Chapter 471 - Basketball and Business 5 (1/2)

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 sponsorship 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 shirts 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 passing 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 passed 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 passed to Vince Carter who was on the left, Carter advanced with the ball and soon Tracy McGrady arrived to defend, Carter tried to pass by McGrady and failed and had to pass 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 pass 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.