Chapter 479 NBA Season Begins 3
"You can call me Rick too, I"m happy to know that you know who I am, Hahaha, I"m also happy to see someone from the same university as me playing with me."
"Congratulations on helping the Tar Heels team to achieve this incredible record of more than 70 games without losing, I know how it is almost impossible to pa.s.s the UCLA team record, but the record you have achieved has already brought many glories to our university."
"Even more after winning the NCAA tournament twice in a row, in my last year we almost managed to win, luckily you managed to bring that joy to fans of the team like me."
"Thanks, Rick, I know you did great things for the Tar Heels team, and now we are playing together here at the Los Angeles Lakers, I hope that together we will be able to win an NBA t.i.tle."
"Hahaha, I like how optimistic you are."
Jake and Rick soon became friends and Jake was more comfortable in the team, in the first training Jake showed all his enthusiasm and impressed all the other players and the team"s technical committee with his dedication to training and how much stamina he had.
Jake clearly did the training with more intensity than other players and did not need to stop to rest, and that was on the first day of training after the end of the lockout where the players did not dedicate themselves so much to training.
Even though Jake impressing them all knew that Jake was an athlete who was the best in the world in marathons so it was only natural that he had more stamina than the other players, this made Coach Harris happier to have Jake on his team.
Even more because as the game season was less time and they would still have 50 games, the teams would have to play more games to keep the schedule and some players would not be able to handle this intensity.
The first day of training was just for Coach Harris to see the physical condition of the players, Coach Harris saw that Rick Fox would not be able to play and also saw several players who were not in perfect physical condition.
Fortunately, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O"Neal were in the good physical condition and could play in that first game, what the Los Angeles Lakers board and Jake didn"t even know was that Coach Harris was thinking about letting Jake play, but not as PG in the first games.
He knew that Jake had the ability to play in various positions and so he would put him in the place of other players who were tired in the first games to see how Jake would do, after all, Derek Fisher was a player that Coach Harris liked.
So if Jake made a good debut game, Coach Harris would have to put him in to play as PG if he received pressure from the Los Angeles Lakers team board, but he thought Jake was young and couldn"t handle the pressure of debuting playing in a different position.
After training Jake couldn"t take it and went to talk to Kobe Bryant, he was a big fan of him and Jake was nervous when he went to talk to one of his biggest idols as a basketball player and as a basketball fan.
"Hi, Kobe Bryant, my name is Jake Smith, I wanted to say that it is a great pleasure to talk to you personally, I am a fan of yours and I admire how you play."
"I didn"t know I had a fan after playing for a few years, let"s be teammates now, you can call me Kobe."
"It is true that I am a fan of yours, I also believe that just by working hard in training I can do better and I heard that you are like that too, I also just want victory for my team."
"So you really know me well, I really believe that more effort can lead to victory and I really want to win, if you are like that then we can get along very well."
Jake was very happy because it looked like he had become friends with Kobe Bryant, he didn"t lie saying that he liked to train a lot and also that he thought a lot about winning, but he said this to Kobe because he knew after seeing several interviews with Kobe that he thought so too.
Afterward when the players were leaving the training site, Jake still went to talk to another of his idols Shaquille O"Neal, even though Jake was tall he felt small near Shaquille O"Neal, but Jake was not intimidated and went to talk to him.
"Hi, Shaquille O"Neal, my name is Jake Smith, I wanted to say that I am a big fan of yours, it is a great pleasure for me to speak with you."
"So you are the rookie who was the first pick in last year"s draft, I saw a few games of yours and I think you are very good, I hope you help me make a lot of points just like you helped your teammates at the university."
"For sure, this is what I plan to do, with you playing on the same team as me, it is easier to make a lot of a.s.sists and I can do the three-point shots with confidence knowing that you can catch the rebounds."
"Hahaha, that"s what I wanted to hear, you also have to make as many points as you can, if you can make at least 14 points per game and make a.s.sists our team can win the NBA t.i.tle."
Jake was happy to have a good first conversation with his two idols on the team, Jake knew that this season he would have one of the best opportunities to be the leader in NBA a.s.sistance and that was what he wanted.
With the coach changes that the team would have and this reduced season, it would be difficult for the team to win the NBA t.i.tle this season, so he just had to adapt to the team and have the best performance possible, and next season they would fight for the NBA t.i.tle.
Jake went home happy and called his mom and Kate to tell them how it was his first day of training on the Los Angeles Lakers team, that day Jake can rest easy knowing he had done well on his first day on the team the Los Angeles Lakers.
On the other training day, the players were finally able to have a training game-playing among the team players that would be divided in two teams, in this training Jake played as PG and Derek Fisher was the PG of the other team.
Jake admired Fisher too and knew his career as a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers team as Jake always was, but Jake knew that he was a better player than Fisher in almost every area of basketball.
Even though Shaquille O"Neal and Kobe Bryant are in the Fisher team, Jake still took the "reserve team" to make a good game and narrowly lost, it was a two-minute 10-minute training and Jake managed to score 18 points and 3 a.s.sists.
This impressed the other players and the members of the coaching staff, it was normal for Jake because he trained twice a day in training his imagination with much tougher opponents and always tried to win.
The difference was that in his imagination training his teammates were as good as his opponents, so in the next few days the team did a lot of training, and Jake continued to show his talent.
In that time Jake won the respect of his teammates and managed to talk several times with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O"Neal and his friend Rick Fox, Jake felt that he was becoming part of the team and the day of the game was coming.
The day before Jake"s debut game in the NBA, coach Del Harris called Jake to have a private conversation with him, Jake thought the coach was calling him to say that he would play in the next game and try to make Jake less nervous for this one game.
"Jake, you"re going to play on the starting team in the next game, but since Rick Fox is still not in his best physical condition and he won"t be able to play, I"m going to have to put you in the Small Forward position, is it okay for you?"
Jake was surprised to hear that, he never thought he would not play as PG in his debut game, but hearing the coach say that Rick Fox was not in his best physical condition it was understandable that he had to play in another position.
Even more, because Coach Harris would let him play on the team and Jake was prepared to play as SG or SF if it was going to help the team in any way, it was different from high school and university where he still had to prove to everyone that it was a skilled PG.
Everyone knew that he knew how to play as a PG, so to help his team Jake didn"t mind playing in other positions, with his imagination training, Jake had experience playing in all positions in basketball.
"Alright Coach Harris, thanks for the opportunity to let me start playing in the next game if you want I can play as SF, but I will not play as well as I play as PG."
"Okay, I understand that you will be playing in a position that you are not used to playing, you are a good defensive player and you also score a lot and that is enough to help us win in the next game."
Jake didn"t think Coach Harris was doing it on purpose and just thought he would have to play in another position to help the team, especially since the player who was like SF before was switched so he could come to the Los Angeles team Lakers.
The other day Jake woke up very early excited because that was the day of his debut game in the NBA, it would be a game at the Great Western Forum that was the arena that the Los Angeles Lakers team used that year.
It was the realization of another dream for Jake and it would be in this team that he could fulfill his other dreams as a professional player who was to win the NBA t.i.tle, Jake would fight for it and wanted everyone to remember that he was fundamental for the team to achieve this NBA t.i.tle.