The summer of 2007 was destined to be a torturous offseason for the Lakers.

Kobe Bryant scored crazy points for two consecutive years, but the Lakers fell in the first round one after another due to the strength of their lineup.

This kind of experience made Kobe lose trust in the management, and he thought about leaving.

At this time, there is no "designated next player", and Kobe's move is more like forcing the management to strengthen the team.

After all, he is a man who aspires to surpass his idol Jordan, but now he is wasting his peak in Los Angeles.

Because there is a precedent of Carter forcing the Raptors, the Lakers dare not say that Kobe will definitely not leave.

At this time, whatever Kobe said, they would take it very seriously.

So at four o'clock in the morning, it's definitely unrealistic for you to say that it was a tryout arranged by the Lakers.

It's more like Kobe couldn't find anyone, so he asked Lin Ying to train with him. He found that he liked it, and then he took advantage of the situation and asked the management for this person.

Reasonable, reasonable.

As for why Kobe approached Lin Ying, I am afraid only Kobe himself knows this.

Perhaps, if Lin Ying really goes to the Lakers, he can ask Kobe directly.

There may be some interesting little stories in there.

Of course, the premise is that the Lakers can draft Lin Ying.

But no matter what, Lin Ying ended his trial training trip in an unexpected way.

Although he has not received a clear draft commitment, unless he suddenly suffers a serious injury in the past two days, he should not fall out of the top 20.

After the Los Angeles trial, he returned to Austin.

Not long after he returned, Duffy told him a piece of news.

He got an invitation to the "Little Green Room" of the league's draft office!

The small green room refers to an area surrounded by a green baffle of more than 1 meter between the audition stage and the auditorium.

That position is facing the stage, and it is also the focus area that the media cameras are facing.

Generally, only players who are considered to have a chance to enter the lottery, that is, the top 14 picks in the draft, will receive invitations.

Of course, this invitation will usually be more than 14 people.

After all, this list is only invited by the league based on the intentions of each team. No one knows whether those teams will suddenly change their minds.

But receiving this invitation means that someone in the current lottery team has thoughts about Lin Ying!

Judging from the trial teams he has participated in, the only one in the lottery is the Hornets.

But an excellent hunter will not expose his tracks easily.

So wasps may be a possibility, but they won't be the only possibility.

Question: How can I refuse this guy after being invited?

Answer: Of course!

It's an invitation, so you can naturally refuse it.

Historically, Usman Garuba declined the 2021 draft because he wanted to represent Spain in the Olympics.

Just being invited into the Little Green Room is not only an honor, but also a kind of exposure. Most people will not refuse.

Of course, in theory, some people don't have to go because they are afraid of falling out of the lottery, or falling into the second round like Jordan and Bol Bol.

Lin Ying, of course, had no reason to refuse.

Sitting in the small green room with Durant waiting to be selected, what a wonderful thing.

Then, Lin Ying also asked about the list of the little green house this time.

Including him, there are 16 people in total this year.

The remaining 15 people are: Oden, Durant, Horford, Jeff Green, Brewer, Conley, Noah, Brandon White, Julian White, Asi Law, Hawes

, Al Thornton, Starkey, Nick Young, and Yi Jianlian.

This means that at least 2 of the 16 people invited will fall out of the lottery.

It is worth mentioning that although Yao Ming was selected as the No. 1 pick in the NBA in 2002, he was not able to come to the draft due to the national conditions at the time.

So this is the first time in history that Chinese players have entered the Little Green Room, and they have entered two at once.

Let’s talk about Yi Jianlian.

While Lin Ying was trying out, two other Chinese players who participated in this year's draft, Yi Jianlian and Sun Yue, were also trying out for the draft.

As in history, there was not much news about Sun Yue's trial training, but Yi Jianlian became very popular in the United States.

Yi Jianlian's talent is definitely better than Lin Ying's.

He is 2.13 meters tall, has a wingspan of 2.22 meters, has the size of a power forward, the speed of a small forward, excellent athletic ability, and excellent outside shooting ability and offensive ability with the ball.

Based on these alone, he will be a lottery pick no matter which year he participates in the draft. The only difference lies in his draft position.

In fact, if Yi Jianlian had participated in the draft in 2006, he would have even had a chance to hit the top three in that young year of the draft.

This is not an exaggeration.

Take this year as an example, even if Lin Ying helped the University of Texas win the NCAA championship, his attention from NBA teams was not as high as that of Yi Jianlian.

In the draft, the higher the pick, the more talent is valued.

Of course, Yi Jianlian also has an obvious shortcoming, that is, his current confrontation ability is very poor.

In order to cover up this, his agent Dan Fagan carried out a series of cunning maneuvers.

First, he did not participate in the joint trial training in Chicago, and then during the trial training, he only performed some non-confrontational demonstrations of his abilities.

This has had the opposite effect, with some NBA team management expressing dissatisfaction.

The first to express dissatisfaction was Celtics general manager Danny Ainge.

Because he found that even if it was a separate trial, Fagan would not allow him to arrange a confrontational trial with Yi Jianlian.

"It was an excellent trial. Yi Jianlian faced off against a chair or a coach, and that chair made several good defenses."

This is also the origin of Yi Jianlian's "chair man" in history.

Lin Ying has stayed in the United States for two years and knows that this is actually an American complaint from Anji.

The "chair" here is complaining about uncontested trials.

But you know how fucked up the American media is from the fact that Durant was labeled "indifferent" before.

Soon, the famous American media personality Bill Simmons began to use the term "chair man" to describe Yi Jianlian.

The label then spread like wildfire.

…

On June 27, the day before the draft, Lin Ying and Durant flew to New York with Bill Duffy.

This year's draft will be held as usual at Madison Square Garden, the home of the Knicks and the "Mecca of Basketball."

The NBA officially arranges for rookies participating in the draft to stay in a unified hotel.

However, if you have family members coming with you, you will have to find a place to live by yourself.

Durant ran to Lin Ying's room to chat.

The night before the draft can easily lead to insomnia.

As long as they are selected in the first round, if nothing else, they will become millionaires first!

The two of us ordered takeout and watched TNT programs while eating.

Barkley and the others were discussing the draft predictions for the final issue of NBAdraft.

This issue is also called the "Ultimate Prediction". In addition to rankings, players are also rated based on physical test data from previous joint trials.

This rating is divided into 12 individual items, namely athleticism, size, defense, strength, agility, leadership, jump shot, NBA readiness, ball sense (outside)/rebounds (inside), potential, passing (outside)/basket

Skills (inside), mental willpower.

The maximum score for each item is 10 points, with a total score of 120 points.

Durant and Oden both scored a historic 106 points!

This score is the NBA's highest rating in the past 15 years.

Barkley and Smith are currently analyzing who of the two will eventually be selected as the No. 1 pick.

It's just that the analysis of these two people is not to compare the advantages, but to compare the shortcomings. It is a matter of nitpicking.

Oden's shortcomings are that he has no shooting ability, has potential injuries, and is prone to getting into foul trouble.

Durant's shortcomings are lack of strength and physical fitness, and there is a certain probability that he will not be able to adapt to NBA confrontation.

Lin Ying was quite impressed by this rating.

Durant scored 2 points less than Oden in history, but now his defense and mental willpower are better than at the same time in history.

The scores were the same, so there was a lot of quarrel over who was the top pick.

However, the program was very effective.

To be honest, Lin Ying still can't guess whether Durant will be the No. 1 pick.

Although the order in the draft lottery is the same as in history, many things have changed.

Barkley and the others didn't discuss it either.

After discussing the No. 1 Scholar, they discussed Yi Jianlian.

After discussing Yi Jianlian, it was time to talk about Lin Ying.

While the two were discussing, Lin Ying's complete score and draft report were given in the live broadcast.

Athleticism:7

Size:8

Defense:8

Strength:8

Agility:8

Leadership: 6

Jump shot:8

NBA Readiness Level: 8

Rebounds:8

Potential:7

Passes: 9

Mental Willpower:9

Overall rating:94

For this rating, 8 is basically the average level of lottery picks. If it is lower than 8, it means that the ability is insufficient for this pick, and if it is higher than 8, it is excellent.

This is more obvious in the text version of the report.

Advantages: Very high basketball IQ, always able to make correct choices in games;

Excellent passing ability, especially outstanding fast break passing ability;

With excellent wingspan and good hand size, he has shown NBA-level defensive ability and there is still room for improvement;

He has good strength and agility, which allows him to play both power forward and small forward positions in the NBA;

Has a stable three-point shooting ability and also shows certain low-post offensive skills;

He has a strong will to play and is a player who is difficult to beat.

Disadvantages: Lack of offensive ability with the ball, relatively simple offensive methods;

Because of the lack of sufficient offensive threats, organizational ability relies more on the performance of teammates;

Although it has good size, its athletic ability is relatively average;

Introverted and unable to be a team leader;

A good immediate player, but with limited potential, it is difficult to grow into an All-Star level player.

Draft template: Shawn Marion/Larry Bird.

"Fxck!"

Durant was very involved in watching it before, but he jumped up when he saw it at the end.

Except for potential, everything from scoring to analysis is relatively objective.

But what the hell does the final template give?

No, just giving Marion is enough. What is that thing added at the end!

Lin Ying also has a Nick Young-style question mark face.

The people in "NBAdraft" must have been kicked in the head by Barkley. The template given to him actually had Bird in it...

This is simply a curse!

In fact, let alone the two of them, Barkley and Smith in the show also started laughing when they saw the end.

That makes people suspect that these two guys worked together with the talent show website to create the effect of the show.

But they were really serious about their analysis.

Barkley analyzed some similarities between Lin Ying and Bird. They have average athletic ability, can play two positions at the same time, have outside three-point ability, excellent passing ability, outstanding mental attributes, and of course, the most important thing is top-notch golf intelligence.

Other players who modeled themselves on Bird did not succeed in the end. A large part of the reason was that they did not have enough golf intelligence.

However, Kenny Smith also quickly analyzed that there are many things that Lin Ying and Bird are not compatible with, or even completely opposite.

The biggest thing is his character. Bird is the best. Lin Ying is more like Tim Duncan after being sanctioned by "bald" Crawford.

And Bird's ball-holding ability is far beyond Lin Ying's.

"When did personality become a template reference factor? And Kevin Durant doesn't have T-mac's ball-handling ability now, does he? Kenny, players will improve."

I don’t know why, but Barkley has a faint flavor of "Lin Chui".

Lin Ying and Durant were both silent.

What he said makes sense, and we can't even refute it!

"Ying, actually it's not impossible."

Durant suddenly changed his tune.

Lin Ying looked at Durant doubtfully.

"Just because others can't do it, doesn't mean you can't do it!"

Lin Ying was stunned for a moment.

What you said makes sense, but I still can’t refute it!

"I am the first person, you can force yourself to be the second person."

Durant is so awesome that he is starting to dominate the world!

Lin Ying smiled and nodded.

yy Well, anything is fine.

"By the way, Ying, what lucky objects have you prepared for tomorrow?"

Durant then asked.

During the NBA lottery, representatives of the lottery will use various lucky objects to give themselves luck.

Similarly, players will do similar things when drafting.

"Yes, I'm ready."

He was really prepared for this.

Two small flags.

This is the plot from the novel "My Shooting Is Too Accurate" that he read before.

He thought it was pretty good and learned from it.

The national flag was not easy to buy, so Guan Yang Yi had brought it from China.

Durant gave Lin Ying a thumbs up and then showed off his lucky item.

That's a pair of green lucky underwear.

…

On June 28, Madison Square Garden was packed with people.

All major media were in place, including Yang Yi, who also came to the scene and prepared for the domestic live broadcast.

It is possible that three people will be drafted by the NBA at the same time this year!

Of course, there were more fans of each team at the scene, and the waves were turbulent and passionate.

This year is a big year for the draft. The teams in the league are highly motivated and the fans are even more enthusiastic.

Especially fans of the Trail Blazers, SuperSonics and Hawks.

These three teams failed to beat the Celtics last season, but in the end they got the top three picks. How can you be unhappy about this!

Lin Ying entered Madison Square Garden with his uncle, Duffy, and the Durant family.

The attendance of NBA venues is basically about 20,000 people, which is much smaller than the venues where they used to play three-game games.

But this size is actually the most suitable for basketball games.

And as the "Basketball Mecca", this arena is even more iconic than the Staples Center.

They were led into the small green room by the staff.

The staff was very considerate and told them the draft process was on the table, and also explained the location of the bathroom in detail.

The draft will last a long time.

The tables were all arranged. Lin Ying and Durant were at the next table, right under the stage.

A small detail reflects the professionalism of the NBA.

On Durant's side, his brother Tony Durant, his mother Wanda, Ross Springman, and Randy Williams sat at a table full of people.

Lin Ying's only family member was his uncle, so Duffy sat at his table, and Rick Barnes was also at his table.

Because they are so close together, this arrangement actually makes them seem quite lively.

Then, the table next to Durant is Oden, and the table behind Oden is Yi Jianlian.

When Lin Ying looked up, Yi Jianlian happened to be looking in his direction as well.

It is difficult for the two Chinese people in the Little Green House not to pay attention to each other.

This was also the first time Lin Ying met Yi Jianlian.

What a sunny and handsome guy!

At this moment, the lights began to dim and all the spotlights hit the center of the stage.
Chapter completed!