Chapter Ninety-Seven: Those Who Have Set Their Sights on Turgon

Before the May Day holiday arrived, Wang Lei brought his team back to the city where he had been born.

Born and raised there, he had left many of life’s firsts in that city. Yet when he had been at his most miserable, only a boy he had once dismissed as a little kid had led him away from that sorrowful place.

Brother Six, Li Kaixuan, did not let him down. Before long, he sent Wang Lei a batch of game footage, all of it recordings from the Capital Youth Team’s earlier matches. These clips were not hard to find, but they took a great deal of time and effort. Wang Lei’s team still lacked the ability to collect every opponent’s game tapes; after all, their overall conditions were among the lower tier of the entire Northern Division.

Li Kaixuan and Wang Lei had once shared the same dormitory. Back then, their living conditions could not compare with today’s. Though it had been only a little more than a decade, they had still been living in communal barracks, eight to a room. The stench in the dormitory was so foul that even rats would not come near. Wang Lei’s own room had been slightly better, with one fewer person. Wang Lei was the youngest there, the seventh in order.

All the way there, Wang Lei kept turning over in his mind the Capital Youth Team footage he had watched. It had to be said: this was a team whose strength, relatively speaking, went beyond the level of a youth squad.

That was not because the team was especially mature, or because it played with such obvious structure and discipline. It was because the individual ability of its players was truly outstanding.

By tradition, the center remained the core of the Capital Youth Team. Tao Zheyong, two meters and eight centimeters tall and only seventeen years old, already displayed in the footage a level of ability no weaker than some professional teams’ starting centers. Though still young and a little short on bulk, Tao Zheyong’s mobility was exceptionally good. That was what Wang Lei feared most. If his own team failed to open up the offense, then against a center like that, their defense would not matter much at all.

What worried Wang Lei even more was the Capital Youth Team’s perimeter defense.

From the game footage, Wang Lei saw that this Capital Youth Team was vastly different from the one once led by Coach Liu. The coach who had once looked down on Wang Lei had surprisingly changed his tactical thinking. Though the system still centered on the interior, Wang Lei felt this Capital Youth Team possessed formidable strength on the perimeter.

With two wing players of exceptional speed, plus a point guard barely over one meter seventy in height, the Capital Youth Team’s starting defensive rotations were extremely swift, and the whole team moved at a breathtaking pace.

From the footage alone, Wang Lei could tell that this team was anything but ordinary. One could even say it was well beyond the level expected of a youth squad.

In truth, abandoning such a game would not have mattered much to Wang Lei. In the long run, even if they lost this one, so long as they won every game that still had to be won, the team could still advance smoothly to the final stage. But Wang Lei did not want to give up on a game like this, and neither did his players.

The players of the Border Province Youth Team, who had once been the fringe figures of their respective school teams, were no longer the anxious youngsters they had been half a year ago. After being tempered by victory and by Wang Lei’s new ideas, they had all, by and large, transformed themselves. Perhaps going toe-to-toe with the Capital Youth Team might not end in victory, but if they did not give everything they had, then defeat was the only certainty.

Wang Lei showed the footage to the players, and the whole team gathered together to study how to deal with a powerful foe. At the same time, there were also people who had set their sights on Wang Lei’s team and its players.

Liu Sicheng was unquestionably a meritorious coach in Capital basketball. Under his guidance, the Capital Youth Team had achieved glorious results, and had also sent one outstanding player after another into the professional ranks. Wang Lei was among them, though Liu Sicheng was very reluctant to admit how exceptional Wang Lei really was.

When they first met, Wang Lei was only fifteen and still in middle school, and he had left Liu Sicheng with a bad impression. Proud and arrogant, Wang Lei had answered criticism with open defiance. From that point on, the two of them had remained locked in a tacit opposition.

Now that same brat from back then had actually led a不起眼 team right up to his doorstep. Liu Sicheng, now approaching sixty, could not help feeling a little emotional. Whether he was lamenting his own poor judgment or Wang Lei’s hard-luck life was impossible to say.

But he dared not be careless in the slightest about this match. Three straight wins in the earlier rounds were more than enough to prove the strength of Wang Lei’s team.

After watching the footage, Liu Sicheng felt somewhat irritated. In his view, a brat was still a brat; nothing had changed. Their play was a complete mess, lacking any structure at all. A team that survived only on fast breaks and long-range perimeter shots was, in Liu Sicheng’s eyes, simply playing with fire.

Still, aside from his contempt for Wang Lei’s tactics, Liu Sicheng did take an interest in the white-haired point guard on Wang Lei’s team. He had to admit that although his understanding of tactics still clung to his old ways, he remained highly skilled at identifying talent. He could see Turgun’s exceptional gifts. Such a keen sense of the game was not something an ordinary young player could possess.

And beyond Liu Sicheng, someone far away in Jinling had also set his sights on Turgun.

Yangtze River Sports Club was Jinling’s largest comprehensive sports group. They fielded teams in the three major ball sports, as well as in the country’s more popular competitive leagues. Some of those teams were even league powers. Their men’s basketball team, however, had not been especially impressive in recent years. Though they were still regulars in the playoffs, they could not compare with their long-time city rival, the Golden Deer men’s basketball team.

Golden Deer Men’s Basketball were last year’s champions of the Republic Men’s Basketball First Division League. Although the club itself had existed for less than twelve years, it had risen with startling force, thanks to an excellent scouting staff and ample capital.

Golden Deer’s scouting team numbered more than thirty people. In recent years, they had focused their attention on some of the country’s more remote regions. As Wang Lei’s team continued to deliver strong results, Golden Deer’s scouts also took note of this squad with its rather unconventional style of play. The player they valued most among them was Turgun Mamat.

Ever since the game against the Ningliao Province Youth Team, Golden Deer’s chief scout had been following every match played by the Border Province Youth Team. Setting the team’s style aside, Turgun’s extraordinary shooting and excellent ball-handling in those games had left a deep impression on him. He felt that burying such a player out in the borderlands was a tremendous waste. Golden Deer ought to have a young talent like him.

Even as Wang Lei led his team toward the capital, a Golden Deer delegation had already set out for the borderlands. In their view, as long as Turgun’s parents could be won over, everything would basically be settled. After all, Turgun was still a minor and needed a guardian’s consent to sign a contract. As for the Border Province Youth Team’s opinion, Golden Deer did not consider that to be any kind of obstacle at all.