Chapter 471 Basketball and Business 5
The other day very early he sent some drivers he had hired for the next few days to take some rental cars to pick up his team players at the hotel, Jake would not rent a bus or order several taxis for his teammates.
Jake had already called the players who were waiting in the hotel lobby, they were curious because they never saw anyone do this, but they soon accepted and got into the cars that followed one after the other until they reached the mansion where Jake lived.
All the players were surprised by the mansion that Jake owned, they thought he managed to buy this mansion after getting his sponsors.h.i.+p contracts with Adidas and other companies, but they soon realized that this was a house that had existed for many years.
"Welcome, I wanted to thank everyone for coming to Miami for this game, I hope everyone will have fun in the game and know that you will help thousands of people from a charity with this game."
"Let"s go to the back of my house, which has the court and a locker room where you can change clothes."
So the players followed Jake and went to the locker room where they had prepared uniforms, they were not the uniforms they would wear in the game, but they were from Adidas too, they had blue and red s.h.i.+rts to differentiate the teams.
The players started talking while warming up and Jake went to talk to all the players a little bit, he spoke to Tracy McGrady to thank him for accepting the invitation, he spoke to Paul Pierce, and also to Tim Duncan to thank.
So the players thought Jake looked very humble and spoke to everyone politely, many skilled players like him became arrogant over time, so they soon went to the court at Jake"s house.
They were impressed with the quality of the court, Jake had done something as professional as possible, but without bleachers and without all the beauty of an Arena, so it didn"t cost millions of dollars as the Arenas did.
"I was thinking that we could do some team training to warm up a little bit and then we can do two teams of 4 players and have one player on reserve, whoever stays on reserve can play on both teams."
"So we can have a little training playing a game with 2 times of 10 minutes, what do you think?"
Everyone agreed with Jake and thought it was best to do it anyway, so all the players did exercises doing pa.s.sing and dribbling training and then doing three-point shots and mid-range shots.
Almost all of the players on Jake"s team were skilled at three-point shots, most notably Jake, Paul Pierce, and Vince Carter, all players had skills to catch rebounds, but Jake, Antawn Jamison, and Tim Duncan were superior to everyone.
So after training and with everyone warm-up, the hardest part was putting together two teams balanced with these players, Jake knew how to put together the best team possible, but that would make the training boring.
But Jake didn"t want to lose, so he wouldn"t send the best players to the other team, so after thinking a little, Jake decided to build a team to win, but that the game could be played too.
The teams would be Jake, Tim Duncan, Vince Carter, and Paul Pierce, the other team would be Michael Doleac, Tracy McGrady, Antawn Jamison, and Tim Thomas, Bryce Drew would play in reserve, Jake knew his team was much stronger, but at least he would be able to train like that.
The players thought that the two teams were balanced after all in Jake"s team only Tim Duncan was a player that everyone knew he played well, the training game started and Tim Duncan won the contest at the top and pa.s.sed the ball to Jake.
Jake calmly advanced the ball remembering the feeling of playing a game with real teammates and opponents, it was great to do his imagination training, but it could never be like a real game.
Jake advanced with the ball and soon pa.s.sed to Vince Carter who was on the left, Carter advanced with the ball and soon Tracy McGrady arrived to defend, Carter tried to pa.s.s by McGrady and failed and had to pa.s.s to Paul Pierce on the right.
Pierce advanced with the ball and managed to get rid of Antawn Jamison"s defense and ran to make the layup and get the first 2 points of the game, Jake could soon see that all the players were in good physical condition.
Jake also realized that this game they were playing was different from what it was at university, Paul Pierce seemed to have much more skill and agility to get rid of his opponent"s defense than Carter and Jamison had.
Jake also realized that he could just pa.s.s the ball to Tim Duncan because Michael Doleac would not be able to defend against him, so the attacks would be much faster, soon after it was the turn of Antawn Jamison"s team to attack.
As they were not playing with a PG, Tracy McGrady was setting the shots, so it would be him who Jake would have to defend against McGrady stepped forward and tried to get rid of Jake"s defense, but Jake was faster and just kept his distance.
So McGrady had to pa.s.s the ball to Jamison on the right, Jamison took the ball and Pierce soon appeared to press on defense, Jamison tried to pa.s.s through the defense and failed and had to pa.s.s to McGrady further back.
McGrady observed the placement of his teammates and pa.s.sed the ball to Tim Thomas, Carter was defending against Thomas, but Thomas could not try to get rid of the defense easily because Jake and Tim Duncan were watching him.
So Thomas pa.s.sed the ball to Doleac who was ahead, Doleac received the ball and turn to make the layup, but Duncan used his strength to hinder Doleac in the play that missed the attack, Duncan soon caught the rebound and pa.s.sed it to Jake.
Jake calmly advanced into the attack while his teammates advanced into the attack, reaching the three-point line, this time McGrady was defending against him and Tim Thomas was defending against Carter.
Seeing this, Jake realized that McGrady was too far away and so he took advantage and tried the three-point shot to hit and make 3 more points for his team who already had a 5 point advantage.
So Jamison"s team realized that Jake"s team was much stronger and they had no chance of winning, the training game ended with Jake"s team winning by 16 points.
In this training it was easy to see the qualities and defects of almost all the players, Jake managed to defend very well against McGrady and for that reason McGrady had no opportunity to make any points.
Jake made 4 steals in that game and 2 blocks and left the rebounds to Duncan, with Duncan catching the rebounds of Jamison"s team failed to catch any offensive rebounds, and Jake tried more to make a.s.sists than to make points to know how his teammates They were playing.
Tim Duncan, Tim Thomas, and Tracy McGrady who already had experience in the NBA realized that Jake already had the quality to be a very good player in the NBA even though he didn"t debut, they knew that because the three wanted to have someone like Jake playing on their team.
For the training to be fairer in the coming days the teams were changed with Tim Duncan always playing on Jake"s opposing team to make everything more balanced, but Jake"s team won in all training sessions.
On those days, in addition to training the players of the two teams, they also made new friends, Jake became more friends with Tim Duncan and Paul Pierce as well, the two teams made two different groups of friends on those days.
The players invited by Jake agreed to go to dinner a few times at Eva"s restaurant, but Jake didn"t accompany them once because he still wanted to respect Lola and didn"t want to cause unnecessary discomfort.
The sports media in the United States began to gather more in the city and were able to interview the rookie players several times during these days, so basketball fans started to become more interested in this game.
Tickets for the game had already sold out and so Jake managed to raise another $ 1.1 million for charity, players were excited to learn that 15,000 tickets had been sold to watch their game.
The ticket price was not expensive, but it was also not cheap and it was basketball fans who decided to pay for tickets, Jake also knew that more people were subscribing to TNT just to watch their game.
That was because TNT was doing good advertising and making it easier for more people to pay for the subscription, the fans liked it because it had a lot of good programming on the other subscription channels as well.
Fortunately, Jake had already warned all players more than a month ago and so everyone managed to be in the best physical condition for this game, so it would depend on the performance of the players to gain the recognition of the fans.
After several days of training, Jake"s teammates were confident that they would win this game because with Tim Duncan, Jake, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison and Tracy McGrady they had the confidence to win that game.
Antawn Jamison would play as a PF in that game and thus the team would have more speed and with Jamison and Duncan they would get all the rebounds and many points inside the area, and in defense, they would have Jake and Tim Duncan to avoid the attacks of the opponents.
So with only one day to go before the special game Jake can finally meet Kate, she had called him because her manager wanted to talk to him, Kate"s manager was called Lily, she was 31 and was already married to a lawyer.
Lily was a beautiful woman who took care of herself, but she was a little overweight because she didn"t eat properly because she had to work a lot, Lily had black eyes and hair and her eyes were highlighted because of the gla.s.ses she wore.