After a one-year contract expired, the Dallas Mavericks and assistant coach Gard Sam Goude extended their contracts for four years.
Born in 1976 in Brooklyn, New York City, to a poor family in a government-relief residential neighborhood, basketball, especially street basketball, became an important part of Autoder's childhood.
As a student, AutoNavi has become New York's best street ball master. He attended Lhasa Le Academy in high school and was a teammate of Ci Shiping. After playing two seasons at Providence College in the NCAA, Gao De entered the NBA. In the summer of 1997, Gao De was selected by the Washington Wizards with the 17th pick in the second round, but his development in the NBA did not go well, playing 20 games for the Wizards, averaging 3.1 points, 0.4 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game.
In 2001, AutoNavi came to China and joined CBA team Zhejiang Wanma. In the three seasons of Wanma, Gao De's amazing dribbling shocked the fans, and he was hailed as the league's first point guard. In the 03-04 season, AutoNavi won the CBA scoring champion. But at the end of the season, Wan Ma did not renew his contract with Gao de, but chose high school forward Samaki.
A year later, Gaode returned to China and joined the Shanxi Yujin team, which moved from Henan to Shanxi. In Shanxi, Gaode was not happy, and in the whole season, Shanxi only won 4 games. In the 07-08 season, Zhejiang Wanma re-invited Gaode, but his competitive status was not as good as a few years ago, and he was cut by the team in the middle of the season.
In 2012, Gao De returned to his alma mater, Providence, as the team's assistant coach. Every summer offseason, AutoNavi trains a lot of NBA guards, and point guards such as Ben Gordon and Thomas Jr. have trained under Autodavi. Of all the players trained, the most well-known is undoubtedly Kobe Bryant. Bryant said in an interview that he was very grateful to Gaode for helping him improve his dribbling skills.
In today's NBA game, Paul and Carey Irving are imitators of Gaode's dribbling action, and Paul said that Gaode is an innovator in ball control technology and has an enlightening influence on his possession.
Last summer, Gard joined the Dallas Mavericks coaching staff as a player development assistant. Last season, he helped new Mavericks star Harrison Barnes develop ball-handling techniques that enriched Barnes' offensive skills.
The Mavericks management is very satisfied with Gaode's work and recently reached a new agreement with him that Gaode will continue to serve as the team's player development coach in the future. Gao De's focus will then be on cultivating Mavericks' No. 9 rookie Dennis Smith this year.
"He's a lot of influence," Smith said in an interview, "you've all heard a lot of legends about him, and now you finally have the opportunity to meet him and find that he's a very humble person, he knows a lot about the game, so I want to be like a sponge, absorb as much knowledge as possible, and I think he will help solidify my basketball career." ”
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