Chapter 127 A New Beginning 1
The training of the day was normal, but it also had a special feeling for all the people on the court, the players thought the confusion had finally ended, Jake thought he could finally play again, and Coach Mike was feeling a strange emotion as well.
The day before school started the president called Coach Mike to his office, he said he trusted him and hoped he would do a great job in the years to come, but also made it very clear that it was at Jake"s request that he had been hired and that for the next two years it was better that he did not cause any problems.
Mike was grateful for Jake"s thinking of him, but he felt a little strange that he had been ordered by the president to practically drop his authority as a coach, of course, he understood that this was only because of the president"s concern that something that happened to us years.
And Mike also understood that Jake was not the kind of person to take advantage of the situation, so nothing would change as it was in Middle School, but served to show the importance that Jake has for the team.
Jake was very calm in the coming weeks, the next day would be the first regional champions.h.i.+p game, he could finally return to play normally, in those weeks he also talked a lot with Jenny on the phone and sometimes in person, and so the relations.h.i.+p between them was deepening.
Jake can finally feel that things were back to what they should be, after dinner with his mother he went to bed and before bed, he decided to talk a little with the system.
"Things have been a little intense in those two years, is not it, Fate."
[These two years have been very good for improving your skills and also you can mature a little more, it"s important for you to know that even with the system things can get complicated for you too.]
"That"s true, it helped me realize that this is real life and not a dream, things can go wrong and can work for me as for everyone."
[You can also do many things in those years that you normally could not, you may know some people better too.]
"That"s true, show me my statistics, please."
[Here it is]
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[Name: Jake Smith]
[Age: 15 years]
[Job: Basketball Player]
[t.i.tle: High School Player]
[Position: PG, SG]
[Height: 1.83 m]
[Weight: 78 Kg]
[Force 28]
[Agility 28]
[Resistance 30]
[Intelligence 57]
[Luck 99]
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Skills Basketball
[Ball Handling SS]
[Body Control S]
[Man to Man S]
[Dribble SS]
[Layup S]
[Set Shot SS]
[Block S]
[Pa.s.s SS]
[Rebound S]
[2 Points SS]
[3 Points SS]
[Free Throw SS]
[Steal SS]
[Dunk B]
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Jake was impressed when he saw how much he improved that year, it was few times that he can see almost all his skills in the S rank, after looking for a while he cannot resist asking.
"Fate, why have not I come up to the next level to upgrade my skills?"
[There are two reasons for this, the first is that you have to raise your dunk skill to rank S too, and this is not going to be easy, the second is that you have to decide for sure what your next step will be, you can go to university like you said it would or could show the skills of the NBA.]
So Jake realized that this was really important, but he had already decided to go to a university before, he had to realize that dream that was as much of his mother as his.
[I think you should talk to your mother better about this, you can go to university when you are older if you are to fulfill your mother"s dream, you have to think about what is most important to your career as well.]
[Because after you stop playing along with the money you"re going to earn in the NBA and with the stock you invested, you will not need to work after retiring from basketball, so I think you better think of it better, there"s still plenty of time until you have to choose since your dunk ability is still far from the S rank.]
Just as the system said he thought he really should have this conversation with his mother, he also thought he would not have to do the university, also because after spending five years studying various business books in this life and more than 10 years in his life should not have much for him to learn.
"But changing the subject, why do you say it will be difficult to raise my dunk skill rank?"
[As I said before, some of your abilities are also affected by your overall stats and by your body, just as your height affects several of your abilities, so some of your abilities only rose in rank because your height increased.]
[Dunk was one of them, that means you need to train a lot and grow up too so that dunk becomes S rank too, so you can get to your next level.]
Since this did not just depend on him, Jake decided he would just rest to be well in the game the other day.
The next day Jake woke up early and went down to have breakfast, down Jake saw that Eve had woken up earlier and had already prepared all the food.
So Jake smiled and remembered that two years ago his mother really always cooked the breakfasts on game days.
"Hi Jake, you woke up early today, I thought you were going to rest some more before you go to the game."
"I think I was very excited, I still can not believe I"m finally going to be able to play again."
"Oh, you can believe, things always turn out well when you wait and try hard if you did not train those two years you could not play this year."
Jake thought his mother was right as always and ate his food quietly, then he got his purse with his things and went to the playground.
Jake looked at the stands and saw that Eric was there as he said he would be, but the audience for this game was very small, this was normal it was a game that everyone knew what the result would be.
Although last year they did not win, the Elite team is a team that reached the national champions.h.i.+p for three consecutive years and won in two of them, Jake thought it was strange to be playing in a team that was a favorite to win, was the first time for him.
In the two years that he played in Middle School his team was one that no one expected to win, but now many expected good results from them, of course, Jake did not feel any pressure, he always played to win even before.
The opponents seemed discouraged because they expected them to lose the game when they learned they would play against the Elite team.
Coach Mike had already established all strategies and tactics for the games in training, so in the game who would command the team was Jake, but this was a game that no one expected it to be difficult.
After a while the game began, Mark won the first possession of the ball and pa.s.sed to Jake, Jake with the ball possession began to organize the first attack for his team.
Arriving at the three-point line he pa.s.sed the ball to Harrison who would play for the first time in two years like him, Harrison who despite not playing much improved with the training ran towards the inner area and did the layup to do the first 2 points for the Elite team.
The opposing team also managed to score 2 points and tie the game, Jake started another attack and this time did not pa.s.s to anyone and made the shot from outside to make 3 points.
The game continued like this, before the defense if they hit both teams. .h.i.t their attacks until the pressure of the Elite team"s defense increased and the opponent erred first, so the difference on the scoreboard only increased.
The elite team attacked efficiently and defended well, as the advantage in the abilities of the players of both teams was very great the result was expected, in the interval after the second period the Elite team won from 42 to 24.
Jake played those games with a different goal than just winning, he wanted to do a Triple Double in every game until he won the state champions.h.i.+p, Jake was proud as well and wanted to show everyone that the national champions.h.i.+p MVP was back in High School.
Making more than 10 points and 10 a.s.sists were easy, the hard the other, Jake decided to try to make 10 steals per game, at least Double Double was guaranteed for him.
After the game was over Jake was very happy, his teammates were already hoping for it and he thought it was normal, but for him, this was an important victory.
Jake returned home and as he always did he was anxious to tell his mother about the victory in his return game when he came home smiling Eva already knew that everything had gone well.
So that was the first step of a new beginning, it would be Jake"s walk for the first national champions.h.i.+p to be defeated at high school.
Jake wanted to at least win both he could still win to not feel bad for losing the first two, and he also thought it would be a good result to win two national champions.h.i.+ps in four years.
The most important number was something that Jake counted on, but he did not care much but could be important information in the future, it was more than 3 years since Jake did not lose a game.