Chapter 437 - End of Time at the University 9
"For all that I have achieved, I will always love the Tar Heels team and my university, but I think that after achieving so many things, it is time to leave."
"I plan to finish my university course later while playing in the NBA, and this season almost all of my teammates left the team, Okulaja, Cota and many others are still going on, but I think this is the right time for me to leave."
"I want to play on the best NBA teams against the best players in the world to learn a lot from them in the years to come and have more challenges as a player so that I can continue to improve."
"The university players are great, but I want to play against the best players and be one of the best players in the future who knows, only the future will say if I can become an NBA star or I will regret not staying 4 years on the Tar Heels team."
Jake was very honest in saying what he thought, he couldn"t say the real reason for going to the NBA, but he said what he really thought to decide to go to the NBA, Jake knew he could wait for a season if he was unsure, but with the system and the experience he had in basketball he thought he was ready to play with the best players in the world.
The reporter who was interviewing Jake was excited too, he knew Jake was smart, but it seemed like Jake knew how to answer questions better than many professional NBA players.
And even with him asking some questions that could harm Jake, he was answering all the questions without leaving any unanswered as he had agreed before the interview.
"Jake, could you say what you expect from the NBA draft and your first NBA season?"
"Yes, I hope that I will be chosen in the draft by a team that really needs a player in my position who is from PG, I would not want a team that would choose me just for what I did at the university, but a team that really think about putting me in the games to help the team win."
"From my first season in the NBA I know that I"ll probably play a few minutes in the first season, I"ll have to prove my skills to my future coach to have the chance to play and so maybe hopefully become an important player for the team in my first season."
"That"s why I preferred to be chosen by a team that really needed a PG, so it was more possible that I would have more playing time in my first NBA seasons."
"Thanks for the great responses, Jake, I hope you succeed in the NBA and become one of the best players in history."
"Thanks."
After doing the interview Jake can be more relaxed, he liked the interview and thought that he had answered all the questions that someone could ask him in the coming months, now he could return to focus on his running training and his training with Yuen Woo-ping and his friends.
Jake just had to worry about finis.h.i.+ng cla.s.ses at the university and then going to Australia, he was fine with his friends and his teammates, Tar Heels team fans were disappointed in him, but as college fans basketball they were used to great players leaving the team.
Since Jake helped the Tar Heels team win 2 NCAA tournaments they couldn"t be mad at him, as Jake had won the Naismith College Player of the Year, the number 7 s.h.i.+rt he wore at the university would be retired from North Carolina University.
So Jake could finally have peace until the end of his cla.s.ses at the university and the trip to Australia, the race training with trainer Davis and Zack was easy because it was the same as always.
But his training with Yuen Woo-ping was much more intense, Yuen Woo-ping knew that soon Jake would have to go to Australia, getting there Jake would have to train the movements suspended on the cables and then he would have to study his lines at script and film.
So it was less than two weeks before he taught everything he could to Jake in that time, of course, if it was for Jake to learn everything Yuen Woo-ping even with his intelligence it would still take a few more months.
So Yuen Woo-ping taught Jake just what he might need to use in action films and martial arts films, Jake even learned to shoot to better train his movements with Firearms.
Even though Jake had not done any proper training to learn martial arts, he could defend himself even from a skilled fighter for a while using his speed and what he learned.
If it was an armed fight Jake would be even more prepared to defend himself even though he hoped that with his luck it would never be necessary, in these teachings Jake learned why he needed the photographic memory skill when he learned his job as an actor with the system.
Jake thought that to be a good actor he just needed to be able to express himself well, using his speech and expressions to pa.s.s on the emotions he was feeling to the audience, but after learning from Yuen Woo-ping he realized that in today"s cinema it wasn"t even close enough to be a good actor.
If Jake couldn"t learn things just by watching a few times and being taught he couldn"t learn enough in the short time he would have in filming a movie.
Thinking about it Jake realized that his role in this film The Matrix would really open up new doors and give him more opportunity to have more roles in the cinema, Jake thought that playing in the NBA he would not be able to act in films.
But Yuen Woo-ping said that if he became a good actor and a director liked him, it was quite possible that the director could organize all the film footage in the time that Jake could shoot his scenes in the off-season of the NBA.
But even though he knew that Jake knew it was almost impossible for him to receive so much recognition for a film director to go through so much difficulty just having him as the actor in the film, Jake knew that almost everyone he knew in Hollywood had more skill and more time available than him.
Not to mention that a lot of shooting in other settings and countries would be harmed because Jake would have a few months out of the basketball season to partic.i.p.ate in the recordings, but for the future when Jake left the NBA he might have more opportunities to act.
So in the next few weeks, Jake went out more often with his friends from the university that he wouldn"t see for a while, even if he could meet them in the future it wouldn"t be a meeting with everyone together as it was at the university.
They stayed together until Jake"s cla.s.ses ended, after taking the exams Jake could say that he had finished his time at the university even though he was going to come back in the future to finish his course.
Jake needed to do only a few subjects because of the great grades he always had and would get his diploma, Jake had three parties after his exams, one of them was with his friends at the university and mainly his roommates and cla.s.smates that he had.
This was a lively party even though Jake had banned alcoholic beverages at his parties because he and his friends were not of legal drinking age and it could damage his reputation, his friends understood and then they would have other parties with a lot of alcohol.
Another party Jake had with his teammates and even though this party wasn"t that big it was very important because Jake had spent a lot of time with his teammates, even Coach Guthridge showed up at the party and as he had no alcohol players were not intimidated even by coach Bill Guthridge at the party.
Another party that Jake had was with his fraternity people at the university, Jake did several activities with the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, mainly in his first year at the university when he had Charlie McNairy to accompany him, but because of the grades Jake had and the several sporting achievements he had on the Tar Heels team and even in the marathons he had become one of the most important members of that fraternity at North Carolina University.
Jake managed to make many friendsh.i.p.s in the fraternity that he would remember for many years, Jake did not break the rules because he had the mentality of a 49-year-old man, but he really enjoyed his time at university and if he did not regret having spent those two years at North Carolina University.
Jake could understand why players who went to universities sometimes stayed 4 years even though they had the chance to enter the NBA before, that was because the university environment was great and it was an experience that everyone had to have.
After the exams, Jake was out of college and had to go to Australia soon, but before that, he asked for a week to go to Miami to spend that time with his mother before going to the shoot with Yuen Woo-ping.
Fortunately for Jake, Yuen Woo-ping had told the directors that Jake had learned everything he needed and that another week would not delay filming and so Jake could go to Miami, Jake would stay in Australia until the NBA draft and then return to Australia again.
Only after that could he spend more time with his mother because Jake knew that the NBA season wouldn"t start as it normally does every year and Jake would have more time before he started training with his team.
Eva was very happy when Jake came home because she was also prepared to go another month without seeing Jake until the NBA draft, the truth was that Jake didn"t even want to go to Australia to have to return in a little over a month for the NBA draft, but Yuen Woo-ping said that Jake would be able to do several cable scenes this month.