69novels Chapter 12 The Impact of Top Scholars
Chapter 12 The Impact of Top Scholars
"You're saying he'll be amazing in the future? Even more amazing than that fatso?"
"Yes, I admit that fat guy was really good when he was young, but now he's getting old. Your compatriot is the future number one center. I almost became his teammate, no, I should say he almost became my teammate, but your so-called loyalty from the East ruined him."
"He looks so skinny, can he handle that fatso?"
"His shooting is amazing, and his footwork is great too. Can you imagine him being the one executing free throws for the Rockets in the future?"
"That's really impressive."
Wang Kai thought about Eddie El of the Hawks' pitiful service field goal percentage of less than 60% and realized that this tall, thin compatriot on TV was indeed quite impressive.
It was June 2002, and the annual NBA draft was about to begin. Wang Kai saw news about his compatriots in the news in the United States.
Before this draft, no one would have thought that a Chinese center would be the number one pick. Even though many media outlets said that Houston needed a pillar in the paint, and Houston did get the number one pick, no media outlet dared to say that the number one pick would be a foreigner.
However, Kobe Bryant, with his foresight, gave Wang Kai a brief overview of Yao Ming's situation.
Kobe had considered letting Wang Kai use his "first-mover advantage" to make a quick buck in the gambling industry, but considering that Wang Kai is only seventeen years old and still a minor, and that he doesn't have anyone he can completely trust in the United States, it's better to wait patiently for his opportunity when he comes of age rather than take a huge risk to make a quick buck.
With the NBA draft approaching, Wang Kai's training has begun to show results. After nearly three months of training, Wang Kai's shooting technique is now close to a straight-arm shot.
With his ongoing core strength training, Wang Kai has been able to execute a proper fadeaway straight-arm shot in training. Given his current height, as long as the opponent is not taller than 2.1 meters and their jumping ability is not at Kobe's level, they basically cannot block Wang Kai's shot.
High school summer vacation in Florida comes early, with schools closing before June. However, this applies to regular students. For athletes like Wang Kai and Eddie El, their vacation is their training period.
However, they didn't have professional coaches to guide them during this training period. After all, coaches are human too. As soon as the academy opened, Coach Kevin went on vacation to Europe. However, before he left, he developed a training plan for most of the Hawks' players.
Wang Kai and Eddie El and others organized a small holiday training team. Although they didn't have the money to hire sparring partners or a professional court, there were plenty of open-air courts in Montverde, enough for these young people.
Although the Hawks won the state championship last season, their influence is limited to Florida and a few neighboring states, and they have not received attention from major media outlets across the United States.
So apart from Wang Kai, who qualified for some invitational tournaments, the Hawks' young players didn't have many opportunities to play elsewhere.
That's why Wang Kai and Eddie El organized such a small training camp. Even if the conditions were simple, it was at least a place to improve their skills.
While Wang Kai and his teammates were practicing basketball with great enthusiasm in the Florida summer heat, the 2002 NBA Draft officially began.
Yao Ming did not attend the draft; he was still negotiating with the Shanghai team at the time.
When David Stern announced that Yao Ming had been selected as the number one overall pick by Houston, the entire North American region was shocked. This was the first time in NBA history that a foreign player had been selected as the number one overall pick.
Chinese basketball fans were overjoyed that Yao Ming became the number one draft pick. They thought this was just the beginning, and that more Chinese players would enter the NBA and compete for the number one pick. However, no one expected that this would become the peak of Chinese basketball, after which it would only decline.
The fact that a Chinese player became the NBA's number one draft pick has angered many legends.
However, with media reports, more media outlets finally began to pay attention to a high school team in Florida where a Chinese international student was the core player and led the team to win the state championship.
The first major media outlet to report on Wang Kai's situation was the Orlando Herald, since they are actually affiliated with the Montverde Herald.
The Orlando Herald reported on Wang Kai with the headline "China's top draft pick arrives in NBA, 05 or 06 season's top pick already reserved by China."
Following this, media outlets in southwestern Houston also took notice of Wang Kai's news, with one reporter writing a report titled "The Future Belongs to the Twin Stars of China."
Everyone says that domestic media is terrible, but in fact, media all over the world are the same; they all do a great job of praising the powerful and belittling the weak.
When many American media outlets began reporting on Wang Kai, some domestic media outlets with keen information also started paying attention to him.
Southern Sports was one of the more powerful sports media outlets in China at that time. In addition, backed by the "Southern Media Group," they had better access to information in Europe and America than some traditional sports media in China.
Southern Sports did not send anyone directly to Florida to interview Wang Kai, but instead asked local international students to conduct the interview on their behalf.
During this period, due to the Twin Towers incident a year earlier, visa requirements for media outlets traveling to the United States were extremely strict. Unless they were well-known journalists with a certain international reputation, it was very difficult for ordinary reporters to obtain visas, even if they had the backing of Southern Media Group.
Therefore, Southern Sports had to find an international student studying at Florida State University to interview Wang Kai on his behalf.
However, what Southern Sports didn't expect was that the international student they found was quite unreliable. He did go to Montverde and found Wang Kai training on the outdoor court, but as soon as he saw that Wang Kai and his group were just practicing outdoors, he immediately thought that Wang Kai and his group were no good and didn't even have a decent court. So after asking Wang Kai a few questions, he took a few photos and left.
The "proxy reporter's" reply to Southern Sports was: "He's just an ordinary young player, decent-looking, but not very tall, less than 1.95 meters. I'm not optimistic about his future."
Southern Sports, having received a reply, didn't investigate further. After all, the Korea-Japan World Cup was just around the corner, and sports media across the country were paying close attention to the national football team's performance. Since they had live news, they simply reported it.