From today on is the king

Chapter 941 940. Playoff Progression

Jealousy, envy, jealousy!

But McGrady's fighting spirit has been completely burned up!

A little different from the rest of the Eagles, McGrady's temperament is still tepid even after taking a rest, and he doesn't have the feeling of suppressed desire like others, which makes Liu Mang feel a little weird.

At this time last year, even the 42-year-old Stockton looked high-spirited and very excited.

It's not that McGrady doesn't have fighting spirit, it's just that he's a bit tepid.

With this appearance, Liu Mang knew at a glance that he had never won the playoffs, and he didn't have the drive of others at all.

Moreover, because he is strong, and he is only 25 years old but not 26 years old, he is not as worried about the future as a veteran, nor is he as eager to shine in the playoffs as a young man, and he doesn't even have the so-called grievances to motivate him.

This guy, just like his character in the digitization of the system, is too "indifferent to the world"!

Liu Mang thought about himself, there are many things he wants in the regular season, scoring champion, MVP, team, best defensive team... It's a bit difficult, but in short, he wants a lot.

And McGrady, after playing for a whole season, found an assist king as his goal.

And because the Suns were a bit uncomfortable with the referees' whistle-blowing scale after the All-Star Weekend, Nash's assists became unstable, and the Suns couldn't adapt to the rhythm of the playoffs.

This actually made Stoudemire, a player with great ambitions, start to plan to practice mid-range shooting and richer face-up skills, and developed towards his former idol, the face-up version of Tim Duncan, the flying devil version of Tim Duncan in the late 90s.

Some people need to experience failure before starting to work hard. This is already considered, and some people simply let it go when they fail.

But those with better talent, like Stoudemire, can see their own flaws and take the initiative to improve.

Although Stoudemire did not improve as fast as Yao Ming in the past two years, and Yao Ming was a player in the best team in his second year, the environment of the two teams is different. Stoudemire played with Marbury, and the atmosphere of the team was extremely bad.

But Stoudemire was stunned from only eating cakes in his rookie season, to being able to cut into singles with the ball facing the frame in the second grade, and now he has become the player with the highest score among power forwards averaging 26 points per game.

After the Suns arrived in March, their offensive efficiency declined slightly, and their scoring average has been surpassed by the Hawks. The Hawks averaged 111.6 points per game, while the Suns averaged 110.9 points.

Nash's average assists per game was also surpassed by McGrady. Because of the decline in offensive efficiency, his average assists per game fell to 11.7, and McGrady firmly took the advantage with an average of 12 assists per game.

McGrady's talent is really too good to say anything, and he is fully transformed into an organizer. Although the ability to organize offense is still under development, McGrady has won the assist king in a daze.

This makes McGrady's indisputable character particularly prominent. There is a feeling that he became more and more casual when he won the scoring champion in the 02-03 season.

It's not that McGrady's performance has declined, but it gives people the feeling that he can't find the goal to pursue.

Therefore, Liu Mang brought his championship ring to stimulate McGrady.

The championship ring really hurt McGrady's self-esteem.

When talking trash with Kobe before, Kobe said that he has three championships. McGrady can only respond that he has the scoring champion and is about to win the assists champion.

In the history of the NBA, there are only 4 players who can win the championship in the scoring season. The NBA's ancient basketball god George Mikan, the NBA's basketball god Michael Jordan, the most dominant center in history Shaquille O'Neal, and Liu Mang in front of McGrady.

If you change someone to win the scoring champion, it is tantamount to not having a championship.

That is to say, Kobe has a good face, and if the honor is not mentioned a second time, McGrady won.

But that incident was like a thorn in McGrady's heart, but he didn't care about so many things, so it didn't hurt him.

But now that thorn was punched by Liu Mang, and that thorn pierced McGrady's heart.

Only Bob Cousy, Jerry West, and Magic Johnson are the only players who can win the championship in the assist season.

McGrady wants to be the fourth!
It's not that McGrady didn't have the motivation to compete for the championship before, it's just that he didn't want to wear the championship ring so urgently and tell Kobe that he also has it. Now that Liu Mang has uncovered the previous scars, McGrady's motivation is completely different!
……

……

"Ace, I have already signed Monta Ellis and David Lee. Ace, are you sure they can play in the future? Well, I believe in Ace's vision, but why don't you recommend these two to the Eagles?"

"We already have Jason with a player like Ellis. Lee doesn't match our style. He is a traditional insider. By the way, is Paul signed?"

"Chris is still talking, because Ace and you have a relationship with Dwyane. There is a good chance of signing, but it's a pity that none of the four North Carolina juniors have won. They became popular too fast." Schwartz finished talking and took a sip of coffee.

From the end of the NCAA regular season in early February to the end of the NCAA finals on April 2, he was busy observing college students everywhere and contacting everywhere. He really signed one of the popular rookies. Channing Frye, a senior center at the University of Arizona, was signed by Liu Mang's company.

When the agent is busy, he is very busy. In the past two or three months, Schwartz has not returned home once, and he travels all over the United States every day. Although he has signed many agents and scouts, when it comes to some well-known college players who want to sign, he still has to go in person.

But when the work of competing for university resources was completed, I was in a panic immediately. Except for Paul who was still hesitating whether to play in the NCAA for another year and try to win the championship, all other work was over.

So Schwartz came to Liu Mang's house early in the morning on the 13th, the morning of the Eagles' game against the Spurs, to discuss work.

Liu Mang remembers that Channing Frye didn't retire until 2019. Except for the rookie contract, every year after that, the contract is above the middle class. Not surprisingly, the company will have a stable total income of more than 200 million to 300 million dollars in the next ten years, which is not bad.

Generally speaking, those who often change agents are players with great commercial value. They will choose to change agents because the players under the same agent have no other players with commercial value. The main reason is that the commercial value cannot be better developed, not because the contracts signed with NBA teams are not good enough.

The vast majority of players have no commercial value, and they only need an agent who can get a big contract, so ordinary players basically have the same agent throughout their careers.

As long as Schwartz has Liu Mang in his hands, he will not worry about commercial value. Schwartz has become a popular agent because of Liu Mang. Before the outbreak of the North Carolina Four, the top five picks were Andrew Bogut, Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Raymond Felton, Channing Frye, and Charlie Villanueva.

Bogut's agent is an Australian, Deron's agent has long decided to be Bob McLaren, Villanueva is not favored by Schwartz, and the remaining Felton and Fry Schwartz successfully snatched one.

As for Felton, because he has already approached Paul, he has no time to fight for it.

"North Carolina Four Young Masters?" Hearing this, Liu Mang felt that his teacher was going to do something stupid again. "I can assure you that they don't make as much money as Chris alone."

"Haha, I think so too, Chris is too talented, Ace, I think he will be your worst enemy in the future." Schwartz has always had a unique vision.

"Maybe... I like the number 58 quite a lot. Jeff, you can suggest that Chris wear this jersey." Liu Mang suddenly had a bad taste.

"No. 58? This number is a bit ugly! I don't think Chris will agree. Maybe he will refuse to sign with us after I say this. By the way, Ace, why would you want Chris to wear No. 58?" Schwartz didn't understand.

"Uh... I just think it suits him well..."

"Uh, let's not talk about this, I'm afraid Chris will be scared away by you. Ace, who will the Eagles plan to pick this summer? I remember that the Eagles' own first-round pick is still there, and there is a second-round pick from the Jazz, probably two picks at the 30th and 33rd picks."

"It should be like this, but the team has the idea of ​​​​trading next year's draft picks. I don't know what picks can be traded, but I think we will reduce rookies and young players in the summer, so we don't have to think too much. We have too many young players..."

……

After chatting with Schwartz about work for two hours, Liu Mang mainly gave advice, and the company's operations and financial revenue were all handled by Schwartz.

What Liu Mang wanted was contacts, what Schwartz wanted was money and the sense of accomplishment of developing the company, and the interests they pursued had no conflict, so now that Schwartz has become famous, there is no conflict of interest with Liu Mang.

After Schwartz left, Liu Mang was also preparing to go to the arena. There was a team meeting at noon and a training session in the afternoon. The Eagles coaching staff had already made full preparations for the Spurs game in the evening, and came to play as a preview of the finals.

Before going out, Liu Mang checked the system, superstars were worth 121196 points, and rogues were worth more than 4979 million points.

The superstar value prepared for the playoffs has been fully prepared after the All-Star Weekend, and the rogue value is almost breaking through 5000 million. When Wade and James are killed in the playoffs and they feel the real despair, Liu Mang feels that breaking through [-] million is not a big problem.

The star card is well prepared now, and after the end of the season, he can get a third-year Jordan's star card.

Although as Liu Mang's own strength improves, the role of the star card gradually decreases. The system is assisting him in the way of cultivating Liu Mang's own strength, but the star cards of superstars such as Jordan, Kobe, Wade, and Nash still play an obvious role for him.

Everything is ready, just waiting for the playoffs to start!

Playing the Spurs is like playing in the playoffs!

……

The playoffs are about to start, the enthusiasm of the fans has risen, and the NBA officials have reached the busiest time.

The NBA headquarters in New York is very busy right now. The final planning of the playoffs schedule, the live broadcast negotiations with major TV stations, the assignment of referees for the playoffs, helping each team to negotiate with non-own team arena owners... etc. Of course, these things are all handed over to his subordinates. After David Stern finished the work assignment, he easily drank black tea and browsed the website in the office.

David Stern is very discerning. He has already seen that the future will be an era where channels are king and information communication is the mainstream. Although physical newspapers and TV stations are still the mainstream media, online media has already accounted for a lot of traffic. Although he is a bit old, David Stern is good at computers and surfs the Internet when he has nothing to do.

From the beginning of the month, the live previews of TNT and ABC TV stations have been warming up for the game between the Eagles and the Spurs tonight.

This time it was ESPN's turn to be depressed. They snatched the live broadcast of the Eagles' regular season finale against the Pacers at home, but they didn't expect that game to be completely ignored.

The Pacers have already fallen behind in the playoff competition with the Wizards, 76ers, and Magic. They have fallen to tenth in the Eastern Conference and are behind the Celtics. The top eight in the Eastern Conference have been confirmed.

People ignore that the Pacers are the Eagles' opponent in the final game, and they regard the Eagles' game against the Spurs as the final game.

Originally, the last game of the Eagles was arranged by the league as the focus of the playoff warm-up, but the current situation is unexpected.

David Stern never thought that he would put his expectation of boosting ratings on the Spurs.

But this game really attracted a lot of attention.

Mainly because the Spurs were beaten by the Suns with a 113-91 massacre at the beginning of the season. They played better and better against the Suns in the next three games. They lost 102-105 in the second game and took the initiative from the beginning of the third game. They defeated the Suns with a high score 124-118. In the fourth game, they scored 109-91 and gave the Suns a big victory.

This season, there are only four teams that have an advantage in total points against the Suns, and the Spurs are one of them. The other three teams are the Hawks, Rockets, and Mavericks.

The Spurs are the number one seed in the Western Conference finals, and the Eagles, which are "similar" to the Suns, are the top seed in the Eastern Conference finals, and the damn Spurs played very well against the Suns, and people are looking forward to the game between the Eagles and the Spurs.

Browsing the webpage and watching the hot discussion on the Internet about what will happen in the game between the Eagles and the Spurs, David Stern feels that the world is really amazing. He never thought that there would be such a day when the Spurs would boost the ratings.

That's when David Stern got a call...

One minute later, a scream came from the president's office of the NBA headquarters: "Popovich! I am at odds with you!"

(End of this chapter)