When pride still matters

Chapter 25 Because You Are Too Weak
Sonny Vaccaro and his assistants stood on the sidelines, Hubie Brown looked at the court with keen eyes, and Jerry West, who had retired from the Lakers, sat quietly not far away, "Sports Illustrated" Gary Smith, NBA scout, college coach. Countless professionals are interested in the matchup between Fei and Anthony.

The attention of this game undoubtedly surpasses the battle between James and Telfair.

Because no matter how potential these two junior geniuses are, they are still tenth graders, and there are variables in the future. Yu Fei and Anthony are different. One has already established his position in the same age group. Tomorrow's game against DeAngelo Collins will be Decisive.The other one is a new star emerging from the ABCD training camp. He is regarded as the second Tracy McGrady.

Before entering training camp, Anthony's reputation in the 2002 class was only slightly better than McGrady's reputation in 1997.

However, after yesterday's game, Anthony's super immediate combat ability and mature skills, as well as his young age, born in May 1984, made people see his strength and potential.

When the training camp is over, Anthony will be ranked among the top five high school students in the 2002 class based on his performance in the training camp. Many people will discuss who is better between him and Amar'e Stoudemire.

The center of Anthony's Aces team was about seven feet tall and black, and he easily defeated Wilkins.

After getting the ball, Anthony showed his talents in the first attack. Facing Iguodala's defense, he dribbled up and stopped to make a jump shot.

"Shh!"

Yu Fei doesn't comment on Anthony's dribbling, but as far as his shooting is concerned, he can be regarded as a "natural scorer".

The combination of man and ball is a general concept. Generally speaking, this sentence refers to the ability to hold the ball, but in fact, it has many indicators.

Stability in ball control, coordination in holding the ball, balance in movements with the ball in the air, and smoothness of the ball falling from the hands and collecting the ball from the ground.

Anthony's most outstanding talent for combining man and ball is the process of picking up the ball from the ground and lifting it to his head.

It's so silky, it makes people's hearts ache.

Iguodala refused to admit defeat and received praise through yesterday's game. Anthony was not the only one who built confidence.

By playing for Yu Fei, Iguodala also received praise from scouts.

He didn't think Anthony was better than him, he wanted to have a chance with him.

So after Yu Fei dribbled the ball past half court, he actively asked for the ball.

Yu Fei passed the ball very simply, because in his impression, Anthony's defense was very poor.

What classmate Yu didn't know was that Anthony was not always a poor defender. In the 2009 Western Conference Finals, the fight between him and Kobe Bryant on both offense and defense showed another side of him. Unfortunately, only one of that bloodthirsty Melo appeared. Yu Fei had never seen the series because he was only 4 years old at the time.

For Anthony, as long as he wants to, there is nothing he can't do on the court.

The problem is, he doesn't want to play defense.

But that is for the future. Now, he needs to make a name for himself. Therefore, not only does he need to hit his opponents hard on the offensive end, but he also cannot show weakness on the defensive end.

Under Anthony's full defense, Iguodala barely missed the shot.

The rebound flew outwards and landed exactly where Yu Fei was.

However, Yu Fei did not hold the rebound in his hand, but gently moved the ball toward the basket, changing the flight path of the ball.

Will Wilkins received Yu Fei's pass and rose up from the basket to score.

"Will, don't you even dunk this kind of ball?" Yu Fei teased.

Wilkins said helplessly: "Da Fei, do you think everyone can dance like you?"

Then, Yu Fei gave Wilkins a high-five.

Whether it was his wonderful pass or his feedback to his teammates after scoring, they all left a deep impression.

Especially for Sonny Vaccaro, he found Yu Fei's unique qualities.

NBA scouts and college scouts are fascinated by Anthony's versatility, but in his opinion, Anthony is very good, even outstanding, but he has no dazzling qualities.

He's just a scorer.

What he's doing at this age is no different than what Paul Pierce, Antoine Walker, Jamal Mashburn is doing.Therefore, Vaccaro focuses more on flying.

Because Anthony's growth curve is transparent and predictable, in the best case, he can become Bernard King, and Vaccaro favors players whose ceilings are unpredictable.

Therefore, he wanted to observe Yu Fei more closely.

Yu Fei has incredible growth. It only took one year to go from an amateur player to a top 20 high school student in the United States with NBA prospects.This kind of trajectory is absolutely irreproducible. The key question is, can he continue this progress?If so, what is his upper limit?
Anthony continued his offensive performance.

He noticed that many basketball professionals were paying attention to him.

He knows where his strengths lie, not in defense, but in offense.

The offense will be where he settles, as for the defense?Just show a little bit. No one will care whether the young players' defense is good or not, just like not many people will care whether the young players are not strong enough.

Because everyone has a growth curve. Young people like James who are less than 16 years old but grow as strong as adults are monster stars who appear only in 20 years. Even James's defense is not good at this stage, so Anthony didn't raise the requirements for himself on the defensive end at all. He just defended carefully in the first few minutes. Then he found that everyone preferred to watch his offensive performance, so he simply downgraded "defensive seriously" to the level of "defending casually". .

However, the other protagonist of this game, Yu Fei, put most of his efforts on the defensive end.

Because Yu Fei knew that there were many NBA scouts present.

It doesn't make much sense to show your offensive skills in front of them. In their view, high school level skills are difficult to display in the NBA.Every young man who wants to gain a foothold in the NBA needs to have engineering attributes.

Therefore, Yu Fei spared no effort to demonstrate his defensive abilities in assist defense, switching defense, and opposing guards and small forwards, just to let them see that he can still rely on defense to gain a foothold even in the NBA.

Although Yu Fei wanted to keep a low profile, some of his opponents wanted to call for help.

This person is not Anthony, but his teammate, Lenny Cooke SF/PF, who was also a high school student in the 2002 class and had a much higher reputation than Anthony before the start of the ABCD training camp.

Cook is currently ranked 2002th in the nation in the 12 class, but experts generally believe he will fall outside the 20th after training camp.

Because Cook not only failed to improve his ranking at the ABCD training camp, but instead served as a wedding dress for James in the game and was completely blown away on the spot.

Then, Anthony, who was on the same team, pretended to be a pig and ate the tiger, beating the 12th graders one after another, thus becoming the most watched 11th grader in the training camp.For Cook, who wants to skip the NBA and directly participate in the draft next year, beating Yu Fei is one of the only two options left for him to rebuild his reputation.

Another option is to knock out D'Angelo Collins, the No. 2001 player in the nation in the [-] class, in the next game.

But the destructive power of the 6-foot-9 Shaquille O'Neal inside frightened Cook. He was not sure of defeating the opponent. Compared with him, Yu Fei, ranked 2001th in the United States in the 16 class, looked harmless and very suitable. Be his stepping stone.

"Hey, why do you keep passing the ball? This is the behavior of a coward. The scouts don't care how good your passing is!" Cook initiated a provocative behavior towards Fei, "But looking like you, I guess you're not good at it either. Attack it, I don’t know how you ranked in the top 20 in the country.”

Later, Anthony missed an outside shot. Yu Fei leaned directly against Lenny and gave the opponent a very unreasonable black elbow. He immediately grabbed the defensive rebound and said: "You are right, you Do you know why?"

After all, Yu Fei dribbled the ball to the frontcourt, suddenly stopped and passed Anthony, who was no longer defending, and landed a powerful and heavy tomahawk dunk, which deepened people's impression of his ability to control movement.

"You dare to do something evil?!" Lenny shouted, covering his lips.

Yu Fei ignored his anger and mocked: "You can't even guard against this. No wonder you were beaten up by the juniors."

Damn it!There were too many people at the scene, and Cook did not dare to make a racist attack on Fei, but this did not prevent him from going on a rampage.

Cook directly blocked Yu Fei with his waist and shouted to Anthony: "Mello, ball!"

Anthony passed the ball, but he was not optimistic about Cook's offensive success rate. If nothing else, he could not even stabilize his center of gravity when he wanted the ball. That Frye was basically playing tricks on him.

Yu Fei had an advantage in the matchup with Cook, especially in the confrontation. He could completely destroy Anthony's pass, but he didn't do that because if Cook couldn't catch the ball, he couldn't humiliate his opponent on the defensive end. .

Cook's self-righteous infield turn gave him the illusion of throwing off the defense.

But when he took off and wanted to dunk, Yu Fei's defense enveloped him at a higher level, directly shattering his offensive intentions and hitting the ball out of bounds.

"There is a reason why No. 35 (Anthony) chose to team up with you." Yu Fei walked out of bounds and grabbed the ball on the ground with one hand, and said heartily, "Because you are too weak, and it is just right to set him off."

(End of this chapter)