Start coaching the Thunder, starting with Westbrook

Chapter 7 Clayton Bennett
Oklahoma is located in the south-central part of Mi Grain, and the capital, Oklahoma City, is in the county.

It used to be one of the settlements of Indians, but now the industry is dominated by agriculture and heavy industry, especially the rich natural gas and oil resources, which is the main reason for the prosperity of the city's economy.

The resident population of Oklahoma City is only over 100 million, which is less than Li Sheng's hometown in his previous life, and this is already the most populous place in the entire state, so it can be said that the land is vast and sparsely populated.

When Li Sheng came out of the city airport, he happened to see a middle-aged brown-haired white man standing next to a Ford holding a sign with "LI.S" crookedly written on it.

When Li Sheng took the initiative to meet him, he deliberately took out his mobile phone and compared it with the photos on it.

After the dissemination of the finals, Li Sheng's current photo is also easy to find on the Internet. Of course, he should have been sent to him by Presti.

"Hello, my name is Mozak and I'm a scout. Mr. Presti asked me to meet you here..."

Mozak is a "young man" who looks much older than his actual age. Well, he is not young in his early thirties, but his poor skin and forehead wrinkles obviously make him look a little anxious.

However, he was very enthusiastic and didn't care about Li Sheng's ethnicity at all. After confirming Li Sheng's identity, he immediately came up and put his arms around his shoulders with a smile, "Dude, I heard you want to join Thunder? Trust me, there is absolutely nothing wrong.

"Brooks is a very nice guy. I read your news too. I'm sure he'll like you. But I'm going to take you to meet our general manager now. He's an incredible guy. You can't believe he built our team with just a few years of drafting..."

Li Shengxin thought that if this guy was going to replace Brooks, what would he think of him?
However, it may not be possible in the first place, let's take a look first.

Mozak was chattering along the way, but Li Sheng didn't feel bored, because Mozak was talking about things related to the Thunder. He said that when Durant was selected, he was the one who accompanied Presti to watch the Durant University game.

Talking about Harden's regret that he failed to renew his contract, "We could have kept him, and he wanted to stay, but you know, man, the NBA is a fucking business..."

You guys seem to be rebellious, and you seem to be a little dissatisfied with the boss?
Think about things like fried rice grains that shouldn't be too common. It's normal to scold the boss for earning the boss's money, not to mention that it's a matter of fact.

Did you do this kind of thing less in your previous life?

However, this trip Mozak did not take Li Sheng to the Thunder arena, but directly to Presti's house.

Now is the offseason, and the Thunder's season is over long ago, but Presti, as the general manager, has to get busy.

He has a lot to do this offseason, he is busy with business.

However, the matter with Li Sheng does not involve official business for the time being. Bennett also wants to meet him in a private name. Didn’t even the scouts know why he came, so it is best to meet him at home.

Li Sheng finally met this legendary manager at his residence in Presti. He assembled three future MVPs through the draft. He also missed the championship because he missed Battier indirectly, and missed Harden and missed the next golden three-year championship time.

But strictly speaking, the latter cannot be said to be his fault, nor can it even be completely attributed to the boss's inaction.

In fact, what many people don't know is that one of the important reasons why Bennett tightened his belt on the two contracts of Battier and Harden was related to the lawsuit fee that was originally moved from Seattle.

Back then, Bennett wanted to move the Supersonics to Oklahoma City, and reached an agreement after negotiating with Seattle. However, he had to pay more than 7 million yuan in lawsuits, and he had to keep the team's name and logo in Seattle. That's how the Oklahoma City Thunder came into being.

This amount was not fully paid off until last year. For Bennett, who has a total net worth of only [-] million, it is normal to tighten his belt on the contract.

In theory, starting next season, they should be able to afford more.

Unfortunately, starting this year, the Thunder began to suffer from bad luck.

First, Westbrook was reimbursed for the season. Although the operation is successful, he must rest at the beginning of the new season and recuperate while playing.

Then the next year, Durant was injured again in the regular season. Westbrook took the remnants and only managed to reach ninth in the Western Conference, and finally missed the playoffs.

In the next season, the doubles and juniors also played on and off, and Ibaka was also affected by the sequelae of injuries, and their combat power was greatly reduced. Even so, they still reached the Western Conference Finals, and finally lost to the Warriors in the tiebreaker.

Then Durant left, Ibaka was also sent to the Magic, and the "lone hero" Westbrook played a crazy triple-double season.

But the end of the double youth era actually announced the temporary closure of the Thunder's window to win the championship, and at least in the 22 years since Li Sheng's rebirth, the Thunder still couldn't return to the current powerful posture.

For Li Sheng, it is definitely a great pity that Dewey did not win the damn championship when they were together, because sometimes it may be a matter of luck, unless you are in a team that is completely crushing like Yu Yuyong, otherwise a single injury may end all your efforts for a season.

Even Yu Yuyong was defeated by injuries in the end...

"Li, you are welcome to come to Oklahoma City as a guest."

Mozak ran away after being delivered, and it seemed that he had other things to do.

Presti is a middle-aged white man. Well, he is really middle-aged this time. He wears a pair of glasses and combs his hair back. Although his hairline is a bit high, he is not yet in danger of balding. From certain angles, he looks a bit like Ryan Reynolds, a talkative guy.

He seemed quite interested in Li Sheng, greeted Li Sheng, let him sit down together, and then smiled: "Please forgive me for saying that, but I am really surprised by one thing, did you know Mr. Bennett before?"

Li Sheng shook his head with a smile and said, "Of course not, I've heard of his name, but we've never met. To be honest, I haven't even been to Oklahoma before, and I haven't been to a few states in the United States."

"Hahaha..." Presti responded with a burst of hearty laughter, but he felt relieved. At least it showed that Li Sheng was not the kind of narrow-minded and impulsive young man who could take jokes and even laugh at himself. To be honest, he was a little different from the Chinese in his impression.

"Mr. Bennett is waiting. Let's sit for a while and go find him together before dark. Maybe we can just have dinner at his place. You don't know how much I miss his foie gras."

"Uh..." Li Sheng was a little strange. Is there any tradition that people in NBA teams like eating and drinking so much?

After that, the two chatted about some news that Presti found useful.

From Li Sheng's information alone, Presti really can't judge what kind of person he is.

He seems to be a top student—well, in his opinion, it seems quite common for Chinese top students, but he did not expect that he would fall in love with basketball instead of going to Wall Street after finishing his financial management at UCLA.

Because I couldn't play, I thought of being a basketball coach, and soon got the coaching qualification certificate, and then successfully interviewed with the Spurs, and became a one-year rookie assistant coach.

Although in the past season, he did not show up, but it can be seen that Popovich is very satisfied with him, and the finals were even bigger, and he even made headlines after the game.

Presti felt that this should be a very interesting person, but from the information he found out, he was very boring in private.

But after this meeting, he found that Li Shengting could speak, and he was not as taciturn as the rumors said, and he didn't know if he went to the Spurs, which is rich in sneerers, and was influenced like this.

Then when the sun was setting, after saying goodbye to the hostess, Li Sheng got into Presti's car and soon arrived at the villa of Thunder boss Clayton Bennett.

Bennett also waited for a long time, and when he saw Li Sheng coming over, he even stood up, and then stepped forward to give him a big hug, and said, "Finally here, the savior of our team!"

"..." Li Sheng didn't need to look back, he knew that Presti behind him must have a white question mark on his face, but he also had a Chinese question mark on his face.

Bennett immediately laughed and said, "Don't be surprised, there's a reason why I asked Sam to invite you over. It's actually because... I had a dream before..."

(End of this chapter)