From today on is the king

Chapter 596. 595. The Beginning of Opposition

Again!
Seeing Liu Mang's strange eyes, Xiao Zhan felt uncomfortable all over.

Even James, who has a strong "mature heart" after training and practice, can't stand Liu Mang's weird eyes.

James felt from the bottom of his heart that the senior in front of him wanted to "play with" him. He felt a chill in his heart, and felt that it was a wrong choice for him to invite Liu Mang to lunch.

However, building a good relationship with the league's superstars is a decision that James has made before entering the NBA, even since 2002, when he announced that he would directly enter the NBA after high school, he has already made a decision.

"Ace, I may go to your country to promote sneakers next summer. Can you tell me about the interesting places in your country? I want to go and see it then." James forcibly diverted his attention, racking his brains to think of a topic, and put aside the uneasy feeling now.

James thought of a good topic this time, and Liu Mang immediately diverted his attention: "Travel to our country? You should get the places recommended by the tour guide, but I don't recommend you to go to the famous scenic spots recommended by the tour guide, such as Hangzhou West Lake. You have heard of it. That's good. If you go to Hangzhou, you don't have to go to the West Lake. You know? Then I have to tell you about our country’s superior reform-through-labor system, which is different from feeding and drinking criminals for free..."

After Liu Mang finished ordering food just now, looking at James's face that was no different from that of ten or twenty years later, he couldn't help but start planning how to deal with the young Zhan in front of him the day after tomorrow.

To abuse the little emperor, it is probably only the first year that he can have fun. Wait until James' second season, the 2004-2005 season, the league began to enter the No-Hand-check era, coupled with the soaring strength of James, it will be difficult to stop the young Zhan from the second season. It will not be easy to abuse James by then, so Liu Mang looked at James strangely.

However, everyone is happy to discuss the good things about their own country. They can say bad things about their own country, but when chatting with foreigners, they always point to the good places.

Seeing that Liu Mang finally lost that gaze, James breathed a sigh of relief and began to discuss China with Liu Mang.

James attaches great importance to China. His management team told him that China is the most important market for the NBA in the future. He naturally wants to occupy a place in the Chinese market. Understanding China with real Chinese is of course the best choice.

However, if Liu Wei knows what James thinks, he may feel sorry for James. As far as Liu Wei knows, even if James is popular in the United States in the next few years, in China, people only know the four major shooting guards...mainly Kobe, Yao Ming, O'Neal, James and the future beasts. .

The first private meeting between Liu Mang and James was a bit awkward, but overall it was very pleasant.

After lunch, Liu Mang's agent, Schwartz, and James' agent Rich Paul, the largest sports agency in the United States, came to pick them up and went to Nike's largest sneaker store in Atlanta.

James came to Atlanta one day earlier, mainly to get together with Liu Mang, have lunch, and enhance friendship. At [-]:[-] in the afternoon, the two went to Nike's sneaker promotion to help promote James' first-generation boots in Atlanta.

For this point, Liu Mang felt strange. There had never been two Superman balloon stars promoting sneakers together before. It was mainly the most popular Koeika, one from Adidas, one from Reebok, and one from Nike. They were all set up as sworn enemies.

Kobe’s image has collapsed this year. This unlucky boy who doesn’t know how to use money to stage things outside the court still goes to Colorado once or twice a month to file a lawsuit. Adidas doesn’t want him, and Nike can’t help him for a while.

For Nike, Carter's popularity has declined sharply over the past year, and people's aesthetic fatigue has emerged. In the playoffs, Carter did not perform like Kobe and Iverson, and in the regular season, he did not have the outstanding performance of McGrady.

Originally, James and Wade and Anthony were fighting against these two. The latter two belonged to Jordan, and they were also considered Nike's stars. But now there is a Liu Mang who is more popular than Wade and Anthony combined. Naturally, Liu Mang and James are used to compete against the other two brands.

Some aspects of Liu Mang really admire James. This time, Liu Mang has participated in the promotion with other stars, but James does not behave like an 18-year-old child. He speaks official language skillfully with the media and mingles with fans when interacting with the fans.

However, Liu Mang didn’t have much idea of ​​wanting to learn from James. Everyone is different. Liu Mang felt that he would never be able to learn James’ social butterfly-like ability.

……

……

Time, November 11th, location, Phillips Arena.

"Ace, you are studying that rookie champion! Do you want to play again?" Rasheed Wallace was a little excited.

Liu Mang was studying the few game videos of the Cavaliers from the preseason to the regular season this season, and even some of the game videos from high school were obtained by the team's editors.

Jason Terry, who was practicing his strong shooting ability, also came over: "Ace, are you going to teach that guy who lied about being a high school student a lesson?"

"Lied about being a high school student?" Liu Mang was a little surprised by this title.

"Oh, look, that guy looks as old as my dad, he doesn't look like a high school student, and he actually plays better than Ricky Davis. He must have lied about his age. I guess he is at least 35 or six years old..." Jason Terry was very upset. Another guard who was so strong in his rookie year came, which made him very upset.

Liu Mang did not expect that whether it is Chinese fans or American fans, the things that make fun of James seem to be the same.

After all, it's a friend, so of course Liu Mang wants to complain about James!Liu Mang said: "Jason, he's just a little older, don't look at him with colored glasses, it's okay to bully a rookie, but to bully an old man, others will call us disrespectful!"

"Haha, Ace, your mouth is more annoying than mine..."

Liu Mang, Rasheed Wallace, and Jason Terry discussed how to deal with James together, and attracted other teammates. Prince, Raheem, and Barnes, the three Eagles frontline defenders, heard that they were going to deal with James, and immediately became interested, including Kwame Brown, who was also the No. [-] pick in high school, and joined them with great interest.

Ratliff, Stockton and other veterans shook their heads with a smile and joined in.

Bullying rookies, especially guys like James and Milicic who seem to be terrifying opponents in the future, bullying and bullying them during their rookie period is something that veterans like to do very much.

The most famous example is Isaiah Thomas, who isolated Jordan's rookie season All-Star because Jordan didn't take the initiative to say hello. Of course, Isaiah Thomas may not have thought that Jordan was such a hard iron, and finally lost his chance to enter the greatest dream team.

Although the Cavaliers had a bad start this year, James made the news every now and then, mainly because he was completely different from other high school students who entered the NBA before. When Kobe, Garnett, and Tracy McGrady entered the NBA, they could only see talent in their rookie years.

Just like Kidd felt the pressure brought by Liu Mang, most of the famous swingmen in the league felt the pressure brought by James, and this is still a rookie!

The most important thing is that before James entered the NBA, he had already signed the second largest sneaker endorsement contract in history. Compared with the largest endorsement contract in history that Liu Mang got after he showed his talent and strength in his rookie season, James didn't even play in the preseason.

Seeing that his teammates didn't have much interest in playing the Cavaliers, and now they are swarming up to abuse the young James, Liu Mang mourned for LeBron Jr., and then decisively began to build an impregnable defense and targeted offense for James, so that James can truly feel what the NBA is...

It's just that after James entered the NBA, his ability evaluation dropped a bit, from 82 to 79.

Liu Mang did some research before he understood this point. It was still a matter of adaptation. When James played for the McDonald’s All-Stars, he played with those high school students, and he could show an ability value that could be rated as 82 in the NBA.

Of course, this does not rule out teammates, coaches and other factors.

The strength of the Cavaliers is indeed poor. Originally, there was a combination of Boozer and Big Z in the interior, but now only Big Z is left. Big Z's offense is not bad, and his defense and rebounds are terrible, forcing James, who is still playing point guard, to throw himself inside to grab rebounds. Against such opponents, it is difficult for the Eagles to regard them as opponents of the same level.

As for abusing food, Raheem, who is the most similar in size to James, should be the one who wants to abuse food the most, but Raheem is not such a hot-tempered person, no one brought it up, and he is not that interested.

After participating in the promotion with James, Liu Mang devoted himself to the next duel with James, discussing with Mike Woodson how to defend, and discussing with his teammates how to attack.

For this fight against James, Liu Mang attaches great importance to it. Suppressing James in the early stage of his career is the most difficult part of Liu Mang's task as the king of the new generation of players. Everyone else can say that it is the most difficult for James.

James, who is currently training in the hotel gym, doesn't know that the friendly elder brother who told him about the good places and interesting things about China yesterday is thinking about dealing with him.

However, James' training attitude is also admirable. As the youngest member of the Cavaliers, his training is the hardest. The rest of the Cavaliers came to Atlanta, a big city, and they had already gone to have fun. Only James was left to practice.

……

One day flew by, and on November 11th, the game day between the Eagles and the Cavaliers arrived!
For the duel between Liu Mang and James, the alliance started to build momentum in advance several days ago!
Finally, the appearance has a new point to build momentum for Liu Mang. At the same time, James has lived up to expectations since he entered the NBA. He started 14 games and averaged 16 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists.

This time, David Stern personally planned the promotion of the Rising Star Showdown.

After obtaining the consent of Nike, the day before the game between the Eagles and the Cavaliers, David Stern used a photo of Liu Mang and James participating in a promotional event together. The title on the official NBA website was "One Second Brother, Next Second Enemy".

Compared with Adam Silva, who only bluntly forcibly creates public opinion, and the future kind of imitating cats and tigers that will force two teams to fight in the finals in an attempt to reproduce the Magic Birds duel in the 80s, it is embarrassing to look at.

Adam Silva has a strong ability to negotiate business, and can often sign contracts that are much higher than expected to bring benefits to the league. However, making Adam Silva have negotiating capital is all due to David Stern's strong promotion ability.

He didn't forcibly exaggerate the strength of Liu Mang and James and the things that could create enmity between the two. Just that sentence showed Liu Mang and James' feeling of being both enemies and friends.

This was originally a promotion of the rookie year match between James and Anthony. James was not used to compare with Kobe at the beginning. Kobe just collapsed this year. The confrontation between James and Anthony was originally what the league wanted.

Originally, in addition to the Chinese market, Liu Mang was trained by the league as a candidate to challenge Kobe, but Kobe did it himself, which seemed to have ruined his own future, but at this time James played in line with or even exceeded people's expectations. Originally, David Stern thought that it would take two years for James to grow up before he could become an opponent with Liu Mang and Kobe.

But James was so mature when he first entered the NBA at the age of 18, even more mature than Liu Mang when he first entered the NBA. In this case, David Stern decisively chose to put the duel between Liu Mang and James on the stage.

And the effect is beyond David Stern's expectation!
Just before the 1991 Finals against the Devil, David Stern didn't do too much publicity, but just used an adjective-torch.

The word torch has also become the representative of the inheritance in Jordan's mouth, and later Kobe and James have continued to use it.

James is more suitable to oppose Liu Mang than Kobe, and is more representative of the United States. Like most blacks in the United States, he lived in poverty since he was a child.

James is the representative of the American dream!Compared with Kobe, who is regarded as a sandwich biscuit by many Americans, James is more suitable as a representative of the American dream.

Because the league's promotion is working well, the game between the Eagles and the Cavaliers, the attention of this game has soared. It was originally an insignificant regular season, but it has become a lot of attention!
Because of David Stern's good promotion, American fans naturally regarded this game as a duel between the strongest new generation players of China and the United States!

After Liu Mang finished playing in the first two years, he became the No. 1 star of the new generation. Since there were no outside stars or inside stars who could be compared with Liu Mang in the past three years, fans did not expect such a thing as a Sino-US war.

But now, James has shown a personal ability that is even better than Liu Mang's rookie season. After the promotion of the league, the confrontation between the two has risen to such a height!
However, Atlanta fans still support Liu Mang. As for the American Dream... Atlanta fans sneered!Without Liu Mang leading the team to the present, their basketball circle in Atlanta is like an invisible man in the United States, talking about the American dream!
Liu Mang didn't know whether James was nervous or something else, Liu Mang didn't care at all, but became more excited!
(End of this chapter)