After leaving Washington, Leon took a week's leave to return to Boston, where he accompanied Ayatollah Khomeinith on a trip to Marshfield to take care of Auerbach's children's camp. The old man was a little overwhelmed right now, and it was a bit of a struggle for him to fly back and forth from Washington to Boston and take a car to Marshfield to watch a group of energetic stinky imps teach them to play basketball.

Now that the Auerbach training camp has been handed over to Leon to be in charge, the scale of the training camp has expanded a lot compared to last year, Leon is an energetic guy, he will no longer just invite a few Celtics veteran players to come over and take the children, in order to organize this training camp, he hired Don Grimes, the retired head coach of the Medway High School basketball team, to be the head coach of the training camp.

Compared with those players or coaches who have retired from professional teams, Grimes, who has been a high school coach, is obviously more suitable to serve as a mentor for those teenagers, his training ideas are more basic and detailed, and it is easier to get along with the children.

Another coach is Daniel Myers, who has coached Auerbach since the 80s, but Leon brought him back last year after he was absent from camp due to family reasons. Myers previously worked as an assistant to Coach Thompson at Georgetown University, where he trained centers such as Ewing, Mourning, and Mutombo.

Then there are people like Daniel Webster Academy's basketball coach, Donald Morris, head coach Floyd Butler of the State High School Championship School from Philadelphia, and Arik Taylor, a strength and conditioning coach at Barnesbout High School, among others. These people are well-known figures in the Massachusetts basketball community, and in the course of a year, Auerbach spent a lot of energy introducing Leon to know and contact them, of course, not only to let them coach to the training camp, but to give Leon more learning opportunities, and at the same time let Leon inherit the bishop's connections in the Massachusetts basketball community.

For Auerbach, Auerbach is a basketball party, a training camp that has been abandoned as he gets older and his basketball career is dying, but it has flourished again because of Leon's arrival. This year, twice as many young players signed up for the camp as last year, and Khomeenez made a big deal in terms of publicity, she set up an online admissions homepage for the Auerbach training camp, and officially started online publicity and registration, which greatly increased the number of people who signed up, and finally had to screen some of them to qualify.

The camp will still be held in the old stadium in Marshfield, but Leon has discussed with Auerbach that starting next year he will move the camp to Smithfield, closer to Providence, to borrow Bryant's new training facility. Not only will there be new venues, but it will also be closer to places like Fall River, Springfield, Hartford, etc., and the transportation will be more convenient, which will attract more children to the camp.

Everything is going in a good direction, just like the Celtics. Over the course of a week, Leon spent a lot of time applying the scouting and team management knowledge he learned from the Celtics, such as building a player profile for each of the young players, including their basic stats, training camp performance, and future development evaluations. Although the vast majority of people were rated as "not going to go professional", his accurate, simple and original comments still left a deep impression on the coaches.

Of course, there are still children who are highly rated, such as Michael Carter Williams last year, this time he went to great lengths from Hamilton to attend the training camp, compared to last year he has grown a lot taller, more proficient in football, and the older children in the training camp are no longer his opponents at all, and his growth rate is amazing.

Of course, none of this is what Leon is here to focus on, his real intention, or mission, is to come to training camp and really start learning basketball tactics.

During his nearly year-long scouting stint time, Auerbach forbade Leon to learn any tactics, did not allow him to read basketball tactics textbooks, did not allow him to steal tactical drills during team training, did not allow him to watch videos to explore tactical routines, and did not allow him to ask himself questions about tactics.

Leon once asked Auerbach this question, and Auerbach gave him only one answer, "I don't want you to become a slave to tactics." ”

From knowing Leon from the beginning, and repeating Pitino's tactical speech verbatim in his office in the training gym, Auerbach knew that the guy was likely to be a tactical genius. His memory and way of thinking give him the ability to deduce, calculate, and have a spatial imagination, which is very important for a basketball tactician.

However, tactics are only part of the team's head coach's job, and Auerbach is afraid that Leon will become a tactical obsessive obsessed with tactical drills, and neglect player relationship handling, team building and player discovery and training.

For example, Doug Collins, the head coach of the Bulls in the 80s, one of the major characteristics of coaching is to stand on the sidelines and shout tactics, and when the players are attacking on the court, they have to listen to what tactics the coach shouts, and then think about how to run this tactic, and finally make offensive choices.

Auerbach said of the coaches: "If you look at the coaches who won championships, are any of them known for their tactics? Phil Jackson? Triangle offense? You go and ask Dennis Rodman what exactly is a triangle offense, give the ball to Jordan! And that thing was just old Winter's trick. Adelman, I heard that he was in Princeton at the King, and I don't think he was playing. Jerry Sloan, what UCLA system does he rely on to live in Salt Lake City all his life, and he can't win a championship when Jordan retires. It's Popovich's ghost boy who won the championship with the twin towers! You see, like Pat Riley, Jack Ramsay, KC, and me, what tactics are you known for? No, none! Remember, tactics are for the team, for victory, don't be a slave to tactics. When you become a slave to tactics, you may win some false fame, but you will not win the championship. ”

Leon was such a smart man that Auerbach only had to say it once to remember it, so the biggest takeaway from the year was his eyes and deep contact with the basketball circle, and his understanding of the rules of the game. When the time comes, it's time to start learning basketball tactics, and everything falls into place.

In the bootcamp, Leon's main teacher was Daniel Myers. Outwardly, Daniel Michael, like his one-time partner John Thompson, doesn't look like a basketball coach at all, but like a wrestler, with a strong figure like a tin bucket.

Miles wasn't known for his tactics in basketball circles, and he was known for his strict team discipline and iron-blooded defense while coaching at Springbrook High School in Maryland. Of course, like John Thompson, he is also good at training centers.

Teaching Leon tactics was a painful affair for Miles, as he soon discovered that Leon was too capable of drawing inferences. For example, after he taught Leon the three basic ways of blocking, Leon quickly summed up nine derivative styles of play based on his experience watching the game. For example, in the tactical routine of the center's low-post and weak-side cooperation, Myers pointed out two key points - one is the ability of the low-post attacker to attract the pack, and the other is the conversion speed of the strong and weak side, and Leon quickly said that he found several other key points - the depth of the low post, the shooting ability of the strong-side players and the moderation of the distance between the players.

After teaching Leon the basic basketball tactics for three days, Myers chose to give up, because in the end he couldn't answer Leon's questions, and he also taught those basic tactical routines and principles that he could teach.

When Leon approached Grimes and asked him for more guidance, Grimes said, "There's nothing you can learn here, we're teaching some of the most basic tactics and principles." Mr. Auerbach called me before he came, and let me tell you not to touch those complicated, dizzying tactics, and he told you to digest the fundamentals. He said that when you get the basics in your hands, the tactics on paper are just tools to play them. So...... We really don't have anything to teach, and we're better suited to teach those kids. ”

Leon heard Grimes' words and began to summarize in his mind the basic principles of tactics he had learned, he thought about it all day, summed up what he had learned in three days, and then wrote a word in his notebook: space.

The ultimate purpose of all offensive tactics is to create space for players to shoot, on the contrary, the purpose of all defensive strategies is naturally to block the space for the opponent to shoot, so space is the source code and core of all tactical operations, starting from this word, Leon will build his own tactical pyramid.