Paper Guiluocheng丨James' new helper Prince's basketball story: The Lakers' No. 3 position has been fully upgraded
On April 10 this year, in the final game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the New Orleans Pelicans, Timberwolves players Gobert and Anderson had a fierce conflict in the game, and Gobert suddenly punched Anderson when the two were arguing, at this time, Timberwolves player Torrion Prince stepped forward, he used a move to directly push Gobert 3 meters away, as we all know, Anderson was accepting the Chinese men's basketball plan at that time, and we Chinese fans treated Anderson as a comrade. And Prince's righteous shot this time also immediately attracted countless fans, and the comment given to him by Chinese fans after the game was: "Who dares to bully the sons and daughters of China, Prince is the first to not agree." ”
I don't know if it was affected by this, the Timberwolves did not renew Prince's contract at the end of the season, he recently joined the Los Angeles Lakers with a one-year $4.5 million contract, recently I paid attention to many basketball media at home and abroad in the analysis of the Lakers' new players have pointed out that Prince will bring more help to the team's defense than Vincent, Reddish, and Hayes, in order to let everyone better understand the player, the second issue of today's Lakers new signing story series will bring you Torion-Prince's basketball story.
Prince was born on March 22, 1994 in San Marcos, Texas, his father Anthony and mother Tammy Iko are both local low-level blacks, very poor economic conditions, in addition Prince also has a sister named Catina, parents love Prince and sister very much, but poor couples mourn, when Prince was eleven years old, there was an accident in the family, the parents divorced the child without concealment, and soon his father Anthony went to prison for crime, Prince and his sister followed his mother to live in San Antonio.
Prince's father was in prison for a year, and not seeing his father for a year made him miss him very much, after his father was released from prison, he didn't want to leave his father alone, so he made a difficult decision to leave his mother to live with his father, when his father had a house in San Angelo, and the two men started a bachelor life there, their lives are like the days of father and son in Stephen Chow's movie "Yangtze River No. 7", although it is poor but still comfortable, but not long after suddenly one day his father told Prince to pack up, He said that the house was about to be taken away by the bank and that they had to leave, and Prince was very confused, so he packed up his things and followed his father without asking.
Dad took him to a local shelter with many rooms but nothing but concrete walls and beds, and his dad, a very optimistic man, comforted Prince, "We're so lucky." Prince asked suspiciously, "Lucky?" His dad said, "We got a single room, just the two of us, so we didn't need to be crammed into a room with four or five people." ”
Although the father said so, but in fact the room did not belong to them, the shelter accommodation has very strict rules, all the people who live in it must leave at 6 a.m., and then they are not allowed to return until after 8 p.m., Prince goes to school in the morning, his father works around to make a living, sometimes the father works late, and when they return to the shelter, they find that their room has been occupied by others, and many people will fight because of the room problem. And Dad can only take Prince to find a grievance on the sofa abandoned by people in the nearby park for one night, and sometimes several people will suddenly squeeze into the room to sleep on the floor, Prince felt how cruel this society is at the age of 12, but his father always comforted him: "You have to learn from this, treat everyone around you well, although we are unlucky, we are good people, you never know what the people next to you are going through." ”
Prince's favorite movie is "Happiness Knocks" starring Will Smith, he watched it more than 30 times, tears in his eyes every time he watched it, the story told by the movie is very similar to his situation, Will Smith plays a down-and-out salesman with a bankrupt career and a wife leaving home, living alone on the streets with his son, but he became a stock market trader by hard-working, hard work, and the spirit of hard work, and hard work, and tried to become a well-known financial investor inspirational story, Prince has always believed that he and his father will eventually have a happy ending just like in the movie, and this hard experience has sharpened Prince's will.
But movies are movies, reality is reality, in reality Prince's father works 6 days a week, working more than 10 hours a day, he earns a meager salary plus various relief hardships to live, and there is no time to accompany Prince, over time basketball has become Prince's only pastime, I have said in many star stories, basketball is the favorite sport of black children in the United States, compared to baseball and football it occupies a small area, low equipment requirements, basketball courts can also be seen everywhere, Prince's earliest basketball initiation came from community courts.
There was no professional trainer on the community court, but Prince slowly became a street ball master with his basketball talent, and he jumped the highest in the worst sneakers among his peers, ran the fastest, and played the best ball, and at the time he never thought that he would become a basketball player, basketball is just a game to kill time.
In the second year of junior high school, he befriended a diehard Bowdie Thompson, when Prince and his father were still living in uncertainty, Bowdie learned about his experience and proposed to let Prince live with him, Bowdy is a white wealthy family, Bowdy's parents treat Prince like their own son, they gave Prince the warmth of a long-lost family, of course, the biggest contribution is to guide Prince on the right track.
Texas basketball atmosphere is very strong, there are Spurs, Rockets, Lone Rangers three NBA teams, cities and regions AAU teams are numerous, Prince was found by a local AAU team in San Antonio when he played on the court, they invited Prince to join the training camp while waiving training fees, Prince readily agreed, since then he began to receive formal basketball training, AAU team coach Smith recalled that Prince first joined the team with poor basic skills, but he started from scratch, I practiced very hard, and soon I mastered all the basic skills.
In 2008, Prince was admitted to Earl Warren High School, when he was only 1.75 meters tall and relatively thin, but because of his excellent ball skills to sign up for the school basketball team, he passed the ball skills, but before the start of the season because of unqualified cultural class results were judged not eligible to play for the team, until his sophomore season finally passed the cultural course results and joined the team as a substitute.
There are two people who directly changed Prince's basketball fate, one is his physical coach John Collins, he picks up Prince and teammate Marcus King to his training gym every day to practice physical fitness, Collins is completely a ball idiot, he regards basketball as life, his attitude towards basketball greatly affects Prince, and Prince becomes stronger and stronger under Collins' devil training.
The other is his high school basketball coach Jim Weaver, Weaver found in daily contact that Prince's child is very talented, and the training is super hard, completely genius + diligence = success formula model, so he devoted a lot of effort to Prince, after understanding Prince's family difficulties, he paid for him to supplement nutrition, Prince's height also soared to 1.98 meters, and Prince ranked 25th among Texas high school players in his junior year, which is difficult to enter the NCAA D1 level school, coach Weaver took him to Long Island University for trial training, because the school's coach Jim Ferry and Weaver have a good relationship in private, Ferry observed Prince's training in the field and agreed to provide a scholarship, and the two sides signed a preliminary letter of intent, but then Prince exploded in his senior year, averaging 21.4 points, 11.2 rebounds, 3.5 blocks, 2.3 steals per game, and against Mark High School's star guard Smart (a former Celtics player), Prince had 24 points and 9 rebounds on his defense. A big reputation, at the end of the senior season, ESPN gave him a comprehensive score of 89 three-star high school students, and also rose to 5th in the Texas rankings, with the strength of this year to join Long Island University without NCAA qualifications is really a bit wasteful, just at this time Long Island University coach Ferry switched to Deakin University, Prince immediately terminated the plan to go to Long Island University, when he announced that he became a free student immediately several universities issued recruitment invitations, he finally chose to join Baylor University after careful consideration.
Baylor reached the NCAA quarterfinals under Perry Jones and former CBA Xinjiang player Pierre Jackson the season before Prince joined, and played back and forth with the top seed of the University of Kentucky led by Anthony Davis in the quarterfinals, Perry Jones joined the NBA in the new season, but Pierre Jackson stayed on the team, and also recruited five-star talented high school student Isaiah Austin, and there was a lot of hope for the team.
Prince's desire to join a more visible team is right, but luck did not follow, his fame and strength at that time were not competitive with the main players on the team, and he could only start as a water cooler administrator, and the team's main lineup that season was not competitive, they only achieved an 18-14 record, and did not even make it to the NCAA March Madness, and although they won the second-level NIT tournament, they still made the school's reputation greatly reduced.
Pierre Jackson joined the NBA in the 13-14 season, and Prince's status improved, he averaged 14 minutes per game as the sixth man on the team, and the team returned to March Madness with a 24-11 record and reached the round of 16.
In the 14-15 season, Prince continued to be the sixth man, but this year he played a super bench performance, ranking fifth in the team in minutes but scoring a team-high 13.9 points, amazing efficiency, the team went 24-9 to play March Madness again, but was defeated by the University of Georgia led by RJ Hunter in the first round, and Prince was named the best sixth man in the Big 12 Division at the end of the season and was named to the All-NBA Second Team.
The 15-16 season was Prince's last season, he finally became the team's starter, and this year's performance is related to his future prospects for the NBA draft, that season he averaged 15.9 points (fourth in the division) in 30 minutes per game, 6.1 rebounds, led the team to a 22-11 record into March Madness, he was personally selected to the All-12 team, but unfortunately played another round in March Madness. In the game against Yale University, Prince and the opposing player Makay Mason played a battle against each other, Prince scored a team-high 28 points, while Mason cut 31 points, and Yale University also won 79-75 against Baylor University.
After graduating from college, Prince signed up for the draft, the older show is real-time combat power, can attack and defend very versatile, inside and outside knots and three or four positions are competent These are his advantages, these labels are just in line with the Hawks coach Budenholzer, who pursued a full-offense and all-defense style of play at the time, of course, the Pelicans and Bucks also focused on Prince, and Prince had not been selected by other teams when the draft was about the 11th pick, at this time a text message from Hawks manager Malik Rose came from Prince's agent's mobile phone: " Welcome to the Atlanta Eagles. The agent secretly showed the text message to Prince, and his excitement was overflowing, years of suffering and trials and tribulations were for this day, Utah Jazz selected Prince with the 12th pick, and it didn't take long for the Hawks to get Prince for sending Teague in a three-way deal.
Prince immediately got a chance to play in his rookie season and had 10 starts, but as the season went on, Budenholzer was forced by the pressure of record to finally choose Sefrosa and Bazemore, Prince averaged 5 points in 16 minutes per game that season, the team achieved a 43-39 record in the first round of the playoffs defeated by the Washington Wizards, and the Eagles era that belonged to Budenholzer at the end of the season also came to an end, and the former Atlanta Five Tigers Korver, Teague, Horford, Millsap, Carol left the Hawks all.
In the 17-18 season, the Hawks began to rebuild, Prince was lucky to get the main position, he ushered in a super rare opportunity to play, averaging 14 points and 4.7 rebounds in 30 minutes in 82 starts, shooting 38.5% from three-point range, through a season's performance to see his ceiling is a 3D player, even if he is given enough play, it is difficult to get a return on the offensive end.
At the end of the season, Budenholzer left, Prince and his two seasons together benefited a lot, when the current coach of the Lakers, Ham, was Budenholzer's gold medal assistant, Prince and Hamm also spent two years together, Hamm was responsible for daily training, Prince what ability and what level Hamm knows very well.
The 18-19 season Hawks welcomed Trae Young, Prince is still seen as the team to continue to exercise, but in the middle of the season due to injury problems and missed for a while, because he was too old and Trae Young was not on the same timeline, plus the upcoming contract extension, so the Hawks traded him to the Nets at the end of the season, where he extended his contract early and received a multi-million contract, and then the Nets sent him to the Cavaliers in a big deal for Harden, and then was traded to the Timberwolves.
In two seasons of tepid performance in the Timberwolves lowered his worth, and in May last year he was involved in a case of illegal carrying of contraband and illegal carrying of firearms, Texas police found two guns and a can of marijuana in the car driven by Prince during an inspection, the police once banned bail, the lawsuit continued until last November, Prince hired the best lawyer to start from the police search loophole, and finally the prosecutor dismissed the police charges, but the incident still labeled Prince a problem player. And guns and DP are also the two high-voltage lines of the current NBA, once convicted NBA career is basically over.
In terms of ball skills alone, Prince is a very standard 3D player, and is also the favorite type of role player of the competitive championship team, his style of play is adapted to the Lakers system, his ability is better than the Lakers' No. 3 position Beasley, Troy Brown last season, on paper, the Lakers ushered in an upgrade in the No. 3 position, hoping that he can play his own characteristics in the Lakers and re-win the tens of millions of contracts.
(Text/Our Aesthetics in L.A.