Chapter 479 - NBA Season Begins 3 (1/2)

”You can call me Rick too, I'm happy to know that you know who I am, Hahaha, I'm also happy to see someone from the same university as me playing with me.”

”Congratulations on helping the Tar Heels team to achieve this incredible record of more than 70 games without losing, I know how it is almost impossible to pass the UCLA team record, but the record you have achieved has already brought many glories to our university.”

”Even more after winning the NCAA tournament twice in a row, in my last year we almost managed to win, luckily you managed to bring that joy to fans of the team like me.”

”Thanks, Rick, I know you did great things for the Tar Heels team, and now we are playing together here at the Los Angeles Lakers, I hope that together we will be able to win an NBA title.”

”Hahaha, I like how optimistic you are.”

Jake and Rick soon became friends and Jake was more comfortable in the team, in the first training Jake showed all his enthusiasm and impressed all the other players and the team's technical committee with his dedication to training and how much stamina he had.

Jake clearly did the training with more intensity than other players and did not need to stop to rest, and that was on the first day of training after the end of the lockout where the players did not dedicate themselves so much to training.

Even though Jake impressing them all knew that Jake was an athlete who was the best in the world in marathons so it was only natural that he had more stamina than the other players, this made Coach Harris happier to have Jake on his team.

Even more because as the game season was less time and they would still have 50 games, the teams would have to play more games to keep the schedule and some players would not be able to handle this intensity.

The first day of training was just for Coach Harris to see the physical condition of the players, Coach Harris saw that Rick Fox would not be able to play and also saw several players who were not in perfect physical condition.

Fortunately, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal were in the good physical condition and could play in that first game, what the Los Angeles Lakers board and Jake didn't even know was that Coach Harris was thinking about letting Jake play, but not as PG in the first games.

He knew that Jake had the ability to play in various positions and so he would put him in the place of other players who were tired in the first games to see how Jake would do, after all, Derek Fisher was a player that Coach Harris liked.

So if Jake made a good debut game, Coach Harris would have to put him in to play as PG if he received pressure from the Los Angeles Lakers team board, but he thought Jake was young and couldn't handle the pressure of debuting playing in a different position.

After training Jake couldn't take it and went to talk to Kobe Bryant, he was a big fan of him and Jake was nervous when he went to talk to one of his biggest idols as a basketball player and as a basketball fan.

”Hi, Kobe Bryant, my name is Jake Smith, I wanted to say that it is a great pleasure to talk to you personally, I am a fan of yours and I admire how you play.”

”I didn't know I had a fan after playing for a few years, let's be teammates now, you can call me Kobe.”

”It is true that I am a fan of yours, I also believe that just by working hard in training I can do better and I heard that you are like that too, I also just want victory for my team.”

”So you really know me well, I really believe that more effort can lead to victory and I really want to win, if you are like that then we can get along very well.”

Jake was very happy because it looked like he had become friends with Kobe Bryant, he didn't lie saying that he liked to train a lot and also that he thought a lot about winning, but he said this to Kobe because he knew after seeing several interviews with Kobe that he thought so too.

Afterward when the players were leaving the training site, Jake still went to talk to another of his idols Shaquille O'Neal, even though Jake was tall he felt small near Shaquille O'Neal, but Jake was not intimidated and went to talk to him.

”Hi, Shaquille O'Neal, my name is Jake Smith, I wanted to say that I am a big fan of yours, it is a great pleasure for me to speak with you.”

”So you are the rookie who was the first pick in last year's draft, I saw a few games of yours and I think you are very good, I hope you help me make a lot of points just like you helped your teammates at the university.”