Chapter 29: Team training

Zhang Yang’s high school life officially began.

The curriculum of public high schools is really limited.

Zhang Yang learned from DeRozan that the honors class and regular class have a 3+1 curriculum every day, with three regular classes in the morning, starting at 3:8 and ending at 11:1; and one elective class in the afternoon, such as music, art, and physical education, which ends at 2:. The rest of the time is free to arrange and can take elective courses, but the elective courses offered on campus at Compton High School are only those "cheap" subjects. The more expensive elective subjects can only be "self-taught", such as enrolling in a class outside the school.

His class B has slightly more courses, with 6 more classes per week. From Tuesday to Thursday it is 4+2, with 4 regular classes in the morning and 1 regular class and 1 auxiliary class in the afternoon. Monday and Friday are also 3+1.

The course schedule was completely different from what he remembered from his original life halfway up the mountain. In his memory, when he was in grade 9, he had 35 to 40 classes a week. The circle of Chinese and Asian students was very crowded, and many people would go to take classes on weekends.

It's incomparable to his previous life when he had 5 classes in the morning, 4 classes in the afternoon, 3 evening self-study classes, six days a week, and evening self-study classes on weekend nights...

Apart from the fact that he felt he didn't learn much, this course arrangement really made him happy.

Zhang Yang guessed that there must be someone in their class who was the best at taking the exam, the kind who studied hard in secret. There are always people who want to work hard to climb up the social ladder everywhere.

He is very serious in class. If he has to learn, he has to learn well. But he doesn't study in his spare time. After school in the afternoon, he will make an appointment with DeRozan to hang out in the training ground together.

A few days passed in a flash, and the first weekend of the new semester arrived.

Daily morning training. After school started, Zhang Yang adjusted the morning training time from 6:15 to 7:15, shortening the time to 1 hour, and putting more training in the afternoon and after dinner.

After breakfast at 8 o'clock, he took Thomas's car to school.

He didn't need to tell anyone that he was boarding at the head coach's house. If Thomas's time to go to school in the morning was just right, he would take a ride if possible. However, Thomas' working hours were different from other teachers in the school. He often went to school after 9 or even 10 o'clock, but his working hours in the afternoon were very long. After school started, he was busy until seven or eight o'clock in the evening.

When he arrived at the training ground, Zhang Yang saw that DeRozan arrived before him as usual.

There were only a few people in the training ground, much fewer than usual after school. After all, it was the weekend, and those who came were all members of the reserve team.

"Good morning, Jack!" Kevin Miller greeted warmly.

Zhang Yang responded: "Kevin, you're here very early."

Kevin Miller, 10th grade, 15 years old, 206 cm tall, 230 pounds (about 105 kg), a white center, is highly expected by the coaching staff and is being trained as the core of the future main team's inside line.

According to Thomas, it is unlikely that Miller will become a notable player, that is, one of the top 100 players in the United States, but he is already the most talented center at Compton High School in recent years, and the coaching staff cherishes him very much.

There is no way. The Compton High School basketball team used to be a weak team and has never had a center tradition. It cannot attract talented centers to join. Without a talented center, no center can play well, and then it cannot attract talented centers...it's a vicious cycle.

Miller is warm, cheerful and proactive. He is very sociable and can chat with everyone.

Zhang Yang spent the past few afternoons at the training ground, where he met a lot of people, and the person he talked about the most was Miller.

Miller smiled and said: "It's the first day of training for the reserve team. We have a game tomorrow. I'm a little excited and woke up very early."

"Me too, I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's game..."

Zhang Yang chatted with Miller for a while, then came to the corner of the court and greeted DeRozan.

DeRozan said "hmm" indifferently, took the ball to the three-point line, and used actions to signal Zhang Yang to practice cooperation together.

Zhang Yang has gotten used to it, while his friends are still in their middle school years of thinking, "Look how cool I am when I'm so cool." He stretched his body and started practicing together.

Not long after they started practicing, a piece of black charcoal rushed up to them.

"DeMar, let's fight! You won't be so lucky this time."

DeRozan looked at Tatum and wanted to leave on the spot.

Zhang Yang laughed, took the ball and went to the next half of the court to train, giving up his position.

DeRozan wanted to reach out and grab Zhang Yang, but he was too late.

Watching Zhang Yang walk to the side court without looking back, DeRozan cursed inwardly for being ruthless.

Tatum: "Haha, Jack, I'm sorry to bother you with training again. I'll buy you some soda later."

"Thank you then."

Zhang Yang responded casually.

This man is also a passionate person, but his passion is very different from Miller's.

Miller is very enthusiastic when talking to anyone and wants to have good relationships with everyone.

Tatum is a noisy person who is not very good at getting along with others and often offends people, but he is not cunning and does not hold grudges.

Tatum challenges DeRozan for one-on-one matches several times a day, and is beaten every time, but he just can't be defeated, and he becomes even more arrogant the next time.

After a few days, Zhang Yang refreshed his perception of Tatum - he is thick-skinned and a talented person; he keeps fighting despite repeated failures and has a tenacious character; he trains hard and is very perseverant.

...

At 9 o'clock in the morning, assistant coaches Johnson and Burke came to the training ground with two trainers. The 10 reserve players and 5 substitutes were already there.

The list of reserve team members was announced on Thursday afternoon. DeRozan is the only 9th grader, and the remaining 14 players, including Zhang Yang, are all 10th graders. Most of these 15 players are new to the reserve team, and only three players were promoted from the freshman team in the latter part of last season.

Tatum and Miller both joined the reserve team in the late ninth grade. The other one is James Keefe, a 9-year-old, 16-centimeter forward.

After the reserve team list was announced, Zhang Yang observed the training and playing of these teammates during his spare time. These three are indeed the strongest in the team except DeRozan.

Tatum is good at breaking through and counterattacking; although Miller is white, he has good athletic ability and is good at rushing and close-range shooting; Keefe has relatively poor athletic ability and is very good at shooting three-pointers.

Zhang Yang had learned from Thomas before that the reserve team generally does not want 11th grade players. If a player has not entered the main team in the 11th grade, he has basically been abandoned by the team and at most he will be arranged to the main team's reserve team.

But the substitutes for the main team are different from those for the reserve team. The substitutes for the reserve team are real substitutes. If a player is sick, injured or abandoned, the substitute members will take over. If a player on the main team has a problem, the reserve team members will generally be chosen to take over. The substitutes for the main team are actually equivalent to sparring partners.

Burke briefly explained the tactics and then began to train the players in groups.

The tactical manual was distributed on Thursday. He didn't think many players would be able to read it, and the explanation wouldn't be very effective. It would be better to just put it into practice. This was his experience over the years.

Burke and two trainers each led a group of five people to conduct tactical running training.

The tactics are actually very simple. For a team with DeRozan as the core, the other players mainly move to the right positions, create space for DeRozan to play one-on-one, and give the frontcourt players better opportunities to rush and steal the ball.

With Keefe as the core, find a way to create space for Keefe and let Keefe shoot.

With Tatum as the core, follow up with teammates to choose the appropriate line during counterattacks, and open up space to receive shots or attack the basket during positional warfare.

Defensive training is even simpler - just keep an eye on the person you are defending.

But even with such a simple tactic, most people performed terribly in the first practice session.

Before entering the reserve team, everyone's playing habit was to wave for the ball when attacking and then rush in with the ball; when defending, everyone's eyes were on the one with the ball, and there were often a group of people gathering near the basket.

So, Johnson's most troublesome time of the year has arrived again. Looking at the performance of his players in training, his expression was very sour.

What makes him feel a little relieved is that the team members are now willing to cooperate with training.

In the 9th grade, these people who were still on the freshman team were all unruly and no one would submit to anyone else. Everyone wanted to prove himself. After all, they were among the best basketball players in their respective schools in junior high school.

At that time, there were no conditions for cultivating tactical qualities.

But after going through their freshman season and understanding what true talent is, they began to accept reality. Of course, they did not give up on basketball. They still wanted to win when they stepped onto the court, and they still wanted to get more opportunities through hard work... and they wanted to leave some memories for their high school years.

This is the purest and most beautiful thought as a student.

However, not everyone's tactical training performance is so poor.

Johnson watched the players train for a while, his eyes resting on the group of Zhang Yang and DeRozan. He had heard from Thomas that the two cooperated well when playing 3-on-3 on the street, and he had also seen the two practicing several sets of two-player cooperation from time to time in the past few days.

In today's training, the cooperation between the two was what Johnson felt most comfortable watching.

Not only that, Johnson also saw Zhang Yang calling four teammates together to discuss tactics during training breaks. Unfortunately, the other three seemed unwilling to accept the advice of a new transfer student with mediocre skills, so it had no effect.

But Johnson didn't see any anger or other negative emotions on Zhang Yang's face...his evaluation of Zhang Yang increased by one point.

...

At 11: in the morning, the first day of joint training ended hastily.

Not to mention the coaching staff, even Zhang Yang was dissatisfied with the training performance.

But it was the first day, and it was normal.

When his teammates did not accept his suggestions, he was actually quite depressed. However, at this time, he would repeat Thomas' words in his mind over and over again - it is rare to have players with good physical fitness and tactical awareness.

Thinking this way, he was no longer angry.

In the afternoon, he and DeRozan continued training.

The next day, the Compton High School preparatory team had its first warm-up match of the new season, against a school in the same city, Liberty Park Academy.

In the morning, Zhang Yang trained for an hour as usual, but there was no training afterwards. He only had a tactical running lesson with his teammates in the morning. The feeling of the training is still hard to describe.

At 1: p.m., Johnson led his players in warm-up.

Seeing that most of the players were chatting and laughing and were very perfunctory in warming up, Johnson didn't say anything. The trainer had already taught them how to warm up, so if they didn't want to warm up properly, then don't warm up properly.

The gap between players, besides talent, lies in these details and respect for the fate of others.

But not everyone was perfunctory. The baseball player was different.

Johnson saw that Zhang Yang was actively looking for a trainer to help with warm-up preparations, and he also discovered that the warm-up exercises Zhang Yang requested were more than what the team required!
Seems very professional!
In this regard, he could only guess that Zhang Yang worked as hard and studied as he did when playing basketball when playing baseball, but he just didn't have much talent... He hated Thomas even more.

Moreover, Zhang Yang not only focused on his own warm-up, but also pulled DeRozan together. However, DeRozan was different from other teammates and was very willing to accept Zhang Yang's suggestions on warm-up.

In addition to DeRozan warming up with Zhang Yang, there was another cheeky guy who took the initiative to warm up with him...

(End of this chapter)