Leon finally succeeded in convincing D'Antoni, in fact, Leon's chip was very simple, that is, the championship, and it was won in D'Antoni's way. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

D'Antoni really wants to win a championship on his own, so if Leon talks to him about how to defend, how to add defensive elements while maintaining the original offense, or asks D'Antoni to change his strategy and follow him, then D'Antoni will leave the Suns no matter how many rings Leon wears on his hand.

However, Leon didn't, he didn't tout any of his own tactics, strategy, or championship experience, he said he wasn't in charge of offense, he wasn't in charge of defense, and he didn't tell D'Antoni what he was going to do from start to finish. He's just chatting with D'Antoni, talking to him about Nash, talking to Stoudeyer, talking about how he's feeling with the Suns in the years, talking about the resentment and loss he felt against the San Antonio Spurs.

The more the two talked, the closer D'Antoni felt he and Leon became, and there were some things he had never even said to his father, D'Antoni the Elder, so much so that the Sr. D'Antoni, who was sitting and listening to their conversation, said to his son: "I didn't expect you to be like this D'Antoni." ”

Leon doesn't talk much, he's a good listener, and that's something he's learned over the years he's been a coach, and sometimes a coach, listening can be more important than talking. In the past, he thought of himself as a commander who had to get his orders and ideas into the minds of every assistant coach, staff member and player, let them execute them, and then the team would win the game.

Indeed, they did it in 2004, and then they did it in 2005, when Fox Leon felt like a terrific playmaker and conductor. But in 2006, when Arenas left, Auerbach became seriously ill, and all kinds of conflicts in the team accumulated and erupted, they began to have all kinds of problems.

Not only on the field, but also off the field, there have been many accidents in the lives of the players, many of which are just minor problems, and in the past, Leon took everyone to his home to have a dinner, which may have been solved. But in 2006, everything was different, everyone wore two shining rings, everyone left an important mark on the championship struggle, they were no longer Under-Dogs, they were warriors who killed the dragon and then became the dragon.

It was during that time, during a time when Auerbach was unable to exert any influence, that Fox Leon felt helpless for the first time, no matter how many phone numbers he had in his head, no matter how many notes and records he kept in his little notebook, he could not think of any phone call that would help and comfort him, and which record would bring him back to life.

That year, they dropped to fourth place in the East in the regular season, behind the Detroit Pistons, behind the Miami Heat, behind the New Jersey Nets, and everyone thought the good days for the Boston Celtics were over.

Things took a turn for the worse in March 2006, when on the last day of 2005, Fox Leon and Ayatollah Ayatollah Khomeenez got married in Boston, and they started a family together. At that moment, Leon found that his life had changed, and although Khomeenez had always been with him in the past, his girlfriend and wife were different.

After officially starting a family, Leon's life is no longer the same as it used to be, a bachelor, knowing work every day, flying around, running around, Khomeenes is in Los Angeles, he sometimes lives in a house, sometimes in an apartment, and there is no regularity in life. But after getting married, Khomeenez moved back to Boston from Los Angeles, where she remotely directed the Los Angeles brokerage business, and then spent more time with Leon.

There will be some quarrels and conflicts between them, which rarely happened in the past, and Leon found that there are actually a lot of differences between the two. But this kind of run-in made Leon start to think that in this world, he is indeed very, very smart, but he can never make others as smart as him. He began to communicate with his wife and at the same time with the players, and he rarely threatened them with fists or gambles, but cared and understood like an elder.

He had done this in the past, but he didn't do it well enough, because he was too smart, he was too easy to understand others, so that many times, the other party would feel that it was not necessary to say anything to Leon, and he understood it anyway.

Then, the playoffs began, the Celtics entered the playoffs in fourth place, they were beaten by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round, LeBron James was semi-mature, he was so talented, so impactful, he began to have ambitions to challenge the Eastern Conference order, and there was nothing better than taking out the Boston Celtics, the defending champions.

They were then swept 0:4 by León's Celtic.

In the playoffs, the Celtics reinvigorated, and Leon abandoned the "ultimate defense" that he had been emphasizing, freeing the players from the rules he had set and letting go of the rules and regulations.

Yes, a team that has already won two championships, a group of players who have proven themselves, what else do they need to restrain and guide them? All they need is a champion's heart.

So in the semifinals, the Celtics defeated the menacing Detroit Pistons 4:2, and they won the best record in the regular season, but in the playoffs, they lost their tenacious defense and were crushed by the wolf-like Celtics.

The only obstacle was in the 2006 Eastern Conference Finals, where the Heat and the Celtics crushed their opponents in seven games, and then in the Finals, the Celtics, whose morale was at its peak, knocked down the inexperienced Mavericks. The Bostonian completed another three-peat, 40 years since 1966, when Auerbach died without regrets.

After that, Leon retired, in addition to Auerbach's death and Danny Angie's backlash, the more important reason was that he wanted to find the true meaning of being a real coach in college, not just being a shadow of Arnold Auerbach. From then on, he put away his cigar and only took a few sips on the balcony in the dead of night when he missed the stubborn old man.

Now that it's the Suns, Leon knows exactly what he's really going to do.

……………………

After spending the night at D'Antoni Sr.'s house, Leon and Mike D'Antoni drove back to Richmond early the next morning, and they were ready to leave for New York together.

"Why go to New York?" D'Antoni had already turned down the Knicks' invitation, but he didn't expect Leon to go to New York.

"New York is my home base, and there's a lot of rumours there, and I want to go there and grab some valuable intel to see if I can help the team in the free market." Leon said.

"But I think that's what Steve Kerr should do, and we'd better prepare for summer training." D'Antoni feels that the coach's involvement in the player selection process is a bit unprofessional, unless it is the kind of core player who can change the player, such as Nash, who recruited it himself.

"The main part of Steve Kerr's job is to recruit me, and the less he does anything else, the better, but he's better suited to be a coach, and this guy learned a lot from Popovich and Jackson." In Leon's view, Steve Cole is not doing his job as a manager.

"But the salary space in the team is ...... I don't think it's easy to make a big change or eat a big fish other than trading. ”

"No, no trading, why trading? If it's traded, how can I ask you to be an assistant coach, this is the squad that you single-handedly tweaked. They're brilliant, and trust me, I'm not the type of person who likes to start from scratch and fertilize and water. Boston was a special case, I worked for them for three years, and now it's different. ”

The two were chatting on the road, when Leon received a text message on his phone, Leon opened it and looked, "I seriously considered, maybe I can play in the NBA for a year, but I want to get a guarantee of playing time." “

Glancing at the sender's number, Leon knew who it was, it was Jascovis, because he had memorized the phone numbers of almost all the players in the league.