Sitting in the training hall, because the children were training, Auerbach had to put away his big cigar and put it up for a while, but he would still take out the cigar and put it to his nose to smell it to satisfy his cravings.

After beckoning Leon to him, he put away his cigar, picked up his cane, and tapped on the seat next to him, motioning for Leon to sit down. Khomemenes gave Leon a look of self-relief and ran back to work.

"Look at the kids on the field, there are more than 30 guys here, they are running and training here, and they all dream of becoming future stars, the brightest heroes on the field. However, some of them are destined to be ordinary, and they will soon realize that they have no chance with the higher world of basketball; Others have the opportunity to go to higher places. Now, I want to ask you, who do you think has the best chance among all of them? Auerbach didn't dwell on Leon, and directly asked his little question.

Auerbach's question ostensibly asks who has the highest level of basketball among the more than 30 children, but he doesn't seem to mean it when he says so much and makes a big turn.

In any case, this is not a small problem for Leon, because to be honest, although he looked like a basketball expert in the office yesterday, he turned on the repeater mode and forcibly wrote down what Pitino said, and then brought a little understanding of his own. His word-for-word retelling of Pitino's words is shocking enough, and who cares if he understands basketball or not?

Now Auerbach directly asked Leon to pick one of the most powerful children out of more than thirty children, which was not easy to say.

"We'll divide them into two groups and play against them for a while, and you'll have two hours from now on to watch them and let me know when you have the answer. If your answer satisfies me, feel free to go to Boston for work. If not, I'm sorry, but I'll have to think about whether to give this job to you. Auerbach continued to say to Leon.

After saying that, he finally couldn't stand the torture of the cigarette addiction, got up and went to the office of the training hall to smoke a cigar, leaving Leon alone in the stands in a daze with a group of children.

However, Auerbach's assumption was wrong, and that was that he thought that Leon knew nothing about basketball, but in fact, before his mother's death, Leon was a basketball fan in the truest sense of the word.

At this time, Leon sat in the stands and saw a group of children ranging from ten to fifteen years old running, passing, shooting, and dribbling on the court, and the memories from the depths of his mind came to the surface.

Leon finally remembered that the game he had dreamed of was the fifth game of the 1984 NBA Finals, when the air conditioner in Boston Garden Square broke down, and the scorching heat of June and 15,000 spectators made the whole stadium hot like a sauna. Leon remembered that day he had sat on top of the burly fat uncle, like he had been sitting on a big rock that had been sunburned for two hours.

However, the enthusiasm of the fans in that game was as terrible as the temperature of the stadium, and Leon, who was sitting in the back row, could hardly hear anything, only the white jersey and the purple jersey on the court, the white jersey was the Celtics, and the purple jersey was their opponent Los Angeles Lakers.

The excitement and excitement he had experienced in his dream that night came back to his heart, and Leon couldn't help but get up from where he had been seated, and he climbed a few steps up the stands to a higher place so that he could see the training scene more clearly.

……………………

Meanwhile, Auerbach was smoking a cigar in his office, sitting in his large swivel chair, Auerbach's mind spinning rapidly as the cigar went out and went out.

Here, just yesterday, Auerbach dimly saw in Fox Leon a rising force, one that doesn't yet exist in the basketball world. As a hero who has been in the basketball world for decades, it is difficult to describe how Auerbach felt at that time.

As he collapsed in his hospital bed a few years later to meet the Grim Reaper, Auerbach recalled that afternoon, the little blackboard that had rekindled his somewhat dull basketball heart, and Auerbach, who was about to come to the end of his life, described the feeling of that moment: "I saw the light. ”

……………………

The children trained for nearly 20 minutes, and the two sides began to play a simple confrontation game in groups, the purpose of the confrontation was not to win or lose, one was to improve the children's sense of competition and feel the competitive atmosphere of the training camp, after all, only the real game can reflect the charm of basketball confrontation; The second is to conduct a basic assessment of the basketball level of all children, so that this group of children can show themselves well on the court, and Anji and the other three will evaluate each person's performance, and then arrange targeted training for each child according to this evaluation.

It's a game with no specific time limit, with a dozen players on each side, taking turns on the court, no timeouts, no rests, like a never-ending wheel battle, and it's this way of playing that children can fully display their basketball talents.

The youngest of these children is nine years old, the oldest is fifteen years old, and the gap between nine-year-old children and fifteen-year-old children is still quite large.

And some fifteen-year-olds have grown taller, like a few white children who are already very big and have the appearance of adults.

Therefore, some children who still seem to have outstanding ball skills during training will fall behind when they really start running up and fighting the whole court in the game, and their skills will not be able to play at all in the face of those taller and stronger children.

Auerbach walked out of his office, dusted off his cigarette ash, and watched the children on the field while paying attention to Leon, who was standing intently high in the stands.

As a veteran who has been immersed in basketball for decades, and has always been known for being good at discovering talents, Auerbach is naturally a torch, although with the development of basketball, the evaluation and judgment of players are becoming more and more professional and refined, but that is in the field of professional basketball; In amateur youth basketball like this, Auerbach is able to get the best out of the players in a ten-minute match.

"This will be the last test I give you, and if you can pass it, I'll follow my instincts and bet my last basketball life; If you can't, then I'm sorry, I'll have to get you a job as a cleaner in the team's arena. Auerbach said to Leon inwardly, although he had told Leon yesterday about introducing him to a job, but he did not say what kind of job it was.

That's why Auerbach asked Leon to come to the training gym before leaving, and he wanted to give him a final test.

……………………

The competition was quite intense, and the children took turns on the field, and everyone was full of physical strength and enthusiasm, like a group of sheep running back and forth tirelessly. At the same time, the game was also played at a glance, and it was not messed up because they were not familiar with each other.

From this, you can quickly see the level of the children, some older and stronger children, no one can stop on the court, often one person dribbles through the whole court and scores directly to the basket.

One of the 14-year-old black kids was already able to dunk directly with the ball, and although his dunk lacked power and beauty, his bounce was enough for him to easily smash the ball directly into the basket with his hands.

When he dunked the ball into the basket, the whole arena was a little boiling, Maxwell danced happily and stepped forward to high-five the young man in encouragement, and even Ayatollah Khomeenez jumped up excitedly, there is no more exciting way to score on the basketball court than a dunk.

Khomeenez also turned his head to look at Leon standing in the stands, and found that Leon was like a stone statue without moving, his hands crossed on his chest and looking at everything on the field, his brows slightly locked, not knowing what he was thinking.

Unbeknownst to her, Leon was trying to read all the memories of basketball in his mind, looking for all the criteria that could determine a player's merits.

If you were to pick who was the best basketball kid in the camp right now, the answer would be out of three or four people, especially the black kid who could dunk the dunk, and his skill level was already quite good and his physical fitness was top-notch.

During the seven or eight minutes he was there, his team completely suppressed the opponent, because no one could match him, and he was inferior to him in terms of speed, strength, and bounce, and these seven or eight minutes were completely his one-man show.

As more and more children played, and the match drew to a close, Auerbach had already made a plan in his mind, and he walked up to the stands on crutches, pointed at Leon and asked, "It's time to solve my little problem." ”