On the way back, Wallace complained to Leon, who he felt was too hasty in his answer.

"You could say we're bullish on Michael Reid and then pick up a couple of other players along the way, that's a normal response, but you add a sentence of 'He's the best player in this camp,' oh gosh, his prediction is in the second round, second round my good buddy. Do you think the guy in front of you will die the night before the draft? Wallace didn't mean to blame when he complained, after all, he didn't talk to Leon before the interview, and this was his first time being interviewed, and he was already doing quite well.

In O'Brien's words, it's remarkable that he doesn't get his name and gender wrong.

Leon just smiled and didn't speak, and he didn't refute, because he didn't have a good reason to convince the Celtics' scouting team to think that Michael Reed was the best player in the rookie class, and the reason why he said that in the interview was purely from his own intuition.

As Auerbach said, Leon decided to trust his instincts when it came to judging the strengths and weaknesses of the players, because the data was not reliable enough for the time being, let alone experience, and he only had that intuitive advantage, just like Michael Carter Williams in Auerbach's training camp, he just felt that this guy was the best in the training camp.

"Michael Reid, I know him, if he had run in 1999, he would probably have been drafted in the top 10 in the first round, but this year, you look at his declining stats year on year, and his physical measurements, it's mediocre, and I really can't think of any reason why he should be drafted in the first round, let alone the best player." Vogel looked at the scouting report on Reed and commented.

In 1999, Reed led Ohio to the Final Four, losing to Richard Hamilton's University of Connecticut.

However, he did not run for the election that year, but played for another year, and as a result, the team failed to regain the glory of 1999, and his personal data also declined year by year, which made his rating in scouting drop sharply, directly from the first round of prediction to the middle of the second round.

And so far, no team has shown a particularly significant interest in Reed, and Reed's performance on the first day of rookie camp can only be described as mediocre, without showing any special brilliance to change the scouts' perception of him.

Only Leon paid special attention to Reed, who carefully watched Reed's mid-range and three-point testing drills, and came to only one conclusion: the guy's shooting was really inconsistent.

Leon's criterion is not the number of hits, nor the shooting position, nor does he know what the standard shooting position is, Leon focuses on the distribution of the final landing point of each shot on the basket.

If you open Leon's notebook, you will see a strange picture on page six.

In the center of the note page is a standard circle, which Leon drew by hand, and on top of this larger circle there are many smaller circles, the faces of which are pressed against the sides of the larger circle.

At the same time, the great circle is divided into four parts by two straight lines perpendicular to each other, so that the small circles are distributed in four quadrants.

This page is Leon's shot distribution for Michael Reed, and these small circles are the approximate locations where Leon observed through his superior eyesight that Reed missed the shot and the basketball hit the basket.

From this diagram, Leon can see that these small circles are distributed in all four quadrants, and the distribution is very irregular. Throughout the afternoon, Reed missed more than 30 balls, although the sample size is far from enough, but from these shooting distributions, Leon can feel that Reed's shooting adjustment ability should not be strong, a really good shooter, even if he can't shoot, he should hit the basket in the same place.

However, Leon still has reason to believe that Michael Reid will be the best player and will be the best pitcher.

No matter how much others complained, Leon just sat in the car and silently perfected the picture on page six. He had the urge to use the distribution function to describe the distribution of Reed's shooting points, but he stopped thinking about the fact that the shot was not a random event, and that it was impossible to predict complex events with a distribution function.

……………………

The first day of the camp was spent like this, scouting was a great challenge for Leon, but it was also a great pleasure, and although it would be difficult to establish himself here, he felt fulfilled and excited, especially when he found that he could get in touch with his beloved numbers again.

This may not have been expected by Auerbach, who only valued Leon's intuition and observation, but did not expect that this guy had a much more ambitious goal - to describe and predict the world of sports with numbers.

Of course, Leon didn't think that far ahead at this time, and the reason why he fiddled with the numbers was actually very simple - he had too little experience in basketball, and he could only use these previous data to reconstruct what happened on the basketball court.

Back at the hotel, Leon returned to work, this time with not only the data, but also the footage.

Leon's anti-recording camera shot the whole day when he went to the training camp, filming everything on the field, in order to return to the hotel for Vogel to edit, analyze, and discover more valuable content.

Video analysis is a very important daily work in the NBA, and each team will set up a video analyst position, so that they can use their sharp eyes to find all kinds of problems in games and training, and show them to coaches and players with intuitive images.

The five members of the coaching team watched the video of the training camp edited by Vogel in Vogel's room, two of them sat on the sofa, two sat on the bed, and one sat on the ground, all staring directly at the TV screen, and those who didn't know would think that the five people were watching a small movie.

Vogel focused on editing the training process of several of Celtic's favorite players, including Pulzbilla, Samaki, Moiso, Margloyle, and of course, in the end, Vogel added Michael Reid.

Vogel played the video while putting some slow motion to explain, and at the end, everyone's eyes hurt a little.

"Oh my god, this Michael Reed shot is like throwing, my eyes hurt a little bit, and now it hurts even more." Chris Wallace was already rubbing his eyes and barking when he saw the Michael Reid part.

However, Pitino said: "This Reid does have some potential, although various factors before the draft are not in his favor, but some of the talent he shows is still amazing, especially his ball sense, which is quite unique." But his shooting is really a big problem, not stable enough, and his shooting posture is also very non-standard, I don't know why Leon are you optimistic about this guy? ”

This is the first time that Pitino really started a basketball exchange with Leon, before he had always had opinions about him, and it was difficult everywhere, but after three days of getting along, he found that Leon was a good employee, first of all, he worked hard, hard, responsible, and a lot of the team's work was done by him who was physically strong; Secondly, he does have something unique in basketball, at least his notebook is incomprehensible to anyone; In the end, Pitino was also tired and didn't want to do any more useless fights, so since he was asked to be a scout, then do it.

Leon got up from the ground and said to Vogel, "Play the video back, play it back, okay, watch this one." ”

The video is played back to the offensive training with the ball, which is the part of the test of the player's attack with the ball in front of the basket.

Leon then asked Vogel to replay it a few more times, watching several parts of the ball-handling drill, and then Leon asked everyone, "Didn't you find anything?" ”

Wallace looked confused, Vogel thoughtfully, O'Brien shook his head, and Pitino looked up at the ceiling, and everyone was silent.

Leon didn't sell off, he said: "Although Michael Reed shoots with his left hand, he's a right-hander in the out-and-out way!" ”

"Right-handed?" Vogel couldn't help but say that he had no idea that Michael Reed, the left-handed player who shoots, would be right-handed.

"Yes, Reed is a right-hander, and although he shoots with his left hand, he is completely right-handed based on his other game habits, which can be seen in some of the details of his movements. For example, when he faces his opponent with the ball, he habitually protects the ball with his right hand and stretches his right foot to test it. Leon said, pointing to a video footage.

Most NBA players are right-handed, especially guards, and you can barely tell if he's left-handed or right-handed just by looking at the dribble.

Only shooting is the best and most intuitive way to tell whether a player is left-handed or right-handed.

However, there are also some players who have to shoot with their non-dominant hands, and the hardships and efforts to make a comeback are unimaginable to ordinary players.

Michael Reed is one of them.

That's one of the reasons why Leon believes Reed can be the best player he can be, and while it's not a big reason, it gives Leon a hunch that this is a player who can change his fortune with hard work.

Leon understands how important hard work can be in a rookie class that doesn't have too much talent.