In today's NBA, Chinese players are extinct. At the same time, Japan is gaining a growing voice in the NBA. If The Racecourse and Watanabe are still just marginal people of their respective teams, then the emergence of hachimura is enough to make all Chinese fans sigh "the ten-year enemy of Chinese basketball is coming".
However, if we turn the clock back to 2004, fifteen years ago, the balance of power between China and Japan is not what it is today: Yao Ming was already established in the NBA, and both Battle and Wang Zhizhi could also make a place in the big list. At that time, the Japanese player in the NBA, not to mention carrying the team's expectations, even his own expectations may be simply "get the contract and survive".
Yuta Takumi is the Japanese player who struggles to survive in the NBA.
His other identity is the first NBA guard in Japan and even in Asia.
Isamu Taku became famous in Japan very early, and when he was in the sixth grade of elementary school, he formed an ace group with another small star, Hiromi Suzuki, and was active in the "mini basketball world". In junior high school, he led the team to the national final four in the third grade, but unfortunately lost to the current champion Lotsi Middle School, and when choosing the school, Tian Woyong unexpectedly chose to join Akita Prefecture Nobushiro Industrial High School.
Nobu Industrial High School is actually the prototype of Sanno Industries, which Chinese fans are familiar with through "Slam Dunk Master". Historically, Noh daiko is a more exaggerated dominance than the Yamano in the manga. Starting with his first crown in 1967, Noh won 22 IHs (including one six consecutive championships), 16 national championships, and 20 WC (one four consecutive championships, three consecutive championships).
In 1996-1998, when Yuta Taku joined the team, Nobuyoshi was at the strongest age in team history, just like Sanno Kogyo in the manga. In addition to the unprecedented three-year nine-time championship, in 1996, the Japanese youth team even directly recruited the starting five-man group of Noshiro.
It is reasonable to say that as a newcomer (or a newcomer whose physical fitness is not particularly outstanding), in such a strong team, Tian Woyongtai's challenge will naturally be relatively large. However, the reality is just the opposite, instead of being overshadowed by his teammates, the light of Yuta Tian has become the core of the whole team, and his ability is considered to be far beyond others, and he has become another gear in the team that originally surpassed the first gear in Japan.
In the 1997 national sports final, Which was a high school masterpiece by Yuta Tian, in this game, Yuta Tanachi scored 50 points that accounted for nearly half of the team's scores, leading the team to defeat his opponent 105-80 to win the championship, proving that he was the king of the Japanese players of the same generation. A year later, Asahi Tanabe was selected as a high school student in the Japanese national training team, becoming the second person in Japanese history.
All indications are that among the Japanese players in that age group, Yuta Takuya is the strongest, one level higher than all his peers. And if he continues to develop, then it will become the core of the Japanese national team and write his own history on the international stage, which is almost a foregone conclusion.
However, this smooth avenue of stars, the next step is chaos.
The distant NBA's lost scenery, like the song of the Siren, lures Tian Wo Yongtai into a maze.
According to Takuya himself, he first learned about the NBA when he was eight or nine years old, and his first actual contact with the NBA was in the junior high school era, when Takuya was favored by Japanese advertisers because of his high popularity, and was sent directly to the United States to shoot advertisements with Patrick Ewing of the Knicks. It was during that trip to the United States that Mr. Tian stood for the first time in the Knicks' home stadium, madison Garden.
The grandeur of basketball Mecca deeply shocked the young Tian Wo Yongtai. Since then, the NBA has begun to move forward as the only goal of his career, and after graduating from high school, Tian Wo yongtai boldly gave up the opportunity to develop in China, but went to the NCAA's Brigham Young University Hawaii to try to contact American basketball in advance and prepare for the impact of the NBA.
In the history of the NCAA, Brigham Young University is indeed a famous university, but its Hawaii campus and the university are completely two concepts, only belonging to the NCAA's D2 level. If Mr. Tian knows Enough about American basketball, he should know that players who can leapfrog from the D2 level to the NBA are rare in history (from 1996 to now, there are only two People, Ben Wallace and Derrick White), so his NBA road is not destined to be very smooth from the beginning. Moreover, Tian Woyong's English level at that time was very average, and even affected the qualification for the competition, and what was even more unfortunate was that he was soon affected by injuries, and his back and abdomen were continuously injured. As a result, two years before going to the United States, Tian Wo Yongtai did not even participate in any regular basketball games.
Sitting on the cold bench for two years, this pair of NBA dreams of Yuta Tian is actually a small knock, but Tian Wo Yongtai obviously only sees it as a kind of "heaven will descend to great responsibility" grinding, and this is actually a manifestation of the emphasis on "root nature" in Japanese sports culture - since the 1960s, Japanese television, manga, and movies have depicted countless legends, and these legends have repeatedly hypnotized the young Tian Wo Yongtai, telling him: "As long as you persist, you will be able to do it." ”
So Tian Stayed in Hawaii, "I don't think about those negative things," he said in a later interview, "I only focus on the pursuit of what can be done at this time, only what can be done at this time, this is what I should do."
Thanks to The Way of Luck, Indota finally got the opportunity to perform in the last two years of college, scoring 7.6 points and 6.6 assists in his senior year, becoming the NCAA's D2-level Western Pacific Division assist king.
This is the first meaningful step taken by Tian Wo Yongtai in the United States, but the problem is that he took this step too slowly and too late, at that time, Tian Wo Yongtai had reached the upper age limit of the 22-year-old NBA draft player, and everyone knew that at this age, his achievements at that time were simply not enough to enter the NBA. And because he did not have enough resources to invest in his growth and cultivation for a long time (the proud son of Tennoko in Japan is a stick of firewood in the United States), The transcendent status of Yuta Tian among domestic players of the same age has gradually been overtaken.
In the 1999 U19 World Youth Championships, in the Japanese national youth team composed of all his peers, Tian Wo Yongtai averaged only 11.1 points and 3.4 assists per game, and had lost the status of the core of the team's attack (the Chinese team next door, Liu Wei, averaged 12 points and 2.6 assists per game was not worse than Tian Woyong, and scored 22 points against Tian WoYong in direct dialogue). Two years later, at the 2001 U21 World Youth Championship, Tian Woyongtai continued to stand still, averaging 10.4 points and 3.1 assists per game, and the main technical statistics could not squeeze into the top two of the team, and the playing time could only rank fourth in the team.
So under the pressure of reality and the persuasion of the agent, Tian Wo Yongtai finally chose to take a step back from the sea and the sky, returned to Japan to join the Tokyo Electric Shock Team, and in the first year of his return, Tian Wo Yongta entered the all-star team, and things seemed to be slowly moving towards the track they should be.
But the temptation of the NBA is too great, just when Tian Wo Yongtai temporarily returned to China, China's Wang Zhizhi, Battle and Yao Ming successively landed in the NBA, and the glory of The first person in Asia has been robbed by China, so the pursuit of becoming the first point guard in Asia has once again become the driving force of Tian Wo Yongtai. In the summer of 2003, Yuta Tian bid farewell to Japan again and came to the United States to participate in the Summer League, and in 6 games for the Mavericks, his performance was not salty, averaging 4.5 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.0 assists per game, and then was abandoned by the Mavericks, after which the Denver Nuggets gave him a training camp contract.
At that time, the Nuggets and The Mavericks were particularly friendly to international players, and the Mavericks selected Wang Zhizhi, not to mention, the Nuggets were also Battle's first stop in the NBA. And at that time, the Nuggets assistant coach Arcana himself was the coach of Brigham Young University Hawaii, so Tian Woyongtai was able to enter the team's trial list, in fact, there was also the meaning of the old leader giving the opportunity to promote.
It is also worth mentioning that Tian Wo Yongtai is actually not the only Asian in the Nuggets training camp, Chen Xinan from Taiwan also happened to be working in the Nuggets' training camp this summer, and he and Tian Wo Yongtai's goal is the same, they are striving to become the first Asian backcourt player to enter the NBA.
However, just as Chen Xin'an, who has excellent running and jump ability, cannot compete with the Nuggets' one-vote mature shooter, The Windy Yongta was completely suppressed by Boykins, who was shorter than him, because he could not shoot well, and was finally abandoned again before the start of the regular season.
In fact, from this time node, Tian Wo Yongtai's trip to the United States should have come to an end: lack of height, weak defensive chickens (as a characteristic steal in the United States has no room to play), shooting is not allowed... At a higher level of competition, Tian Woyongtai can hardly come up with any reason to persuade others to keep him, not to mention that as a 24-year-old point guard, it is difficult to get any promotion without a large number of competitive game opportunities, and returning to China seems to be an inevitable choice.
However, Tian Woyongtai, who "does not think about negative things", refused to give up his dream and decided to focus 100% on staying in the United States to impact the NBA. This year he stayed in the United States to play in the ABA League, and worked as a teammate with Rodman in the Long Beach Jam, but the performance was still flat, averaging only 5.3 points, 2.4 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game (for comparison, two years later, Sun Yue competed with Beijing Aoshin, the first year the data was 9.5 points, 7 rebounds and 6.4 assists, the next year 13.5 points, 6 rebounds and 10.5 assists), it can be said that there is still no NBA prospects.
However, the unexpected turnaround came randomly, and in July of the following year, the Phoenix Suns invited him to join the team's training camp, and after averaging only 4.6 points and 2.1 assists in eight summer league games, shooting only 38% of the way, he gave Tian Wo Yongtai a one-year official NBA contract!