For a moment, Vogel felt like his mind was spinning, and after a while he came to his senses - about 3.06 seconds later, he was sure that his eyes were right, Claxton's three-quarters sprint was indeed 3.06 seconds, and if there was a mistake, it was only in the millisecond range.

Vogel looked at Leon, who was still staring intently at the training that was taking place on the field.

Vogel was eager to ask Leon if he had been blinded by accident or had seen his body gauge in advance, or if he could really read the time when Claxton had finished three-quarters of the time.

But he didn't open his mouth after all, and the question bothered Vogel for a long time, until he became the head coach himself, and he got the real answer from Leon - half feeling, half cloudy.

As for Leon at this point, he has put his whole heart and soul into this rookie training camp, arguably more than any scout on any team in the sports center.

It's not because he wants to pick the best player for the Celtics, and the best players certainly won't be the Celtics' turn, but because Leon is desperate to prove that the conclusions about players based on data alone can match the real performance of the players on the field.

Leon first focused on the power forward group, which boasts the rookie's most favored interior lineman, Kenyon Martin, as well as Stanford University's Mark Madsen and Mexican's Aduado Nahura.

In the initial mid-range test, these newcomers performed quite well, with no defensive pressure and basically hitting more than 7 of 10 balls, and Kenyon Martin hitting all 10 balls, although his posture was a little stiff.

"Martin's mid-range shooting percentage is beyond imagination, but it feels like he's relying on his body's balance in the air and his hands are a little stiff...... Based on his free-throw percentage, he shouldn't be so good from mid-range. Leon saw Martin hit a series of shots and felt a little incredible.

Sure enough, in the middle distance of the interference situation that followed, Martin was immediately deflated, and under the interference of the trainer's top defense, only two of the nine balls thrown from the three positions were hit, and it seemed that the previous consecutive hits were just bursting with hands.

But in the subsequent basket offense and low post defense test training, Martin showed superior strength, his basket offense was simple and rough, without too many changes, that is, he directly held the ball after the tentative step, but he could force a layup against the trainer's collision pad; As for the low post defensive training, Martin's performance is quite good, and he shows great agility and aggression in the sliding step defense training and mirror sliding step training.

"None of the people in the power forward group can score one-on-one in front of him." That's what Leon thought when he saw Martin's defensive sliding step drill.

The trainer stands on one side of the free throw arc and Martin stands on the other side, and Martin uses his feet and body to completely block the trainer who is trying to cross the free throw line at the other end of the line.

You know, the trainer doesn't have the ball in his hand.

Sure enough, Martin has a good set of skills on the defensive end, and his game statistics in his junior and senior years, the opponent's interior scoring is generally lower than that of other games. Although this specific data has not been fully calculated, the overall result should be correct. Leon thought as he flipped through the notebook in his hand.

Leon randomly selected ten teams from nearly 30 opponents in more than 60 games in two years and calculated the points scored by the teams at the forward and center positions when these ten teams played against the University of Wisconsin; The average forward and center points of the 10 teams were then calculated, and the result was a lower score than their own average against the University of Wisconsin, which has Martin.

Of course, Leon knows that such calculations are not rigorous, because the score of the opponent's power forward and center position is not necessarily directly related to Martin's defensive level, because the alignment of players on the court is not fixed, and there are often packs and misalignments.

The assistance of his team-mates, the team's tactics and on-the-spot play all affect the performance of both sides, so if you really want to understand Martin's defensive level, you still need to watch the game and see how he performs in training.

"It would be nice if there was a scoring method used by the opponent every time he scored, and the specific alignment......" Leon couldn't help but think, he still felt that the data in his hand was not enough, especially some refined data.

When he thinks about the various situations that can occur on the court, Leon is eager for the statistician to be able to describe each situation with data to make up for the gap in his basketball experience.

……………………

The afternoon training lasted for nearly three hours, and Leon sat on the sidelines and watched carefully for three hours, which can be said to have benefited a lot.

On the one hand, many of the data conclusions he analyzed were confirmed to a certain extent in training camp, such as the evaluation of Kenyon Martin's defense, the comprehensive estimate of Mike Miller, and the prediction of Jamal Crawford's shooting level.

These simple scores, blocks, and hit rates cannot be directly seen, and more advanced data calculations are needed to draw some preliminary conclusions.

But even though he has gained a lot, Leon still feels the powerlessness of the data he has obtained so far, there are too many things that cannot be displayed with data, and there are too many things that he says he can't understand.

For example, in low-post offensive training, Leon has no concept in his mind about the true meaning of a series of decomposition training contents, such as the trainer's top waist catch, top back catch, no ball stuck, receiving and turning, receiving and dribbling.

After all, the low-post offense is one of the most complex offensive skills on the basketball court, and Leon, who has not been in contact with basketball for a long time, wants to figure out the doorway inside, so let's watch no less than 30 NBA game videos first.

Leon's notebook contains more and more things, but his notes are incomprehensible to most people, and they are simple words, phrases, and even letters, as well as simple images drawn with a pen.

It wasn't until half past three in the afternoon, when the first day of testing and training officially ended, that Leon packed up his things and prepared to leave with the camera and the coaching team.

At this time, Leon found that a reporter had walked up to Pitino, and it seemed that there would be a routine interview after the training camp, but it was not his turn anyway, so Leon silently packed up his things and prepared to leave together after Pitino's interview was over.

Unexpectedly, after the reporter said a few words to Pitino, he walked straight to Leon and stretched out his hand to say hello to Leon: "Hello, I'm KC Johnson, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, and I hope to interview you briefly about the rookie training camp." ”

Leon looked at the reporter, a thin, middle-aged man with eyes that looked a bit like a comedian.

Leon turned his head to look at Wallace, O'Brien and the others, only to see that they all looked like they were hanging up without caring about themselves, while Vogel lowered his head and began to "seriously" organize his notes, Leon knew that this interview could not be avoided.

"OK, I know everything." Leon nodded lightly and said with his waist crossed.

"Thanks, first of all, I heard that you are a new scout for Celtic, can you tell me a little bit about your previous work experience? And then how did you end up as a Celtic scout? The reporter pulled out a voice recorder and asked Leon.

The first question is a tricky one.

Leon rolled his eyes and said, "I'm an errand runner who hands towels to bar fighters in a small bar in Boston's South Side. Then one day a boxer was knocked out, and I was about to hand out the towel when I was pulled onto the stage, and the referee and the audience asked me to continue the fight. So, I punched my opponent away. After that, I worked there until one day, for various reasons, I had to clean the glass for Mr. Auerbach, and because the glass was cleaned well, he thought I should work in the NBA, so I was recommended to the Celtics. I was supposed to be a cleaner, but the Celtics didn't have a cleaner, they lacked a scout, so I became a scout. That's my work experience, and the reason I became a scout, thank you. ”

Vogel, who was listening with his ears pricked up, couldn't help laughing, Wallace and O'Brien also grinned and shook their heads, but Leon was still serious, which made people think he was talking nonsense. Actually, he didn't.

Johnson also smiled, and instead of dwelling on the issue, he launched his offensive and kept asking Leon questions about rookie camp, both about the rookies and about the Celtics.

To Pitino's surprise, in the face of Johnson's fierce language offensive, Leon behaved quite calmly, and the words that came out of his mouth were true and false, false and true, which made Pitino a little confused, could it be that this guy is really a hidden basketball master, who was acting in Auerbach before?

If this is the case, then the bet in the training camp office a few days ago, Pitino really lost unjustly, and was completely put on the table by Auerbach.

But with Pitino's connections in the Boston-area basketball community, he really had never heard of Fox Leon.

"As a scout for the Celtics, who are you most optimistic about this rookie?" After fifteen minutes of grappling, Johnson finally asked his ultimate question.

This issue is quite sensitive, the key is that as a Celtic scout, he has not received the unanimous opinion of the scouting team, and currently between Pulzbilla and Moiso, Wallace and Pitino are relatively unstable, although from the current news, Purzbilla is likely to be taken away in a higher pick.

Leon snorted, thought for a moment and replied, "I'm bullish on Michael Reid because he's the best player in training camp right now. ”