On January 3, 2003, after a two-day break, the Boston Celtics hosted their first opponent of the new year, the Portland Trail Blazers, the sons of Oregon from the Northwest Coast.

During these two days, Leon was not idle, first on the afternoon of January 1, he held an urgent press conference in the press room of the North Shore Gardens to explain to the media about his gambling and imprisonment.

The most difficult part of this matter is that the content of the report is true, Leon has indeed been to the casino many times, and he has also been in prison, so he cannot accuse the report of false and defamatory, but can only clarify the truth as much as possible and let the public know the real situation. Before things ferment, preemptively strike and take the lead in forming a defense mechanism in the public mind. People are always like this, it is easier to forgive when you see an apology first and then understand your mistakes than when you know your mistakes and then see your mistakes.

At the press conference, Leon also showed off his acting skills, admitting with great sincerity that he had made some mistakes in the past, but now he has recognized these mistakes and swept them away from his body, and from now on he is a good coach who is positive and decent and dedicated to the basketball career. At the press conference, his statement was echoed by Danny Angie, who cited the process of meeting Leon in Marsfield and watching him step by step to where he is today, saying that "a person who has been punished for the mistakes he has made cannot erase the merits he has made today." ”

It can be said that at the critical moment, Anji was still very reliable, withstood the pressure, and supported Leon. Even if he has the idea of taking Leon and replacing him with his favorite coach, he will never allow the team's coach to be slandered by others and leave the team, not to mention that the current Celtic momentum is good, and Angie has no reason not to support Leon.

On January 2nd. The whole Celtics team conducted a media open training session, and the entire training process of the Celtics was interviewed and filmed by reporters on the first training day of the new year, of course, Leon did not show his Hawkeye training system, and today was mainly physical training. Several Celtic players were interviewed after training, including Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker. PJ Brown, who is newly traded, and others, have all talked about their views on head coach Leon, showing that Leon is indeed a good coach who follows the law, and although he occasionally scares people with his fists, he has never clashed with a player.

After the afternoon of the 2nd, Leon also drove to participate in the "Care for Autistic Children" activity at the Boston Welfare Institute, where he spent two hours with those children with autism, reading to them, and trying to communicate with them. Everything, everything. It's all sending a signal to people that this is a normal, law-abiding, even caring person.

On Jan. 3, the day of the game, the real bomb fell, and the well-known New York newspaper The New Yorker published a long feature on the topic of "Crime in the NBA", which was not primarily aimed at Fox Leon, but began with the 1977 Washington boxing Tomjanovich, telling the story of the NBA's 60-year history. Drugs that grew up with the pitch, violence. Erotic-erotic crimes. At the end of this report, there is a mention of the current Portland Trail Blazers, who are now known as the Jail-blazers because this team is simply a concentration camp for problem players, Stadamyre Jr., Darius Myers. Randolph, Patterson, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, drugs, sexual assault. These things ruined the reputation of the pioneers.

Then, at the end of the end, the report "inadvertently" mentioned Celtics' new head coach Fox Leon, noting that he was being harassed by gambling and jail messages. It was a bombshell, and it was released at the right time, just in time for the Portland Trail Blazers' visit to Boston. One can imagine how the foul-tongued commentators would have linked Jailblazers and Jailcoach between the two teams to amplify the incident across the United States.

Leon really pinched a cold sweat when he saw this report on the 3rd, but fortunately he contacted Woj on the phone on the 1st, and Woj reminded Leon to prepare early and strike preemptively, and make a move before the real killer is revealed to minimize the damage. At the same time, Woj also promised Leon that he would soon concoct a feature to account Leon's experience of becoming a head coach, and he would interview Auerbach to restore a real Leon from the cardinal.

Even so, on the night of the January 3rd game, there were some fans in the arena holding up the placard "Jailblazers VS Jailcoach", Leon could only clench his fists and not see it, he had to stay calm, he told himself that there is only one best way to survive these crises, and that is victory, victory is the eternal strongest law of the professional arena, and if you master it, you will control everything.

The Portland Trail Blazers are not an easy team to play against, though, and despite their internal disarray, they must admit that they are a team full of talent, especially with Rasheed Wallace, Bunch Wells, Scott Pippen and Dale Davis at the front line, which in 2000 relied on wheel battles to wear the Lakers to the final quarter of Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. This year, the Trail Blazers' former interior center Sabonis also returned to the team, in short, the Trail Blazers are quite strong in terms of book strength, and they seem to be quite restrained by the Celtics, because the Celtics' interior line is weak, and the front line suffers in strength and speed.

Sure enough, the game entered the Trail Blazers rhythm in the first quarter, and Trail Blazers head coach Cheeks put on a tall, fast lineup of no point guard and no center like Antonio Daniels, Bunch Wells, Scott Pippen, Rasheed Wallace plus Dale Davis. The real offensive master of this lineup is Scott Pippen, because Damon Stoudayre's style of play is completely unfavored by Maurice Cheeks, and the relationship between the two is also very bad, so Cheeks simply put Antonio Daniels on the back line and let Pippen play as a playmaker. With Sabonis on the bench as the center of the organization, it can be said that the organization does not need a defender at all.

Morris Cheeks used to be a legendary guard for the 76ers, and followed Dr. J through the 76ers' glorious 80s, so he seems to be very classical in his coaching style, dislikes three-pointers, values confrontation, values positional offense, and attaches importance to interior offense. Perhaps spurred on by the recent comments of "Jailblazers", the Trail Blazers played unusually ferocious in the first quarter, with Wells, Wallace and Dale Davis hitting the interior in succession, while Leon did not put PJ Brown in the starter, but continued to start Blunt.

As a result, the "weak" Blunt was hit by the fierce Trail Blazers front, and the Celtics trailed the Trail Blazers by 11 points at 37:26 in the first quarter, digging a big hole for themselves. At the break in the first quarter, PJ Brown said to Leon: "Let me go coach, I'm here to play, not to sit on the bench." ”

But Leon shook his head and motioned for Brown to sit on the bench for a while and take a hard look at how the Celtics team was going and get acquainted with it. This made PJ Brown angry, he is no longer a rookie who has just entered the league, no matter which team he is traded to, he is a good player who can immediately play and plug and play, but on his Boston debut, he was pressed to the bench by the coach and watched the team fall behind by the score.

"Maybe it should be PJ on, he's going to be a big help to the inside." Assistant coach Dave Cowens reminded Leon, who shook his head, saying, "We need a little bit of anger power." ”

The power of anger, this feeling Leon is very aware of now, he is very angry, because the recent series of attacks against him have come silently, hidden in the needle, seemingly a simple report, a few simple words, but can give people lethal force. Leon was already secretly determined in his heart that he wanted to keep the Celtics winning, and let the person who framed him finally lose his golden job, if that person was Andy Miller.

However, for now, he needs to focus on the game again, because of the bad things in the past two days, he did not prepare well for this game, resulting in Celtic digging a big hole to fill in from the beginning. He didn't play PJ-Brown not only because of the so-called "power of anger", but also because he hadn't thought about how to play Brown's role.

At the end of the first half, the Celtics trailed the Trail Blazers by 12 points at 49-61, and the Celtics needed fresh forces in the first half of a bad new year. (To be continued.) )