The three points of the kill were floating, the people in the stadium were laughing, Bai Haotian was surrounded by the crowd of crazy celebrations, and the teammates who saw him fall into the abyss were happy for him from the bottom of their hearts, only the spear broke the sky, and the wounds could be given with heroes.
Bai Haotian waited bitterly in the bottom corner, just as he had always done in his career, waiting for a chance to prove himself, fate had set countless obstacles in front of him, but this time he finally cleared his eyes. Catching the ball, shooting, looking at the basket like gazing affectionately at a lover's face, until the ball falls into the net, breathe a long sigh of relief, and enjoy the beauty of a smile creeping up your cheeks in a happy roar.
The 22-year-old has played five seasons in the CBA, but this is only his 114th professional game.
At the beginning of the national youth core, Bai Haotian began to play in the CBA in 2017, and played an average of less than 23 games in 5 seasons. His opponent in this battle, Shandong, former national youth teammate Chen Peidong entered the CBA two years later than him, but now has played 129 games. Another Bai Haotian teammate, Xu Jie of Guangdong, played as many as 170 games in just four seasons.
Everything is due to injuries, and the healthiest season of Bai Haotian's career was the rookie year, when he played 36 regular season games, averaged 13.9 minutes per game, and had 3.2 points, 1.2 rebounds and 1.1 assists. By the playoffs, he averaged 13.4 minutes in 7 games and contributed 4.9 points and 1.7 rebounds.
Before the arrival of injuries, Bai Haotian was a long-awaited genius in Shenzhen. In the youth group of the 2017 National Games, Bai Haotian and his current teammates Shen Zijie and He Xining, as well as Xu Jie and Du Runwang in Guangdong, reached the final together, and Bai Haotian helped the team win the championship with the highest 16 points in the team.
As the outside core of the Shenzhen New Century Youth Team and the Guangdong Youth Team of the National Games, Bai Haotian has excellent physical condition and outstanding talent. Height 194cm, arm span 197cm, juvenile running assistant touch height can easily approach 3 meters 5, has a strong breakthrough lethality, but also very like and good at defense, in addition to the three points are not stable, he was already the leader in the domestic young backcourt.
Born in Jiaozuo, Henan, Xiao Bai is destined to be associated with basketball.
His grandfather, grandmother, and father were all basketball players, and even began to cultivate a love for basketball at a very young age. In his early years, he received basketball training at Jiaozuo Sports School, which is also full of talents.
Active and Xiao Bai are almost the same period as Yang Ali in Beijing, Cui Xiaolong who entered the CBA this year, Li Yueru, Zhang Ru, the core of the national women's basketball team, and so on. In 2012, Xiao Bai came to Guangdong from Henan to study, went to the newly established Dongguan Basketball School with a very complete training system, and won the second place in the national U15 that year.
Xiao Bai, who showed talent, won the U15 national championship with his teammates at Dongguan Basketball School in 2013, and his teammates at that time were Xu Mengjun of the current Jiangsu team. In the American basketball enlightenment of Dongguan Basketball School, Bai Haotian became a highly anticipated explosive defender, and a year later, he appeared at the 2014 Basketball Borderless Asia Training Camp All-Star Game, scoring 19 points and winning the MVP.
Before him, Liu Xiaoyu, Dong Hanlin and others also won this MVP award. In 2015, he was invited to participate in the Jordan Classic International Tournament, and the NBA's current Japanese player Hachimura Washi was also on the invite list.
At the same time, he represented Shenzhen in the men's U16 final of the first National Youth Games with 12 points to beat Zhengzhou and win another championship.
The outstanding performance also made Bai Haotian selected for the 2015 U16 Asian Youth Championship, and his teammates were Zhu Rongzhen, Xu Jie, Wang Yibo, Huang Rongqi, Wang Junjie, Zhao Yanman, Wang Rui, Wu Yujia, Li Xiangbo, Chen Baishi, Han Yifeng, and Chen Peidong regrettably failed. Unfortunately, Xiao Bai, who averaged 9.4 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game, failed to keep the record of consecutive wins in the National Youth And Asian Youth Championship, and the 32-game winning streak came to an abrupt end.
In the semi-finals, the national youth lost to their old rival South Korea, and finally only won the third place to barely save the place in the World Youth Championship. A year later, Bai Haotian appeared on the battlefield of the World Youth Championships together with Chen Peidong, Xu Jie, Huang Rongqi, Jia Hao, Zhu Rongzhen, Li Xiangbo, Liu Zeyi, Wang Yibo, Wang Rui, Wu Yujia, and Zhao Yanman.
However, before that, he helped Shenzhen win a national youth league championship. Facing Beijing Shougang, he and Shen Zijie, Rong Zifeng, Li Bairun and others took over the game and scored the highest 16 points in the final, which was also the third national youth league championship of the New Century Youth Training.
With the glory of the domestic arena, Bai Haotian failed to turn the tide in Spain. At the 2016 U17 World Youth Championship, Xiao Bai averaged 11 points, 3.6 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game, especially when beating Australia, he scored 21 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists. However, the national youth met South Korea again, Xiao Bai played the longest 34 minutes of the whole team, scored 12 points and 5 rebounds, and the national youth 5 people on the double, but in the end it was lost to 7 people rotating 3 people to play the whole field of South Korea, unfortunately blocked out of the quarterfinals.
The talented teenager won the National Games Youth Championship a year later and advanced to the CBA with his head held high.
At this time, Bai Haotian had been the core of the National Youth, Shenzhen Youth Team, and Guangdong Youth Team of the National Games, but Shenzhen, whose youth training has always been outstanding, even if it sent Luo Hanchen away in the summer, it also piled up a large number of defenders, coupled with the use of small foreign aid, it is difficult to free up a lot of playing time for him. Even so, he was trying to show himself, scoring 17 points against Tongxi in 16 minutes, and then stealing in the next three consecutive games.
On December 3, 2017, Bai Haotian ushered in the first start of his career, followed by eight consecutive starts, Shenzhen 7 wins and 1 loss. Although he is not even an absolute main force in the Shenzhen backcourt, he has only lost 3 of the 15 games he started, and even when defending Stephen Marbury, he was very successful, and the energetic young defender quickly won the hearts of the fans.
In the two games eliminated in Guangzhou in the playoffs, he had a total of 12 points and 6 rebounds, 3 shots, and 6 free throws. In contrast, Bai Haotian's defense is more admired by the coach, and five battles with Guangsha, he has been the starter 3 times, and Shenzhen has won two of them, but unfortunately failed to continue to qualify in the end.
The rookie season was less than satisfactory, and Bai Haotian's potential was affirmed in the summer Chinese men's basketball team blue team roster. Du Feng coached very much like the defensive backcourt, but he did not train with the team in the end, but appeared in the U19 youth league. It was this summer, after experiencing the baptism of the professional league, Xiao Bai suffered leg and back injuries when he wanted to move forward.
The patellar ligament tear had to undergo surgery, and Bai Haotian directly injured the entire 18-19 season. When he returned to the field after a difficult time, he was injured again after only 8 games, missing for a month and a half, followed by a long suspension of the epidemic gave him enough time to recover. After returning again, Bai Haotian has made significant progress in handling the ball compared to his rookie year, averaging 6 points, 2.1 rebounds and 2.6 assists in 20.4 minutes per game.
Just when people were pinning high hopes, the injury and illness once again ruthlessly found Bai Haotian.
The knee injury devastated him and prevented him from catching up with the team's first two stages of the game last season, with two knee meniscus, patellar ligaments, and a front cross that tore four or five times in a few years. Fortunately, he eventually returned to the court, and in the later part of last season, he scored in double figures four times in a single game, but at the same time, the defensive end of the movement and experience were greatly damaged due to injuries, averaging as many as 3.1 fouls per game in 16.7 minutes.
From the beginning of the 2017 National Games, the stardom of infinity fell all the way to the bottom, but at the 2021 National Games, Du Feng's guidance and his fate continued after 3 years. As a player of the right age, he and his teammate Rong Zifeng have excellent defensive performances under Du's guidance, and although they have withered due to injury in the past few years, there are still many people who expect him.
Returning from the national game, Bai Haotian used the confidence recovered from the defensive end in the CBA, and he also maintained a rare health, averaging 6.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game in 24.9 minutes per game. Alert defense, reasonable transfer of the ball, he did the right thing on the field, and Qiu Biao's guidance also put him back into the starting lineup.
Health, the most precious asset that ordinary people always overlook, is extremely luxurious in Bai Haotian, and even this season, he has missed many games because of the fracture of his left ring finger in training. On January 14 of this year, in the match against Jilin, he played 41 minutes and scored a career-high 21 points, which was also the first time in his career that he scored 20+ single games.
Yes, the former national youth core did not get the first 20+ until the 5th year of his career.
Injuries are worse than tigers, and no one knows what kind of physical and mental torture the young player is experiencing in those dark hours. Time and time again, he beat injuries, returned to the spotlight on the pitch, and again and again, when dreams and hopes shone with some light, were ruthlessly extinguished by injuries.
In order to overcome the injury, Bai Haotian has never relaxed his requirements for himself, and Qiu Biao's guidance bluntly said that he usually trains very hard. There are several ways to reduce the risk of joint injury, change the position of the force, exercise muscle strength, Bai Haotian has been increasing muscle strength since the beginning of the injury, and now his weight has reached 92KG.
Bidding farewell to those youthful ignorance and glory, Bai Haotian is now less than 1 month old and 23 years old, and his positioning on the field has also changed from a ball-holding potential dual-energy guard who can be 1 but 2 to today's defensive top soldiers in the backcourt and organize receivers. The lead washed away, and he rediscovered his way to survive on the pitch.
So, after 5 seasons of tempering, after a long fight with injuries, as he said, "The meaning of hard work is that when good luck comes, I feel that I am worthy..." When fate brushes aside the bleak fog, when the light shines down from the dome of the arena, when Bai Haotian is ready to wait in the bottom corner, the water will come to fruition, this is the gift of life to the warriors, the best flowers and applause for heroes.
The fact that the game whistle does not sound means that there is still a chance to kill, and the excitement of life is not in the suffering today, but the tomorrow you want to give up.