tried to boost the morale of the team and arrange some tactics through a timeout, but it had no effect at all. In the 20-minute short game, the main team The team scored 57 points above the bench group, while the bench group only scored 31 points. The difference of 26 points made Winter stunned.

Sharman, who was sitting next to Winter, also laughed loudly. He said: "You don't even know that Leon has only been here for a week, but he has won the respect and awe of all the players. You didn't see the first day. How did he teach those brats a lesson when he came here. Since you let him command the main team, then he doesn’t have to do anything is the best command, let them relax and play freely. And the substitute team, what do they have? What about the determination and belief to win? Come on old Winter, don’t set up any tests, just hand over what you know, this kid is a coach.”