One Year Left to Play

Chapter 613: Chapter 189: Even My Grandma Could Lead the Bulls to a Championship

The Lakers are professionals at grabbing headlines.

Sometimes, they don’t even need to do anything proactively, like now, the Lakers never thought about bringing in Barkley, nor did they illegally contact Barkley in any way.

Actually, as per normal protocol, Barkley has no way to interact with the Lakers. He can’t even express his desire to join until he genuinely refuses to execute the player option.

But he can state his desire to the Phoenix Suns to join the Lakers, letting the Suns inform the Lakers of his intentions.

On May 28th, the morning after the Western Conference Finals ended, Zhang Hao called Logo Man, inquiring about Barkley’s interest in joining.

Due to NBA rules, Logo Man didn’t speak directly but replied with, "Any NBA trade could happen... not including you."

Then he called Henry Thomas to try and find out Barkley’s schedule. By noon, while having lunch at a beach in Miami, Zhang Hao proposed changing their destination to Hawaii.

Originally, the biggest purpose of this trip for the group was to cheer Zhang Hao up.

Even though others couldn’t tell, seeing Zhang Hao the same as before, his close friends could sense that Zhang Hao was doing things deliberately to shift his mood from unhappy about watching others play in the next round.

Since it’s all about shifting the mood, with exams over, Pierce, Aprile Clark, Britney, and Le Lin were all on holiday, and going out to play would definitely be better than trying hard to distract themselves.

Howard Schultz was also assured, sending two caretakers and lending a private jet to Zhang Hao, thus letting his daughter go off.

Any place could be a destination; changing it to Hawaii didn’t raise objections from others, and they were rather delighted. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

Pierce was the most excited, but slightly puzzled: "What are we going to do in Hawaii?"

"Barkley is in Hawaii, I want to go chat with him."

"Is Barkley really going to join the Lakers? Oh, I thought it was fake news."

"Trump isn’t president yet."

"?"

"Uh... I intend to have a direct conversation with him, and incidentally block him from talking with other superstars."

"This... involves blocking doors?" Even Pierce, the chatterbox, was momentarily stumped by this.

But Pierce being Pierce, he quickly got excited: "If we have Barkley, we wouldn’t lose to the Rockets, right? Maybe we’d be facing the Bulls now! Oh my, that’s Barkley! I’ve never dreamed of Barkley joining our Lakers..."

He always finds the trigger for his chatterbox mode, and Zhang Hao can only admire Pierce for this aspect.

However, he really didn’t expect Barkley to choose them.

He recalled Barkley would voluntarily give up over twenty million dollars, actively seeking to join the Rockets, yet unexpectedly landed with the Lakers.

At this moment, he felt the Lakers’ allure for superstars. Even under equal or disadvantageous conditions, they still hold the upper hand in competing for star players.

Pierce fell into chatterbox mode, while Aprile Clark ignored Pierce, and asked Zhang Hao: "Aren’t we going to watch the finals?"

With the network not as developed at present, they are unlike Jordan, who finishes his games and waits for the news. At 10 PM last night, Zhang Hao and Aprile Clark turned off their cell phones and returned to their rooms with large floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea, galloping around, and only saw the news this morning.

In the aftermath of last night’s big battle, they were discussing where to play in Illinois today, waiting for June 1st to watch the finals.

Zhang Hao wasn’t very interested in the finals, responding: "The Bulls are bound to win."

Aprile Clark was curious: "You have so much faith in the Bulls’ strength?"

Zhang Hao shrugged and replied: "Yeah, if my grandma had teammates like Pippen and Rodman, both in an All-Defensive Team, she could lead a championship team too."

This remark made everyone burst into laughter.

No one noticed at that moment that the waiter, who had just approached them to serve dishes, quickly retreated and used the counter’s phone to dial a journalist’s number... serving slowly could get them scolded by the manager, but delivering news late slows down the cash flow!

...

...

While Zhang Hao was discussing learning future meeting skills orchestrated by another Los Angeles team with Pierce, in Los Angeles, at the Time Warner Training Center, the Lakers management was also discussing Barkley.

Unexpected, very unexpected, extremely unexpected.

Even the strategic Logo Man couldn’t foresee such a situation arising.

"We really underestimated Aix’s allure." Logo Man felt the future was becoming increasingly uncontrollable, "A rookie season averaging 27.1 points, selected for the All-NBA Team, leading the team to the second round, all without the ball—everyone wants to cooperate with him..."

Logo Man was contemplating, next to him Jim Buss and Kupchek didn’t respond, not wanting to interrupt Logo Man’s train of thought.

Evidently, the other party was pondering the next steps.

Unlike certain fans who became misled by media voices, thinking Zhang Hao’s early playoff exit and lack of regular-season honors reduced his worth, the Lakers management, as NBA executives, were thrilled to the point of madness with Zhang Hao’s performance.

Similarly, they were well aware that Zhang Hao’s rookie season performance would definitely attract attention from young stars of other teams.