"Name: LeBron James
Height: 6'8"
Weight: 240 lbs
Position: Small forward
Alma mater: St. Vincent–St. Mary High School
Ability rating: 103
Athleticism: 10
Size: 10
Defense: 7
Strength: 10
Agility: 8
Leadership: 9
Jump shot: 7
Readiness: 8
Ball handling: 7
Potential: 10
Passing: 10
Intangibles (willpower, court sense, and the like): 7
Strengths: Explosive physique and athleticism; excellent passing vision and instincts; basketball IQ beyond his years; a blazing first step on his drives and outstanding body control as a finisher; a perfect fast-break finisher; a steady rebounder; an elite team player.
Weaknesses: Inconsistent mid- and long-range shooting; struggles at the free-throw line; ball handling in need of work; a habit of gambling for steals on defense; no low-post game; shaky composure in clutch moments; too eager to show off.
Draft comps: Earvin Johnson / Scottie Pippen
Evaluation: Has the physical tools to become the greatest player in history, but his skills will never reach the top tier — the most perfect second option in history."
David Cole frowned at the rookie report on his desk.
As Wake Forest University's national scouting director, he had read rookie reports beyond counting, yet this one still left him momentarily stunned.
James had come into the league three years earlier as the NBA's first overall pick, and even before that he had signed a staggering seven-year, $93 million shoe contract with Nike. He was regarded not just as Nike's future but as the hope for the league's next face after Kobe.
Yet this report, written by an undergraduate called Yang Shuai, had ended by rating James a second option?!
Shaking his head, Cole was about to move the report to the reject list — then couldn't help picking it up for another look. Aside from its biased final evaluation, the report was precise in everything, from its format and content to its analysis of strengths and weaknesses. The ability rating in particular was something he had never seen before, far more intuitive than the vague A/B-style letter grades in use today.
This Yang Shuai had the makings of a scout.
After some thought, Cole finally placed the report on the interview list instead.
…
Wake Forest University library.
A student with bold brows and star-bright eyes, his features strikingly like the actor Yan Yikuan's, sat by the window with a copy of Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense. Written by Jordan's mentor Dean Smith, the book covered nearly every offensive and defensive system in today's game.
A chair scraped nearby, and Yang Shuai looked up from the page. He raised his wrist, checked the time on his watch, then closed the book and stood.
After leaving the library, walking through a campus full of Georgian-style academic buildings, he felt a wave of unreality.
A week ago he had been a senior employee at an NBA statistics site in China; outside of work his life was games, novels, and the occasional pickup game with a few basketball buddies. Then the economy soured and the company folded. Unable to find work and weighed down by a mortgage, he had been forced into food delivery — until, worn past his limit, he dropped dead in the street.
He had thought his life was ending there, in regret and resentment. Instead he had crossed over, inexplicably, into 2006 America and become a junior at Wake Forest University.
Yang Shuai finally stopped before a vast round building: Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum, an NBA-caliber arena that could seat fifteen thousand spectators at a time.
He wasn't here for a game today, though. He had come to interview for the junior scout position with the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
The second-floor corridor was bustling. Around twenty people had come to interview, most of them older than Yang Shuai; Wake Forest offered graduate programs as well as undergraduate ones, and these were all grad students from the school.
The interviews began shortly after he came upstairs, the candidates lined up in the order they had signed in. What surprised him a little was the format: three at a time. Most interviews he had seen were one-on-one, and a few — the kind run by state-owned enterprises — were many-on-one. One-against-many was rare, generally used only when applicants were too numerous and time had to be saved.
Soon, Yang Shuai's name was called. Both men going in with him were grad students, and as they rose, their eyes went to each other. Besides saving time, the one-against-many format had another hallmark: it bred direct competition. Clearly, each of the two grad students had made the other his target.
Inside the office were two interviewers. In the main seat sat a Black man in his early thirties wearing black-framed glasses; beside him was a white man in his forties, hair slicked straight back, with a high nose bridge and a mole at the corner of one eye that made him the spitting image of Tom Hagen from The Godfather.
"What do you think the team's recruiting focus for the new season should be?"
Once the introductions were over, the Black interviewer pushed up his glasses and came straight to the point.
"I think our focus should be on the players' families — their parents above all. They play an enormous role when a player chooses a school. The NAA has rules against giving players financial aid, but no rule against extending their parents a little help..." The grad student in the middle reacted fastest and spoke first. In a group interview, answering first seized the initiative and kept anyone from getting a jump on your idea. The grad student held forth at length; grad students were students too, but they saw more of the real world than undergrads, and their social polish showed it.
Both interviewers, however, sat expressionless. Officially forbidden, practiced by every NAA school in reality — to their ears, it was nothing but correct nonsense.
When he finished, the grad student on the right also got in ahead of Yang Shuai: "I don't think we should watch only this year's high schoolers. We should follow next year's, and the top players of years to come — build long-term relationships with them, learn what they truly want, and cater to it. That's how you raise your odds of landing a recruit."
The second grad student's answer was clearly better aimed, and the Black interviewer couldn't help nodding — it was, in fact, what Wake Forest was already doing. But the white interviewer beside him still showed little reaction.
Both grad students had had their say, and now every gaze in the room settled on Yang Shuai. For an instant it felt as if an enormous weight had come down on his shoulders — yet no panic showed on his face. Going first had its advantages; going later naturally had strengths of its own.
From the moment the Black interviewer asked the question, Yang Shuai had known the man with the real final say was not him but the white man at his side. And judging by the white man's reactions while the two grad students spoke, neither answer had moved him. That mattered, because only one junior scout was being hired: the real contest was not the three people in this room but all twenty who had come to interview.
"I think we should focus on players with the ability who are being underrated," Yang Shuai said, unhurried.
At that, both grad students' lips curled in perfect unison. An undergrad was an undergrad — shallow horizons. In this age of information, any player with ability had long since been discovered by the media and posted on every rankings board. Did he really think this was still the eighties and nineties, when you had to drive out into the countryside to find stars?
"The A League① is the most competitive league in the NAA. If those elite high schoolers are going to enter it, how many reasons do they have to give up basketball royalty like Duke or UNC and come to us instead?"
But Yang Shuai's next words pulled those curling lips back down, and even the Black interviewer let out an involuntary wry laugh. In pedigree, Wake Forest, founded in 1834, was not much behind Duke or UNC; in basketball, the gap was a hundred thousand miles. In more than a century, the school had sent only twenty-eight players to the NBA — and of those twenty-eight, only two had ever made a name for themselves there.
One was Tim Duncan — the future master barber famed throughout the NBA, the man behind the classic scene of giggling on the bench, and San Antonio's celebrated car mechanic. The other was Chris Paul — the mysterious 1.83-meter masked man, King of the Western Conference Finals floor, and spokesman for 58.
And neither man had chosen Wake Forest because of the Demon Deacons' own appeal. Duncan had come for the psychology program, with his sister studying at the Wake Forest medical school besides; Paul had hometown roots — a Winston-Salem native, born and bred, who chose the school in his own backyard. So Yang Shuai's analysis hit the nail on the head: in a North Carolina recruiting landscape, the odds of an elite high schooler picking Wake Forest under normal circumstances were pitifully small.
Now the white interviewer looked at Yang Shuai: "You're Hansen? A junior in psychology?"
Yang Shuai nodded; Hansen was his English name. The white interviewer's unchanging face finally cracked into the faintest smile. No wonder he was the fellow who had rated James the most perfect second option in history — he really did think along different lines from the average student.
"Then how would you know which player is the underrated one?" Cole pressed. However unusual Yang Shuai's thinking, without the discerning eye for uncut jade it was so much talk on paper.
But Yang Shuai remained calm, answering with an air of complete confidence: "Those players aren't perfect, but they carry overlooked sparks — and those sparks can light them up on the NAA stage."
"So you already have someone in mind?" Cole's curiosity was roused. Years on the job had taught him to read people, and he could feel that Yang Shuai was not talking through his hat.
"Yes." Yang Shuai's gaze was steady.
In his last life, the wave of layoffs had left his work experience nowhere to be used, and in the end all he could do was deliver food. In this life, that experience would become his greatest wealth.
***
①: One of the most competitive leagues in the NAA. In 2006 it comprised twelve schools: the University of North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Maryland, Georgia Tech, NC State, Florida State, Miami, Clemson, and Wake Forest.