Zhang Wei likes the moment of winning the championship very much, but he has no interest in the moment of awarding the award, even if the president stands there and smiles, he can only squeeze out a slightly perfunctory smile to deal with it.

David Stern is indeed happy that while the four-game Finals are a bit of a fly in the ointment, ratings and global reach are more important than playing two more games.

As long as the NBA has the two magic weapons of ratings and influence, it will not worry about sponsorship and advertising in the future, especially the broadcast contract that is about to expire, which is a multi-billion dollar deal, and only two or three games are counted as eggs?

Why did the league give up Jordan this year and instead favor Zhang Mao?

The question is so easy to explain, although David Stern is happy about the growth of NBA advertising and sponsorship in the past two years, but the new broadcast contract is the key.

Fans may not have felt that basketball has never been as valuable as it is today, and in the last decade, the NBA has sold their television rights for record high prices, which is the league's long-term revenue gains.

The person at the helm of Zhang Fu, who is presenting him with an award, majored in law at university, but he is actually a shrewd businessman.

David Stern realized how important live television was to the NBA when he first became president of the league, and the Olympics were the winners because of the telecasts. Therefore, after the president took office, he immediately signed a two-year, $20 million TV broadcast contract with Japan's TBS, and this is just the starting point of NBA broadcasting.

At that time, 20 million, even in that era, was actually not much. But then, David Stern signed several more TV contracts, and each one bigger than the other......

In 1988, Stern signed a two-year, $50 million broadcast contract with TBS and TNT.

But just two years later, TBS was kicked out, and at this point the contract began to be worth hundreds of millions, and the league signed a four-year, $275 million television contract with TNT, and then turned to the richer NBC to sign a four-year, $601 million contract.

In 1994, Jordan retired, and the NBA's broadcast costs not only did not grow, but regressed. David Stern had to reluctantly sign a four-year, $397 million contract with TNT/TBS, and a four-year, $892 million contract with NBC.

The development of NBA broadcast fees proves to some extent that professional sports are in a state of rapid development, and the market value of this field has not yet been fixed. In other words, no one has made it clear how big the broadcast contract should be, and what kind of scale the market will reach in total, so of course it is more of a process of exploration through games.

But there is no doubt that the NBA's broadcast price has risen since the Bulls dynasty, and the decline has also begun with the dissolution of the Bulls dynasty, so the value of star teams and superstars to the league is self-evident.

It's 1997 now, and the old broadcast contract will expire next year, and this time to sign a new contract is not just a few hundred million, because in the first negotiation stage alone, TNT and ABC have increased the price to $2.4 billion for six years, and NBC has prepared a contract of $3 billion, but the league's bottom line is at least $3.6 billion for six years, which is six times higher than before.

So think about it, if the league still supports Jordan, even if an old guy who is almost 34 years old is perverted, he can maintain a state for another two or three years at most, how can the league rely on a Jordan who is about to go downhill to get such a big contract from these TV stations?

Zhang Qi is different, he is at his peak in the next 6 years, and even in the next 12 years, he will be at his peak, and the league can use Zhang Qi to increase the two contracts in the future. If you add the sponsorship and advertising income during this period, it is foreseeable that the league will never set up obstacles for Zhang Fu's ascension, but if the Lakers fall behind, David Stern will have to raise his godson.

This is the real society, everything has to move closer to money, but you have to keep the bottom line, otherwise your popularity will run out, and David Stern obviously has just the right grasp of the heat, and people will make money while standing.

Jordan's fans will definitely feel too dark, but you must know that the market is determined by all fans, if everyone doesn't like to watch Zhang Qi play and still likes to watch Jordan, then the league will naturally not train him, Jordan is afraid that he will have to carry the banner when he is 40 years old.

These TV stations are willing to give such a high price, of course, they also feel that they can recoup their investment, which also proves that more fans, especially young fans, still prefer to watch koala babies play.

Of course, in the future, NBA players will still scold David Stern, they will only talk about words like "underpaid" and "excessive overtime", but they will not think that here, an athlete who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a year will be regarded as a low-income person, which has completely subverted the worldview of ordinary people, and the income of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is completely high-level white-collar in the eyes of ordinary people.

Come to think of it, these players' grievances have their own reasons. Not to mention others, take Jordan, who is currently the highest-paid player, for example, the value he has created for his team owners, the players' association, and the entire NBA in the past two years is far more than the salary he can receive from his own team.

and Zhang Fu, who is accepting the award from the president at the moment, he will be more qualified to complain than anyone else in the future, because the league's future broadcast contract depends on him to fight back.

Thinking about it like this, Zhang Wei immediately felt that David Stern should be his godson.

Besides, now that he is not worth tens of billions, he still wants to be his godfather? Dream on!

His father is really about to have a net worth of tens of billions, and now Bill Gates and Ballmer are qualified to be his godfathers, behind the koala baby are three legends in the IT industry known as the "Harvard Three Musketeers", and David Stern is also a little famous in the sports world, but his popularity in the world is far worse than Zhang Mo, Bill Gates, and Ballmer.

"On behalf of the league, I congratulate you on winning the championship and thank you for your contribution to the league."

When David Stern said this sentence in front of Zhang Fu, he should really come from the bottom of his heart, and Zhang Zhu's contribution to the NBA in the future will definitely be higher than Jordan's, which is the gold mountain of him and the entire league.

Let's put it this way, as long as Zhang Fu can maintain the peak of ten years in the future, then the league's income can maintain ten years of rapid growth, and their next live broadcast contract is afraid that it will be tens of billions, which is a contribution that Jordan can no longer provide.

If you look at it on another level, it does have the flavor of unloading and killing donkeys. After the league squeezed Jordan dry, it found that the other party was old and of little value in the future, so it decisively kicked it away, and then chose a younger newcomer to cultivate, which was really ruthless.

Miss Nicole is very touched by this, isn't she just older now, and the peak of her appearance is about to pass after the age of 30, Tom Cruise immediately chose to leave her and find a younger woman, these two things are essentially the same ruthless and unjust.

Here, David Stern finally awarded the championship trophy to Zhang Zhu, and with the eruption of a streamer salute, the Lakers players standing on the podium shouted and cheered loudly!

Standing in the middle of the crowd holding the championship trophy aloft and handing it to Mutombo so that his teammates would have a chance to show their faces one by one, Zhang Ji began to think about how he would spend the summer.

The 1996-1997 NBA season is over, and there are many people who are turning their minds to the next season like Zhang Zhu at this moment, especially the Bulls who watched their opponents reach the top on their own turf, and their flame of revenge has been ignited from this moment.

At this moment, there are many more teams thinking about the future......

This summer is destined to be more turbulent than last year, and the Lakers, who are in the spotlight, will surely become a thorn in the side of other teams, just as all teams targeted them after the Bulls broke the record last year, and the Lakers will also be targeted by everyone next season.

#####

A week after the end of the NBA Finals, the Lakers and Zhang Qi were still hot topics around the world, and even the lottery meeting held on the 13th was weighed down by the news related to the Lakers and Zhang Fu.

On this day, it has been 4 days since the finals ended, but when fans picked up today's newspaper, the first thing that caught their eyes was Zhang Mao's report......

——ESPN

"Leon: It's not someone else's title, it's something we fought for, and we all enjoyed the moment."

- Dragonborn Sports

"He is tied for four legends and four MVPs! A new dynastic saga begins......"

- Fox Sports

"Lyon has taken the bar to the next level."

—Los Angeles Times

"Millions of Lakers fans join the championship celebration, and Lyon promises more than one championship."

- Playboy

"Lyon only wears underwear when leaving the country on a large scale, and his appearance and figure show off his muscles and muscles, and the cameraman confirms: This 28 is really 28!"

Well, when most people stop at Playboy's magazine, you know why this broken magazine is making money.

Zhang Zhu really took a large-scale photo for his own media after winning the championship, and the photo can be described as quite "content", even though the current circulation of "Dragonborn Sports" is far more than ten times that of usual, the result was swept away as soon as it was released, and it was snatched up by hungry American young women and girls within half a minute.

Although "Playboy" did not grab the first-hand photo, they added content to this group of photos, and the following is the photographer who took this set of photos for Zhang Fu revealed: "When I took this group of photos, I was shocked by his model. In order to avoid him being jealous of ordinary men, we even had to be able to photoshop the photo. You know, the average man doesn't want to admit his model. ”

According to the cameraman, on the day of the photo shoot, the baby koala pointed his right hand at his right thigh while lying on the ground in boredom, saying, "You won't see anyone else have this muscle anymore," and then he smiled at the camera, "Look, there's another muscle arching here." "Obviously, he has a lot of confidence in his muscles.

On this day, the NBA's official report received the least attention, but after the news of the San Antonio people's lottery of the champion lottery came out, doubts immediately followed, and many people bombarded the Spurs' bad behavior as not worthy of the champion.

Zhang was also surprised by the news, thinking that the Spurs should only be able to get a list or a pick, because this is the default rule - the team will not get the top pick.

Everyone knows that there are various unspoken rules in the NBA lottery conference, but this time the Spurs broke the rules by drawing the champion, and many people will naturally have opinions.

It's no secret that David Stern has always liked to make a fuss about the draft, as it strategically controls the league.

In 1984, his first spark as NBA commissioner was to reform the draft from a conference call to a live broadcast, and the following year, he introduced the concept of a lottery show.

The reason given by David Stern is simple, the draw needs to be fortuitous and needs to be biased in favor of the weaker team, but there is an unspoken rule here, that is——— team with the worst record should not get the top pick since 1985, no team with the worst record has won the top pick, and even the team that deliberately plays badly has difficulty getting the top pick.

This unspoken rule has also been recognized by all teams in the league, after all, the deliberate bad behavior is indeed not welcomed, and it would be good to give you an example or a flower in the end, just think about it or something.

But even so, because the league did too obvious at the beginning, many fans still couldn't accept it, the most typical example of which was the first lottery draw in 1985, when the Knicks got Patrick Ewing as predicted by the media, but the process was too obvious.

That year's lottery was still in the mode of touching the envelope, and as a result, the Knicks' envelope was photographed with a folded corner, and then there was an inside story of the envelope being put in the refrigerator and baked in advance, and the team that walked up to the lottery only needed to touch which letter was cold or hot, and they could know the answer.

After a few years of complaining about this kind of report, the NBA began to change to a more difficult table tennis number combination game in 1990, and of course there was no shortage of rumors.

This time is an exception, the Spurs already have one of the four major centers in the Sea General, the league gives them another top pick, and the San Antonio people know that they should choose Duncan with their butts, so wouldn't it be a terrifying two-tower lineup in an instant?

This hand is raised too high, right?

You see that Soviet spy laughing and laughing, could it be that David Stern collaborated with the enemy?

Or is the draw already rigged by the Russians?

But in any case, it is normal for the Spurs to be questioned about their selection of the champion, because there are always some rookies in the NBA that everyone knows can play, such as Olajuwon was one of them, and even the four major centers were like this back then.

Like the big four centers and O'Neal, as well as the tall interior players like Duncan who have the body, skills, and brains, especially those who have been trained in the NCAA for several years, they can basically play in the NBA.

Duncan is such an inside line, the chance that he can't play is very small, but the chance of becoming a star is very high, so unless he encounters O'Neal and Olajuwon to compete with the inside, he must be the designated champion, no matter who draws the champion lottery, he will definitely choose him, even if there are Jordan and Zhang Fu.

This is the advantage of interior talent, and this Duncan can not only play center, he can also play the No. 4 position, even if the Clippers with O'Neal have the top pick, they will pick Duncan in seconds.

"David Robinson + Tim Duncan?"

Although Zhang Qian is more optimistic about Keith Van Horn, a super rookie who is known as Bird's successor, he also knows that Duncan's potential will not be worse than Van Horn, but the Spurs already have David Robinson, so wouldn't it be better to choose Van Horn?

It was surprising that the Spurs drew the top pick, and then the Philadelphia 76ers, who had the fifth-to-last record, also got the list pick.

The Philadelphia 76ers already have young and powerful stars like Iverson and Stackhouse, and if they choose another interior player with good fighting ability, they will be able to take off this season, and the league's hand is also too obvious.

Look at the Boston Celtics, who have the same record as the Spurs, but only drew a scout lottery, this kind of ranking really makes Green Army fans angry, but it can also be seen that the league is not interested in reshaping the "yellow-green war", after all, even if they are given a Duncan, it is difficult for the Green Army to make any waves today, so it is better to give these signings to teams that have the ability to rise immediately, so that the situation in the league will be chaotic and exciting.

But the Green Army is not the worst, and there is one of the most unlucky teams this year, which is the Vancouver Grizzlies.

The Grizzlies, as the team with the lowest record last season, only drew a No. 4 pick, and they didn't even get a flower, which shows that this team is really not welcomed by the league.

Zhang Zhu didn't pay attention to the lottery situation later, he just paid a little attention to the Spurs to draw the champion, who made the Lakers really not even have a second-round pick this year, so the draft has nothing to do with them, at most pick and choose from the undrafted draft in the summer to see if there are any missing pearls and other things, but this possibility is also pitiful.

Harris actually has a candidate to replenish fresh blood, and when they went to China to play in the summer league last year, the Lakers saw two good interior lines, and it was no problem to guard the water cooler.

These two people are naturally Wang Zhizhi and Battle.

Harris values Battle more among these two, because this guy with natural divine power can be used to disgust the core of their sworn enemy in the same city, while that Wang Zhizhi is a technical stream, and it is not easy for this style of interior to adapt to the rhythm of the NBA, the key is that the Lakers already have a little O'Neal who has been cultivated for a year, and they don't need to get another Wang Zhizhi.

In addition to the two Chinese players, the Lakers are now interested in other international players as well.

Don't forget that the two championship-winning cores in their team are international players, especially the current No. 1 Zhang Zhu, which shows that there are many super strong guys outside the United States.

The Lakers didn't have a draft pick this year, but it's promising to pick up the leaks in this regard.

Harris believes that international players who want to play in the NBA will be so excited that they can't sleep as soon as they receive the Lakers' tryout invitation.