The NBA is always divided into two seasons, with November to June being a season of intense competition, with teams fighting for at least 82 games with the same goal, and players sweating and tearing on the court, all of which come to an abrupt end in mid-June. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info knives and guns into the warehouse, horses put Nanshan, those players who were originally still alive and die began to fish, vacation, vacation, the whole league from the season of conquest into the season of long rough.

Then for the NBA players, it is okay to relax or find a place to cheer themselves up, but for the management staff of the NBA team, the long grass season is their battle season, and they are fighting a war without gunpowder. The outcome of this war will often have a huge impact on the trend of the entire league next season.

The first battle of the war will start on June 28, the 2007 NBA Draft will be held in the old Madison Square Square in New York, about two days before the start of the draft, the managers and staff of each team slowly gathered in New York to begin the final preparations for the draft two days later.

This is the second time that defending champion Spurs manager Buford has led the team to New York, and although they are the defending champions, although they only have a back-to-back pick, Buford has always believed that every draft pick in his hands must be cherished, even if it is a second-round pick - he once used the No. 57 pick to take Manu Ginobili, and now he has grown into one of the best scoring guards in the league, a ruthless bench killer.

Buford remembers that they could have used the No. 40 pick to get Ginobili early to avoid long nights. At that time, they made a small trade with the Mavericks and got the No. 40 pick from the Mavericks. Still, Buford took the plunge and took the No. 40 pick for Kirisek and traded him for a 2004 draft pick. In the end, he won Ginobili with 57.

But now, Buford definitely doesn't dare to take that risk again, and in 2001 they were almost kidnapped by the Boston Celtics Tony Parker, for which the Spurs had to pay Steve Kerr. Thankfully, they beat the Celtics in the 2003 Finals, otherwise the Spurs' defeat would have been really down to this petty robbery. And from the beginning of this robbery deal, Buford felt that the guy named Fox Leon was simply a ghostly-stirring stick.

Every year at the draft conference, starting from the training camp, he has to stir up a series of rumors, and seven of the ten messages in the entire NBA are related to this guy's behind-the-scenes manipulation, true and false. And he often does things that hurt others and himself, the Celtics can't get any good, and other teams don't want to be good. It has the style of the red-headed Auerbach back then.

And then he really led the Celtics to a resurgence and won three consecutive championships, including the Spurs at the top of their game in '05. Thankfully, he retired in '06, the year Auerbach died, and the Spurs won the 2007 championship. Buford has already begun to think about repairing the bridge for the Spurs to defend their title, and as a result, this guy has made a comeback and has come to the Phoenix Suns, the Spurs' sworn rivals in the playoffs in recent years.

What a headache! At the hotel in New York, Buford felt a lot of headaches, not only because of Fox Leon's comeback, but also because he had been informed yesterday that the Phoenix Suns were interested in using the 24th pick to pick Split to supplement the team's No. 5 spot in the draft. For Split, Buford has long been concerned, because he is Ginobili's teammate in Argentina, and in fact, this group of Argentine players Buford is quite fond of it.

But Fox Leon didn't know where to get the news again, learned that the Spurs wanted Split, and then released the news that they wanted to pick Split. It's all too familiar for Buford, who made a compromise in 2001 and made a trade with the Celtics. In the end, his compromise was worth it, and in 2007 Tony Parker became the Finals MVP, the first foreign MVP in NBA history.

Is that Split worth the Buford do? It depends on Split's value and what the Phoenix Suns want.

Buford didn't sit still, on the one hand, he was trying to establish contact with Fox Leon, sending him a text message to find out; On the one hand, he is communicating with Split's agent, because Split still has a contract and is not going to be able to play in the NBA if he chooses. If Split is reluctant to go to the Suns, then Leon will also be useless in choosing Split. Then Buford was not in a hurry, because in his plan, Split was originally prepared for the future; In the end, Buford is designing Plan B, and once Split is really taken by the Suns, then he will have to choose an alternative.

Thus Boufort was busy, and Fox-Leon never heard back, and Buford decided to give Leon a phone call after much thought, though he hated to call Leon, because he could often silence you on the phone and give you no room to maneuver. This is very weak for negotiations.

However, when Buford was about to make a call, his phone rang, and he received a text reply from Leon, and quickly opened it to see, "We will take Split in a higher pick, but we want Marc Gasol and Brent Barry more." ”

It's Fox Leon's text message, the content is simple and straightforward, and it's like treating players like pigs on the trade market, but this is the NBA, they are heroes on the court, and they are commodities in the eyes of team managers, especially ordinary players.

Seeing this text, Buford was a little relieved, sending Brent Barry was not an unacceptable bargaining chip, and the veteran was not in the team's future plans in the first place. He won the championship with the team this year, which is already considered a complete merit, and in this case, it doesn't matter if he is sent to the sun. If it's really like the rumors these days, the Suns want Robert Hawley, it's really troublesome, it's not that the Spurs are reluctant to Hawley, but what Hawley did to the Spurs in the playoffs, God knows if he can or go home from Phoenix.

As a result, Buford made two more phone calls to discuss with Popovich and the owner, and given the precedent of sending Kerr in 2001, the Spurs management trio didn't care about Leon's small robbery, and it didn't touch the team's core rotation.

With an idea in mind, Buford replied to Leon, and then the message was lost without reply. Buford is used to this, and Fox Leon is really in the same vein as Auerbach in some ways, and it is really the same as the mystery that has always been mysterious.

……………………

On the day of the draft on June 28, Madison Square Garden was lively again, and the playoffs here were basically not lively anyway, so they could only rely on activities like the draft to increase exposure.

Of course, no one cared about the small news that the San Antonio Spurs wanted to take Split and the Phoenix Suns wanted to cut off before the draft began. In addition to those professional managers, professional scouts, the rest of the reporters and fans are all hyping about the ownership of this year's top pick - Greg Oden or Kevin Durant.

Most people always pay too much attention to things that don't have much suspense, especially in a big show like the NBA, where the ownership of a champion can indeed change the fate of a team, or even the trend of a league for several years, such as the Spurs' acquisition of Tim Duncan in 1997, which completely changed the history of the Spurs. But in fact, these things were almost certain before they happened, everyone was just waiting for the moment when the results were announced, applauding and cheering for these ten seconds of euphoria, and then a blueprint for the next ten years, and then all to do was wait quietly.

But as a team manager, you must always focus on those inconspicuous places, and the qualitative changes accumulated by those details are the secret of a team's longevity.

Buford has always believed this, so when David Stern announced that Greg Oden had been selected by the Portland Trail Blazers as the 2007 NBA No. 1 pick after the Election Pick began, Buford only gave a symbolic ovation as a position. Ten years ago, the Spurs experienced a similar moment, but the three championships in ten years, the cost of which is only known to Buford himself.

"Good luck to the Portland Trail Blazers, but please be a little quicker about the choices ahead." Buford thought to himself that the Spurs had been very low in the draft for many years, but this year he was particularly anxious.

After that, the Seattle SuperSonics chose Kevin Durant, and the Atlanta Hawks had to regretfully take Al Horford, and when he got to the tenth pick, Buford's cell phone suddenly rang, and it was a message from someone from the Department of Information.

"Just received news from the league office that the Suns and Lakers have completed a deal for Turyaf and Barbose, as well as this year's draft picks."

"Damn, what are Fox Leons up to again!"