Inside the bathroom of the home team's locker room at the Eagles' home stadium Phillips Arena.

Recalling the clear memories that gradually merged in his mind, Liu Mang looked in the mirror in a daze......

There is no doubt that the person in the mirror is himself, Liu Mang knows his face in the mirror for more than 20 years better than anyone else, opened his pants and looked at the mole in the middle of the second brother's hair, as for why the height has become 20 cm taller, it is one meter ninety-three.

Liu Mang, English name Ace Liu, English name was given to him by the college coach, which means that his shooting pierces the opponent like a skateblade, the new memory is born on February 17, 1983, now 19 years old, a Chinese college student in the United States, Georgia Institute of Technology participated in the NBA draft after his sophomore year, and was upset by the Hawks owner who wanted to follow the pace of President David Stern to open up the Chinese market in the second round with the twenty-fourth pick and the fifty-third pick overall, and his strengths in basketball are ball control and three-pointers. In this era, it is regarded as a non-mainstream style of play, and it is difficult to even draft a small year and a second round......

The current time is November 1, 2001, Liu Mang's identity is the second-round rookie of the Hawks, and the halftime game just played is the opening game of the Hawks' home game against the Rockets.

Liu Mang once thought about what would happen if he traveled back in time, but one day he really crossed over and found that he didn't know anything, and it was even possible that even survival was a problem in this era when there was no network and no convenient transportation.

He now finds himself truly without any capital to survive in this era other than a two-year non-fully guaranteed contract with the Hawks.

In 2001, the Internet was not yet popular, there was only a dial-up network on the Internet, mobile phones had just eliminated Big Brother, the first generation of online games in the United States was only the web version of "The Sims", and the online games in Asia were only "Legend of Blood", and friends still had the kind of karaoke that they lined up to sing when they went to sing......

He is desperate now, he doesn't know any lottery numbers, and the way to make a fortune by buying lottery tickets won't work.

As for investment, it's just, even if he really remembers that there would be a period of time before the economic bubble period, when the stock market skyrocketed for no reason, but there was no money! And the bubble crisis of the 90s has just ended, and it will be at least five or six years before the next round of story crises!

As for ways to make money...... The first thing that popped up in Liu Mang's mind was the team's salary, but he was just a second-round pick, how high could he be?

It's 2001, the NBA salary cap has just exceeded 40 million, the team's number one insider, the league's block king Ratliff plus the team's boss Raheem plus the pension Kukochi plus the good old man Muhammad, the salary of the four people has reached 39 million, and the other players are all hundreds of thousands to more than one million salaries, none of them exceed two million, Terry, who averages 20+3+6 per game and is now regarded as a future superstar, is only 1.5 million a year contract.

Liu Mang's salary in his rookie season is $460,000, and the Atlanta state tax is not high, only 5 percent, but the federal tax rate for those earning more than $200,000 a year and less than $500,000 is 28 percent.

Since he didn't have a draft market at all, no agent approached him before the draft, and there is still no agent, so he doesn't have to pay the agent commission.

This is also a good thing, because the agent is usually the closest to the player, and if an agent is seen to be abnormal, it is troublesome to explain.

However, after deducting 33 percent of the tax and 3 percent of the players' union dues, the salary of 460,000 yuan in the first year is less than 300,000 US dollars.

300,000 US dollars, the purchasing power in the United States is indeed not low, but is it possible to sit on the mountain with these 300,000 US dollars?

Play well and get a contract?

Liu Mang is desperate for this matter, although the height has become the height of the NBA big point guard of 1.93 meters, which is taller than most point guards in the NBA in this era, but the draft evaluation in the memory reads: excellent ball control and excellent shooting.

Not at all with him.

And the original evaluation of this identity is excellent ball control and excellent shooting, that is, the physical fitness is really average, a broken otaku, crossing over, playing woolen NBA!

No one knows himself better than Liu Mang, although he can play basketball and love to watch the NBA, but he plays the ball sincerely, and it is okay to play a three-on-three half-court game with his classmates in China, playing the NBA? !

This body is not the kind of physical fitness that is particularly good, and it is not even excellent, it can only be described as mediocre, and the coach who plays the NCAA generally pays more attention to technology and tactical execution, so the "self" in Liu Mang's memory can have a fairly good performance in the NCAA, Georgia Tech reached the top 8 in March this year, and it is only after it is famous in Atlanta.

As for being able to enter the NBA purely because the drafts in the last two years are too bad, there are only a few worth seeing, especially after experiencing the devilish 2000 draft, the 2001 second-round pick is equivalent to choosing a person to guard the water cooler, not Popovich, it is impossible to guarantee that a real strength is selected outside the lottery area this year, and you can only gamble, because the talent in the past two years is too bad, Kobe, Maddie and others entered the NBA after graduating from high school, and to some extent brought a bad atmosphere, this is not, This year, the Wizards' No. 1 summer league games were not able to beat the unqualified college students.

This makes Liu Mang happen to be because Stern is vigorously developing the overseas ball market, especially the Chinese market, and there happens to be a local Chinese college student participating in the draft, and the three-point point is not bad, and the Hawks spent the second round pick of this super draft year to pick him back for some reason.

Now Liu Mang doesn't know if he is a dove occupying the magpie's nest or what went wrong when he crossed over, he grew so much taller, because his appearance and even some of the "birthmarks" on his body are the same as his original self, but one thing is certain, he has not "inherited" the two abilities of ball control and shooting that this body originally had, and even because he became taller, he was a little helpless to get the "one smaller" basketball, and he was not used to it at all.

With this feeling, Liu Mang understands very well that his shooting is definitely extremely unreliable, and he may throw the ball directly because of the strength brought by the height of the "giant" who has become close to two meters, which is definitely stronger than before and the completely different visual angle now......

The halftime break was not particularly long, Liu Mang was thinking about it in the bathroom for a while, the break time had passed, and he had already heard the voices of the team staff who were calling his name to tell him that the game was about to start.

Liu Mang answered, sorted out his jersey, and prepared to go to ...... Then guard the water dispenser......

The Hawks lineup is not bad, where to get him as a second-round rookie in regular time, and he is a second-round rookie in the draft, and if nothing happens in the second half, he will continue to guard the life of the water cooler.

He already knew at halftime that he had a chance to play in the first half because the Rockets had a point guard who was too powerful, and it could even be said that he was the first point guard of all time to be so strong so far in the position, and there had never been such a strong point guard in NBA history———— Steve Francis.

Francis may not be on par with the MVP or All-NBA point guards, but his emergence is groundbreaking and shows that point guards can play the same way.

In the past, there were about three types of point guards, the most common ones were Kidd and Stockton, who organized offense and controlled the rhythm, not necessarily with good data, but with good data, it must be a super point guard, which was the consensus of the previous era.

The second type is the scoring point guard of Allen Iverson, Havlicek, Assassin Isaiah Thomas, Marbury, etc.

The third type has only one person - Magician Johnson......

And Francis is different from all three, he can organize the offense like Kidd, although not that good, but he can also get six or seven assists per game, he can score like Iverson, although not that great, but he can also score more than 20 points per game, he can also be as versatile as Magic, and he can also get six or seven rebounds per game, but it is difficult to get a triple-double.

He has the body of a small forward and the aerial dominance of Jordan, Carter and James Worthy.

To use a word that would come up a decade later to describe Francis – a two-way guard!

Francis is the first true two-way guard in NBA history, and unlike Iverson, who was transferred to the shooting guard position by Larry Brown last season, in 2000-2001, Francis "dominated" all the work of the two positions of shooting guard and point guard from the beginning, dominating the team's rhythm while being the team's scoring champion.

Francis wants to do this, and the willingness of Rudy Tomjanovich, the head coach of the Rockets, to let him do so shows how tough he is.

Francis's impact is a cross-era point guard position, and now no one in the entire league can beat it, the Hawks' two point guards didn't finish the half, and both of them were charged with 3 fouls, plus two fouls from Jason Terry at the point guard position, Francis made one critical blow after another in the face of the Hawks' weak guard line, giving the Hawks 8 fouls at halftime......

Dealing with such a ruthless opponent, Liu Mang felt that it was impossible for Coach Ron Kruger to send him on the field.

However, Liu Mang had a feeling that Coach Ron Kruger seemed to be quite concerned about him, but that part of the memory seemed to be still in confusion, and he didn't remember it for a while......