Champions Creed

Chapter 291 290: Not explicitly saying that you will stay is also an answer (asking for monthly votes)
In an era when the Internet was not particularly developed, Mike D'Antoni used his connections in the European basketball world to get a lot of game videos.

Roger's task this summer is to spend time studying the game videos of European teams.

European videos are different from American videos. European videos are more artistic and more beautiful. Although they are not as straightforward as American videos, they are full of various miracles and fierce roars. But overall, they have a unique flavor.

It’s nice to watch, I love watching it, Roger likes watching it more and more.

Roger has to learn how their point guards play and how to run fast breaks.

After all, next season, he will be a real point guard.

This is a new role Roger will need to take on next season.

此前几个赛季，罗杰在控球组织上取得过一些突破，99-00赛季甚至打出过场均35+5+5的全能表现。

But he has never been a point guard. In fact, both the Hawks' offense and the Zen Master's offense weakened the role of the so-called point guard, and there was no orthodox point guard on the court.

Since Roger joined the Hawks in 1997, the team has never had a true point guard in its starting lineup.

In the first year, the Hawks' three outside players were Roger, Pippen, and Steve Smith, and later it became Roger, Pippen, and Pierce.

Point guard is a role that has disappeared in the Hawks.

But next season, this situation will change.

Mike D'Antoni's seven-second offense can be fast but not chaotic because he has a very clear controller in the fast break.

This is the most obvious difference between him and old Nelson.

The mad scientist's fast break is more like a complete chaos. Anyone can advance and anyone can hold the ball. They run faster than the Suns in the fast break. They believe that no move is better than a move.

In Mike D'Antoni's fast break, everyone runs and pulls in an orderly manner around the main point guard.

In the Suns, the main point guard is Nash.

In the Knicks, the main point guard is Jeremy Lin.

In the Rockets, the main point guard is Harden.

In Atlanta, the main point guard can only be Roger.

Paul Pierce doesn't have Roger's excellent passing vision, Scott Pippen is no longer a threat with the ball and can't run fast. Michael Redd is a scorer, not a combo guard.

Only Roger has the combination of ball threat, speed and passing vision.

The only difficulty was that Roger had never been a controller before, so he had to get used to the role.

In previous fast break counterattacks, the Hawks actually relied on instinct.

But this year the team needs to take the initiative to speed up and look for counterattack opportunities. Instinct alone is not enough.

Roger needs to watch and practice more this summer.

This is a new system for everyone on the Hawks, but as the point guard, Roger obviously has much more to do than others.

Considering that the Hawks still have a pretty good defense and excellent positional warfare capabilities, Roger does not have to play at the level of Nash to lead the team to victory.

But at least it can't be too bad.

If the seven-second offense doesn't work and the Hawks can't raise the ceiling of their offensive efficiency, all their efforts this summer will be in vain.

Once again, Roger was the key to the Eagles' success or failure.

As the training progressed, Roger finally experienced the joy of being the GOAT.

Because he found that when a person always has control of the ball, it is very easy to brush the statistics!
Don’t worry about whether we can win next season or not, don’t worry about whether the ball was passed at the last moment, all you have to do is think about whether my stats are good or not!

Oh yes, the plus-minus value of the point guard in D'Antoni's system is also very high!

It's simply impeccable!

No wonder everyone likes to be the ball-handling core, this style of play is enough to cover up all the incompetence of a player.

This kind of daily routine of watching videos and then practicing continued for a while. During this period, because of the Warriors' acquisition turmoil, TNT TV station made a program to rate the owners of each team.

When it was the Atlanta Hawks' turn, Charles Barkley gave them 0 points without hesitation.

It's not just because of the disappointment in letting Ben go, but also because of the internal fighting within the Hawks' shareholder team.

"Who doesn't know the value of Ben Wallace? Even a fool knows how important a best defensive player is.

And those shareholders are multi-millionaires, and fools can't become multi-millionaires. Let us tell you the truth, the reason they let Ben Wallace go was to make Steve Belkin lose his equity. If everyone agreed to renew the contract and keep Ben, Belkin would not leave.

In order to better control the team, several other shareholders did not hesitate to use this method to force Steve to leave. Therefore, it was not because the Eagles management did not know the value of Ben Wallace, all of this was the result of palace fighting.

And I can predict that this struggle is not over yet. If the Eagles' shareholders team hurt the team again for the sake of palace fighting this season, Roger may turn around and leave immediately!

Why did I give them 0 points? Because the production team told me not to give negative points! "

Although Sir Flying Pig has been a funny character since he started working in television, many of the things he says are actually true.

The palace fighting among shareholder teams is sometimes even to the point of sacrificing the team to achieve their goals.

Later, when Jeanie Buss and Jim Buss were competing for the Lakers, they were willing to hurt the Lakers themselves in order to get rid of each other.

For example, even a fool knows that the Lakers' second F4 lineup is not suitable for running and gunning, and even basketball idiots know that Gasol and Kobe were too old to run at that time. Howard had just taken out a 13-centimeter-long piece of tissue from his back, and he was already seriously injured and couldn't run either.

But why did Jim Buss insist on using D'Antoni to coach? Is it because he is worse than a fool?

No, he just wanted to simply replace Phil Jackson because the Zen Master was Jenny's man.

It doesn’t matter if the new head coach is not suitable. The most important thing is to replace Phil Jackson.

For example, any fool knows that Luol Deng in 2016 is not worth 4 million for four years, and Jim Buss certainly knows that too.

But knowing that he was destined to step down, he still used this kind of crappy contract to disgust Jeanie Buss, who was about to take over, and create difficulties for her.

In fact, Luol Deng's contract has been a problem for the Lakers until 2022, seriously affecting the Lakers' reinforcement.

Both of these things hurt the team, but Jim Buss didn't do things that hurt the team because he had no IQ.

Sometimes they are not stupid, they just do stupid things on purpose to achieve their goals.

After the show was broadcast, Michael Gillen boycotted it: "I respect Charles, but I never knew he was a mean person who liked to make random assumptions about others. Everything we do is to make the team better! You think we deliberately let Ben go in order to force Steve to leave? You must provide evidence!"

No one cares what Michael Gillen says anymore. The Hawks' ownership group has long lost the trust of the fans.

Even Jeff Hornacek was a little distrustful of them.

One afternoon in mid-September, when Roger was doing counterattack training with his trainer to simulate a fast break scenario, Jeff Hornacek walked into the training hall with his daughter Abby.

After surgery and recovery, Death Ray is now able to walk around wearing protective gear, but it will take a long time before he can play in a game.

Considering his age of 38, the recovery time may be longer than doctors predict.

However, the Eagles have enough depth to wait for his return, and now all he has to do is be patient. Hornacek can't play yet, but he hasn't separated himself from the team.

He has been working with the coaching staff during this period. As a player with good basketball IQ, Lenny Wilkens believes that Ray Gun has the potential to become a coach in the future.

The coaching staff was supposed to rest this afternoon, but Abby insisted on giving Roger a cake she had made herself, so Hornacek brought his daughter over.

Since it was the off-season, Roger couldn’t resist cake and cream.

He took the cake from Abby and touched her head: "Is it a good day worth celebrating?"

"No," Abby smiled happily, "I just wanted you to have a taste."

Roger sat down to eat cake, and Hornacek chatted with Roger: "I thought you would disappear for a while."

"why?"

"The whole world knows that you broke up with the Brazilian model. This is probably the most publicized one, right?"

Hornacek is right. Because Gisele Bundchen is so famous, this breakup has been on the headlines of entertainment newspapers for a week.

Some people say it was because Roger cheated.

Some say that Bundchen was unable to meet Roger's excessive demands.

There are even more outrageous claims that Roger and Pierce had an improper relationship, because at Roger's birthday party a few months ago, everyone went home and only Pierce stayed at Roger's house.

How should Roger tell the reporters that Pierce was simply a poor drinker and vomited so hard that it clogged his sink?

Hornacek also wanted to know the truth behind the breakup, and the truth was surprisingly simple: "She wanted to marry me and have kids, and I didn't think I was ready. I was only 26 and she was only 21. What was the rush?"

"Roger, do you know that in this part of the United States, having a child at your age is considered old age?"

Roger was stunned for a moment. Considering that there were a lot of single mothers aged 15 or 16 in the black neighborhoods, this statement was really reasonable.

Abby Hornacek on the side was even happier. It seemed that Roger and Gisele Bundchen’s breakup was real, and the cake was not made in vain!

"To be honest, I originally thought you would marry her. It's really hard to imagine what your wife will be like in the future."

“No one can predict the future Jeff, so I put a spring in my step every morning by throwing away all of yesterday.”

"Can't God predict the future? That means you don't know whether you will still be here? There have been too many rumors about your transfer recently. We all know that Charles hit the sore spot of those bastards on the show. So are those rumors true, Roger? You should know that the only reason I stayed is because of you." Hornacek stated the real purpose of this trip.

Who is Roger? The most commercially valuable and powerful player in the league.

Therefore, any news about Roger may be deliberately created by Roger's team, and it is a way for Roger to express his ideas.

So did the news about Roger's transfer come from Roger's team?
Jeff Hornacek recovered hard and trained diligently just to make up for that two-minute promise.

So without Roger, everything he did would be meaningless.

Roger ate the last bite of cake and rubbed his belly: "I will not leave this season. You have your commitment to fulfill, and I have mine to fulfill."

"What about next season?"

"I said, no one can predict the future, just like you can't predict who your daughter will marry in the future. Thank you Abby, the cake is delicious."

"I can do it for you every day!"

"Really? That's great."

Hornacek, who was standing by, shed tears. He didn't even eat a single bite of the cake his daughter made.

He shook his head and returned to business.

Just now Roger did not give a clear answer that he would stay next season, but in fact this is also an answer.

But at least this season Hornacek can rest assured that his efforts will not be in vain, and he can burn for a great cause in his last season.

As for next year? It was none of his business where Roger would go. All he could do was wish him the best.

But speaking of it, it will definitely be an earthquake-like summer.

Time flies. On the media day of the new season in October, Stephen Jackson, Tyronn Lue and Dream all held up their Hawks jerseys and made their first public appearance.

Because of the existence of Dream, this year's media day was extremely popular.

Don’t worry about what Dream’s statistics were last season. After all, his fame is here, enough to attract countless media to the scene.

On the media day, reporters naturally did not forget to ask Roger a question about Kidd: "Jason thinks he can break the dominance of the Hawks after joining the Nets. What do you think of his remarks?"

"Oh you know, Jason is a player who impressed me." When Roger said this, the reporters thought Roger was politely praising Kidd.

His last sentence made Dream laugh: "I always thought Gary Payton's shooting was bad enough, but Jason's is not as accurate as his. No wonder that guy couldn't beat Gary in a one-on-one when he was a kid. Jason's shooting is really impressive. You can tell him that the Nets won't win a game next season. This is not the WNBA, he can't beat anyone."

"You mean the Nets can't win any games at Philips Arena next season?"

"No, I mean, they can't win any games against the Eagles in their own home court, the Continental Airlines Center!"

Olajuwon looked at Roger who was uttering harsh words beside him and felt a little dreamy.

In 1994 and 1995, they battled in the finals.

In 2001, he and Roger actually attended the pre-season press conference of the same team.

The world has really changed so much.

But the changes in the world are not only great, they are also sudden.

Just when all the media and players thought that each team's lineup had stabilized and entered the preparation state for the new season, the Detroit Pistons made two buzzer-beating trades.

They traded Jerry Stackhouse, Brian Cardinal and Ratko Varda to the Washington Wizards for Hubert Davis, Bobby Simmons and Richard Hamilton, who is entering his third year!

Detroit fans cheered, they finally got rid of Jerry Stackhouse, the plague who averaged 29 points per game.

It seems that the arrival of Ben Wallace, the defensive core who already has a ring on his hand, has allowed the Pistons to start building a winning lineup earlier than in history.

But this operation did not surprise Roger. What surprised Roger was the next operation.

After getting Hamilton, the Pistons sent this year's ninth pick Rodney White and next year's first-round pick to the Chicago Bulls for Ron Artest.

Ron Artest and Ben Wallace are actually on the same team. The world has really changed a lot.

There will definitely be a strong spark of love between the two.

It seems that the Nets are not the only opponent in the Eastern Conference this year.

Well, that's not what Roger really cares about.

After the deal, Roger found Pierce and made a bet with him.

"Let's make a bet on who will break his ribs first in preseason training camp, Ron or Ben."

(End of this chapter)