How time flew. It was November in the blink of an eye.
Ever since Markson had decided to dedicate a whole column in the Philadelphia Evening Post to the new season of the Pennsylvania High School Basketball League, he had almost become the team reporter for Lower Merion…
He would visit Lower Merion High School once every three to five days with a camera on his shoulder.
Besides shooting the team training, Markson planned to gather more information about the stories between Kobe and Su Feng.
In Su Feng's former life, the biographies of many famous NBA professional players had actually come from reporters like Markson.
When Kobe was in grade 12, many reporters had flocked to Lower Merion High School for him.
At that time, Kobe had already gained a significant amount of popularity. Hence, people had high hopes that he would qualify for the NBA and become a future basketball star.
However, before Su Feng had become famous, Markson had already come for him. This was very rare.
In fact, there were many reporters like Markson.
Not all of them were sports reporters, and some of them would go "undercover" in companies to dig for juicy stories.
In Su Feng's former life, many of the news articles that won international awards were produced by long-term investigations and numerous interviews.
An ambitious man, Markson felt that it was cliche to write about an American high school basketball talent fighting his way into the NBA.
But what if the main character of the story was a Chinese student?
Markson found the idea worth exploring.
Moreover, Markson had the support of both Gregg Downer and the school.
Why not? It was free advertisement for the school and their basketball team.
At that time, Markson was paying so much attention to Su Feng that Kobe was starting to suspect the relationship between the two.
….
November 15th, the evening before the Pennsylvania High School Basketball League.
After the additional training with Kobe, Su Feng returned to his apartment and relaxed himself in a nice, hot bath.
During the bath, he opened the system interface.
Given his insanely strict self-discipline, Su Feng believed that he was close to his goal of becoming an excellent bricklayer, no, he meant, basketball player.
"Master: Su Feng, Nationality: Chinese, Age: 16, Height: 190cm, Weight: 76kg…
"Master's current proficiency (NBA draft second round pick level), Short-range shooting: 44 (64), Mid-range shooting: 75 (79), Three-point shots: 77 (80).
"Passing: 20 (45), Vision: 25 (50), Ball Control: 49 (55).
"Horizontal movement: 78 (88), 1v1 marking: 77 (91), Stealing: 46 (81).
"Jumping: 54 (71), Power: 36 (45), Backboard Rebounds: 24 (30).
"Scoring moves equipped: A-grade Steven Curry Shooting Package.
"Special techniques equipped: Kobe's fadeaway shot (Golden Epic); Current level: College Elite.
"Special techniques not equipped: Shammgod (Original version).
"Badges equipped: None."
Su Feng could feel the obvious increase in proficiency.
After he had increased the attribute points through daily training, Su Feng had also realized that the rate of growth became slower with higher proficiency.
Take for example the shooting scores. In the past, those scores would have increased by a good number of points after his daily training. But recently, Su Feng had seen little progress in his mid-range and three-point shooting scores.
Moreover, due to Su Feng's relentless pursuit of difficult moves, he had already upgraded "Kobe's fadeaway shot" to College Elite.
The main change brought about by the upgrade was the improvement in speed and stability in Su Feng's movement when he performed this move.
In other words… back to that annoying point.
There was no way for Su Feng to cheat in this system.
"Hmph, no matter how perfect you (the system) are, I bet you didn't know that I would befriend the human cheat known as Kobe!" Su Feng thought after inspecting his statistics.
"My current goal will be to upgrade the system to version 7.0.
"I've earned quite a lot of Brick Shot Points recently, enough to spin the wheel. But that won't be helpful.
"With the experience from the friendly matches, I'm good enough to compete in the High School Basketball League.
"I do want to know what badges can do, but I don't want to bet on my luck. It's too risky and may even slow down my upgrade progress.
"For now, I should focus on upgrading the system so that I can unlock more techniques and further improve myself!"
Having set his goal, Su Feng went to bed at once.
Even Iron Man would need to rest if he were to train at Su Feng's intensity.
….
The next day was the first day of the Pennsylvania High School Basketball League.
Su Feng and Kobe had agreed that they would cancel the 4 AM special training on game days.
Nevertheless, even if there was no training, eating Su Feng's sandwiches was something not to be missed for Kobe.
"You are a new student in our school, so you may not be familiar with the way to school. It won't be nice if you get lost and end up being late for the game. From tomorrow onwards, I'll wait for you outside your house on game days."
Kobe told Su Feng after the training yesterday.
Kobe's excuse was full of loopholes, but Su Feng decided not to expose him. Who wouldn't be happy to have a friend go to school together with you?
Although Su Feng was actually much older than Kobe, that wouldn't matter because age differences had little impact on the friendship between men.
On a side note, the American High School Basketball League and the NCAA shared a few common points in terms of competition rules, despite the many differences overall.
In Pennsylvania, preliminaries usually took place in November and December.
Following that, zonal competitions would be held in January and February.
Lastly, the knockout round would happen in March.
In a large state like Pennsylvania, a high school basketball team would need to compete in hundreds of matches in the following year, considering the total number of high schools in the entire state.
Hence, before the start of the competition, the competition committee would usually classify all the high schools into zones according to their locations with around 30 to 40 schools in each zone.
The league would first start with round-robin competitions, which would produce four top teams from each zone that would subsequently join the zonal competitions.
After that, the teams would go through another stage of round-robins and the top eight teams would then compete in the single-elimination or knockout round.
That was also why Su Feng wanted to tell Kobe about the story of the Sewer
Under such competition rules, even Kobe and Su Feng might fall short of their potential.
However, Su Feng felt that it was still too early to talk to Kobe about that. He was planning to wait till the start of the league before imparting to Kobe the values and beliefs of the Sewer Brothers.
Speaking of which, it wasn't a lucky year for Lower Merion High School because they had been assigned to the same group as Ridley High School, which had won the championship for six consecutive years.
Nevertheless…
Kobe, Su Feng, and the other members of Team Lower Merion thought otherwise.
In the friendly match earlier on, Team Lower Merion had crushed Team Ridley. Hence, they were no longer afraid of this "championship team" which had seemingly fallen from glory.
On the contrary…
The head coach of Team Ridley, Fernandes, was thinking about plotting an assassination of Gregg Downer after he had been informed of the grouping results. This wouldn't actually happen though.
Fernandes had been in a bad mood ever since the friendly match fiasco.
….
….
The first opponent of Lower Merion was Shipley, a school with a stellar average SAT score of 1,300.
Hmm…
In the States, such schools were often recognized as the underdogs in basketball competitions.
And results had shown that calling Shipley an "underdog" was an overestimate of their abilities.
Su Feng gazed at the scoreboard and said in disappointment, "The game is over?? I'm not even done warming up!"
It was the first formal match in Su Feng's high school basketball career. He had wanted to unleash his true potential, but his opponents had not given him the opportunity.
"That's normal. They've actually done a good job this year. Did you know that they lost to us by a whopping 70 points last year?" Kobe said, patting Su Feng's shoulder.
Su Feng was speechless.
He had once thought that Nefaria was a wimp, but never had he expected someone to be even weaker.
26 - 87. Shipley might not have scored above 20 points if the Lower Merion substitutes had not been intentionally going easy on them.
That couldn't be helped. The difference between American high school basketball teams was simply too drastic.
Therefore, Su Feng and Kobe were substituted by other less strong members after the first half.
Su Feng only played in two periods of the entire match. During his play, he scored 8 shots out of 11, including four out of five three-pointers and zero free throws. He had scored a total of 20 points.
Meanwhile, Kobe had accomplished 100% field goal percentage in his ten throws, including three three-pointers, four free throws. That gave him a total of 27 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 steals, and 4 blocked shots.
In the face of a weak opponent like Shipley, Su Feng couldn't miss many shots even if he wanted to.
Luckily, the next opponent was Malvern Preparatory School, which was said to have the potential of emerging as one of the top four teams of the group…
….
November 19th. The match was held at the indoor basketball court of Malvern Preparatory School.
At the end of the third period, the audience were wondering whether they were watching an NBA match.
The game had become Kobe's personal slam dunk show. He had accomplished five slam dunks so far.
And Su Feng was showing off his extraordinary three-pointer skills. He had scored seven three-pointers.
He had even performed three ultra-long-distance shots successfully, which was rare in the 1990s.
Not only that, Su Feng had also captured the attention of all Malvern students with his catch-and-drift shots and three-point fadeaway shots.
Su Feng was sad.
His ball sense was… more than exceptional today.
He had wanted to widen the score difference first and then gain some Brick Shot Points. Unfortunately, that was impossible with his perfect ball sense.
By the way…
Wasn't Malvern Preparatory School supposed to be a strong team?
Look at them!
It was only the end of the third period, but the score was 70 - 44!
"Yeah, I was right in trying to gain Brick Shot Points by increasing the difficulty of my shots. I might have stood a chance.
"But I didn't know my aim would be so accurate today! And the opponent was too weak."
Looking at his statistics summary, Su Feng comforted himself after the game.
In the end, Lower Merion won the game with a splendid 86 - 57. Su Feng had scored 12 out of 21 shots, including seven out of 14 three-pointers and no free throws, summing up to a total of 31 points, the highest in the team. He had also achieved five rebounds. There was no assist.
Kobe had scored 11 out of 23 shots, including zero out of six three-pointers, five out of eight free throws, totalling up to 27 points. He had also accomplished 15 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 steals, and 4 blocked shots.
Although Kobe's accuracy outside the three-point arc was below satisfactory, his five slam dunks were the highlight of the game.
Moreover, Su Feng somehow felt that Kobe had done it on purpose so that Su Feng could get more rebounds. After all, Su Feng had retrieved the ball a few times after Kobe's missed three-point shots.
"I hope that our next opponent is tougher!" Su Feng made a wish after the game. A "good" wish to his next opponent.
….