Recently, Andy Miller has been following the news of the Boston Celtics in the newspapers and on TV, "The Celtics lost to the Wizards, and the Stackhouse played their best performance of the season", "The Celtics defeated the Hornets away, and Joe Johnson did not play well against his old master", "The Green Army started its trip to Texas, and the first game of Dallas was defeated by the Mavericks, and Cuban avenged with one arrow", "The Spurs beat the Celtics at home, and the Green Army suffered a series of defeats", "Yao Wang battle, Chinese derby, Celtics shot down the Rockets away, Wang Zhizhi played the best performance of his career"... ……………

These are the NBA's headlines related to the Celtics' games in the last week, and the Celtics began to suffer tough battles in early '03, and their back-to-back road trips have caused some ups and downs in their form. The addition of new players not only strengthened the team, but also allowed the team's tactics to enter a new run-in period, and after a dreaded Texas triangle turn, the Celtics won three and lost three after the New Year, and the performance was not so satisfactory.

Miller is very satisfied with this, he cut out all these news pages, pasted them into his notebook, if someone opens his notebook, he will find that this season's Celtics game he has collected all the post-game news one by one, people who don't know will think that he is a fanatical Celtics diehard, after all, the most loyal teams in the United States are except for the Los Angeles Lakers, that is, the more brilliant Boston Celtics.

But Andy Miller is not a Celtics fan, in fact he is not a fan of any team, he has been in the NBA agent world since 1995, and Andy Miller is the leader of this circle, he has a keen sense of smell, strong negotiation ability and a never-ending greedy heart. Unlike established agents like David Falck, Andy Miller represents the characteristics of today's new agents - everything revolves around economics, and they don't become good friends with superstars like David Falker does. Be a part of the NBA circle. Instead, they call themselves a faction that stands as an independent force between the NBA league and the players, providing a bridge between labor and management. Of course, sometimes they also make waves for commissions.

2002 was a turning point in Andy Miller's career, with a new NBA broadcast contract signed. He smelled the arrival of a new round of super big contracts, in fact, he entered the NBA agent circle in 1995 in the summer when the salary cap rose sharply and 100 million yuan contracts emerged one after another. He broke his contract with his old club in the summer and left with a group of players to start his own sports agency this season, for which he paid a hefty price of $4.6 million, which is enough to show his ambition.

However, the Boston Celtics and their head coach became a hindrance on his mind. Since the All-Star Game in 2002, Andy Miller knew that the assistant coach of the Celtics had come out of nowhere and wanted to get Kevin Garnett and let him join the Celtics.

Garnett is Andy Miller's biggest star and Miller's cash cow, Garnett's league's largest contract is also Miller's proud work, and he has made extremely large profits from it, which can be said to be Miller's confidence and foundation for daring to spend $4.6 million to break the contract with his old club. Because he knows that Kevin Garnett is still on the rise in his career. Although he has been playing in this league for almost 8 years, she entered the league after graduating from high school and is only 26 years old this year, and has not yet reached the peak age of an interior player.

Garnett's contract expires next season for a staggering $28 million, and Miller knows next year will be another year for him to shine, even though the league's rules have changed. There's no way to sign another big contract like that, but Miller is still confident that Garnett will get another super-big contract that is one of the best in the league if he stays with the Timberwolves.

If Garnett doesn't stay with the Timberwolves, then Miller also hopes he can go to big business cities like New York, Chicago, Miami. Fully exploiting Garnett's commercial value, his unique and modern style of play has made the power forward extremely popular in the league, and his talent in fashion and aesthetics also makes him different from the traditional interior lineman and has a special appeal. Miller is also confident that he can use these characteristics to bring Garnett enough commercial contracts — if his city is open and inclusive enough.

The problem is that the team that wants to get Garnett, the Celtics, although they have the longest and illustrious basketball history in the league, is in a conservative, cold, cramped, and notorious history of discrimination - Boston, Massachusetts, a city that once avoided black players across the league, the city that once created the famous "Boston Clause" in NBA contracts - that is, black players can be specified in their contracts. When the place they were traded to was Boston, they had the option to veto the deal.

At first, Miller didn't care about it, because he knew that YY deals like this were happening every day in the league, from fans to media to management, from TV shows to paper media to people's mouths to their hearts, no one could stop anyone else's imagination, and he was all focused on preparing his new company and constantly signing new players, and he needed enough players to keep his company running in the future.

But when the 2002-2003 season was about to begin, he gradually realized that something was wrong, first the Timberwolves cut Garnett's friend Malik Ciri, which made Garnett very unhappy, and even worse, the Celtics signed Ciri; Since the start of the season, the Timberwolves have been extremely inconsistent, with no more than two wins in a row and no more than three consecutive losses throughout November and December, which means that the team is wobbling painfully in a situation of losing one game and winning one game, and winning two games and winning two games, which is perhaps worse than a rotten game, as Garnett has been through seven of these seasons.

Instead, the guy who came out of nowhere became the head coach of the Celtics, and then led the Celtics to a high streak after the start of the season, at one point occupying the top spot in the league for two weeks. Miller, Garnett's closest collaborator, has begun to hear Garnett's grievances and a hint of yearning for the Celts.

This is a very dangerous sign, Miller knows Garnett, he knows that this is a contradictory and complex guy, his personality seems to be uninhibited and wild, but the style of play on the court is very clear, he is loved by fans because of his agile and flashy style of play like a small forward, but in fact his real strength lies in his unpretentious and strong defense. He loves Minnesota and is loyal to the Timberwolves, but he also has a deep desire to betray and claim the league's highest throne. Miller and Garnett have been together for many years, and they understand that this contradiction may stem from his upbringing, or from his unreliable father, the man who provided a chromosome and then drifted away.

But Miller is not a psychologist, he doesn't want to uncover the secret of this contradiction, he just wants Garnett to stay with the Timberwolves, or he can leave, he just can't go to Boston, he can't go to the Celtics.

Finally, when the Celtics visited Minnesota, Malik Seary and Garnett attended a party together, and the conversation at the door of the hotel caused Minnesota to question Garnett, Garnett's counterattack against the media, and a series of discordant events that followed, made Miller determined to put the Celtics together and create some chaos for them.

Miller's biggest concern now is that the Celtics can really make it all the way to the Finals this season, and he still remembers that at the beginning of the season, their head coach set the goal of "getting to the Finals" that many people ridiculed, and as time went on, he felt more and more that he was not joking, let alone stupid, and he said this goal to Garnett, just like he said in the All-Star Game that he was going to use the championship as a bargaining chip.

So after learning that the Celtics were going to make a trade, he used his relationship with Popper to reveal the content of the deal to Joe Johnson, which caused a small Celtic civil unrest; Immediately afterwards, he collected black materials about the head coach of the Celtics, it turned out that he was a gangster who played fake boxing in a bar boxing ring, and he was also involved in the underworld, and he had beaten people and went to prison.

Miller designed a very clever design, first posting some news in the local local media in Boston to make the public feel as if there was such a thing, and then using the relationship to name and criticize the well-known major media pages in the United States, which suddenly aroused people's enthusiasm for gossip, and relied on reporters to turn that guy's black history upside down.

It's just that he didn't expect the opponent's reaction to be so fast, Miller, who originally wanted to play a time difference, gave the other party a chance to breathe and make amends, but Miller knew that this matter could not just be stopped, he believed that as long as the Celtics' results got better and better, more and more people would be interested in this kind of thing, what if the Celtics' results got worse and worse? That would be exactly what Miller wanted.

Miller couldn't help but feel a little smug at the thought of the Celtics' inconsistent results lately, sitting in his office at 223 South Dean Avenue in New York, waiting for one of his guests, an inconspicuous guy. So he kept thinking about things related to the Celts in his head, and he didn't think too much about the small business in front of him. (To be continued.) )