Chapter 6 Time Flies

Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was June.

In the past two months, apart from a trip to Washington with UConn in May as the NCAA champion to meet President Obama, Tang Tian hadn't left the training facility.

He even skipped the joint tryouts, accepting Fagan's advice not to participate.

After nearly two months of training, his shooting speed had improved significantly.

Generally speaking, when he was in the NCAA, the average time it took him from receiving the ball to shooting was about 1.5 seconds, but now he could basically control it within 1 second, about 0.8 seconds, and the accuracy rate could be maintained at about 80%.

Considering the training time, this was a very big improvement.

But this was all thanks to Procopio, otherwise, there would have been no training results.

With the shooting acceleration training initially effective, Tang Tian then had to consider the next step.

Although the endorsement contract hadn't been signed yet, and there wasn't enough krypton gold value to exchange for new skills, he had to make a plan before that.

He pulled up the system interface and focused his attention on those green skills.

Muscle Man (Maggette): Increases physical confrontation by 10%, weight needs to reach 105kg.

Streetball King (Alston): Increases ball control and dribbling stability by 10%, but there is a certain probability of traveling violations.

Roar (Rasheed Wallace): When roaring, all abilities of the opposing player decrease by 10%, lasting for five minutes, but there is a certain probability of receiving a technical foul.

Microwave (Jamal Crawford): Increases the stability of all shots by 10% when coming off the bench, lasting for five minutes.

Strongest 175 (Isaiah Thomas): Increases breakthrough speed by 10%, only applicable to players under 185cm tall.

Catch and Shoot (Korver): Increases off-ball movement speed by 10% and three-point catch and shoot stability by 10%, weight needs to be within 95kg.

…

Green skills, compared to white skills, are more advanced in that they are no longer limited to no confrontation or being passive, but after all, they are only green, and the ability increase is not much, and they all have their own limitations.

For example, the Muscle Man skill has a requirement that the weight needs to reach 105kg.

This is completely reasonable. Physical confrontation and weight are inseparable. It is impossible to say that your confrontation will increase if you lose weight. This is also why Harden chose to gain weight later. He needed to increase the lethality of his breakthroughs, so he needed stronger confrontation.

If you could increase confrontation without gaining weight, then Harden wouldn't have had his lateral movement speed slowed down due to excessive weight, and he wouldn't have been easily blown past on the defensive end.

The same principle also applies to Catch and Shoot. If you want to have speed, you must reduce your weight.

In fact, this was also the position Tang Tian was considering at the beginning. When he got to the NBA, should he gain weight to play the power forward position, or lose weight to play the small forward/shooting guard position? These were actually two development directions.

If he wanted to play power forward, then he would definitely have to gain weight this offseason and then exchange for Muscle Man. If he played small forward/shooting guard, he would have to lose weight and exchange for Catch and Shoot.

Whether it was gaining weight or losing weight, there would be a process, so the sooner he made a decision, the better the effect would be.

After thinking carefully for a while, he finally made a decision: lose weight to play small forward/shooting guard!

The reason?

Actually, it was very simple. When he was in the NCAA, he was a 3-and-D player, playing the power forward position, and he was still a swing power forward. Even if he gained weight and then exchanged for Muscle Man, his height disadvantage would make it easy for opponents to target him in the low post in the NBA arena.

But if he played small forward/shooting guard, mainly as a shooting guard, because his speed increased, his height would be an advantage instead.

Jimmy Butler, Paul George, and other tall swingmen were almost all on this path when they first entered the league.

Of course, this was not the only reason. Another more important point was that he needed to enrich his arsenal.

In the NCAA, his defense and open three-pointers were enough for him to gain a foothold on the court, because the defense in the NCAA was relatively weak, and because there were fewer scoring points on a team, the coach would specifically arrange tactics for him, just like Calhoun did.

But the NBA definitely wouldn't. Coaches rarely, or wouldn't, design tactics for role players. Role players need to run around and find opportunities themselves. If they just stand there waiting for three-pointers, they might not even have one chance in a game.

This was also another very important reason why Novak struggled to survive in the NBA.

After thinking it over, Tang Tian put away the system interface and had a plan for his next step.

The first was to lose weight.

Losing weight and dieting are not the same concept. In order to maintain the existing level of confrontation, losing weight must involve gaining muscle. This is best done under the guidance of a nutritionist.

In other words, he still had to improve his team first.

You have to eat a bun one bite at a time. Procopio was his first target.

This day was the same as usual. The three of them trained in the training hall, because there were only about half a month left until the draft, and their training was coming to an end.

Before the end of the morning training session, Tang Tian pulled Procopio aside at the door for a chat.

"You want me to become your private trainer?" Procopio looked at Tang Tian in surprise.

If it had been when they first met, he would have directly rejected Tang Tian, but after two months of getting along, their relationship had progressed well, and he was more surprised.

"Yes, I need a professional trainer like you to help me. Of course, I will pay you according to your requirements." Tang Tian was sincere.

"No, Tang, it's not a matter of money. I haven't been anyone's private trainer for a long time. Now I'm more about giving training courses, or becoming a trainer for a team." Procopio now regarded Tang Tian as a friend and didn't hide anything.

The meaning of this sentence was also easy to understand. He was no longer an ordinary trainer.

"Why don't you think about it." Tang Tian didn't rush Procopio to make a decision.

"Okay, I'll think about it. I'll tell you if I make a decision. By the way, I heard Clay say you're planning to lose weight now?" Perhaps feeling a little embarrassed as a friend, Procopio took the initiative to ask.

"Yes, my current speed is a bit slow. I'm planning to lose weight to increase my speed and then develop in the direction of a swingman." Tang Tian nodded.

"Well, that's a very good idea. Your three-pointers and defense are very characteristic. There aren't many 3-and-D swingmen in the league now. You'll be very marketable. Have you found a suitable nutritionist?" Procopio continued to ask.

Tang Tian shook his head. Fagan had been busy with draft promotion recently.

"I can introduce you to someone, although she's a newcomer, but she's very professional. If you need it, I can introduce her to you."

Procopio's introduction definitely wouldn't be bad.

Although he might not be able to sign him, if he could sign the nutritionist he introduced first, it wouldn't be a loss.

"Okay."

"Alright, I'll ask her out after training tomorrow, and then you can talk in person."

Tang Tian nodded. Procopio was indeed a very good person.