The day after the interview ended, Yang Shuai received a message telling him he had the job.
Those two graduate students could have racked their brains until they broke and still never have guessed that what looked like a loss to an undergraduate was in truth a defeat at the hands of an old hand who had been around the workplace for years.
What did surprise Yang Shuai was that the white interviewer went so far as to invite him out for coffee.
He met the interviewer at a café on campus. His hair was still slicked straight back, but he had changed into casual clothes and looked far more approachable.
"My name is David Cole. I'm the team's national scouting director," Cole introduced himself once they were seated.
The NAA had no such position as general manager — or rather, the head coach doubled as one — and below the head coach, the national scouting director was the person who actually ran player recruitment.
"Hello, Mr. Cole." Yang Shuai rose first and shook Cole's hand. This was the man who would be his direct superior from here on.
"That verdict on LeBron in your scouting report — was it to draw extra attention?" Cole couldn't help asking as soon as Yang Shuai sat back down.
"That was part of it," Yang Shuai said, not denying it.
The written exam for the junior scout position had been to write a rookie report with no restrictions. A test like that was easy to pass, but precisely because of that, standing out required a hook strong enough to grab people — the same principle as sending in a résumé.
"Part of it?" Cole caught what lay beneath the words, and surprise crossed his face. "So you really think LeBron is a second-option player?"
"The most perfect second option," Yang Shuai said with a nod — though he had attached a qualifier. The most perfect second option did not mean he couldn't become a first option; it was only that his ceiling as a first option was lower than as a second option.
"On what basis?" Cole's curiosity was fully piqued.
"The physical tools to become the greatest player in history, but skills that will never reach the top level," Yang Shuai recited the evaluation from his report, then realized what he had written before wasn't specific enough and added, "LeBron's body coordination is lacking."
Cole rubbed his chin and sank into thought.
James had been in the league three years, his numbers better every season, yet his technical game — his shooting, his free throws, his traveling — had always drawn criticism.
Some said the league had spoiled James; others said he simply didn't train enough. None of that hit the mark. At bottom, it was a matter of natural gifts.
The deficiency in body coordination kept James from owning the most elite basketball skills the way Jordan and Kobe did, and without those elite skills he would struggle to take over games in the clutch — which capped how far he could go as a first option.
But judged as a second option, James's ability could carry most of a game's load with room to spare, and by that measure he was the best there was.
Cole finally let his hand drop and laughed.
Yang Shuai's scouting report looked unconventional at first glance, but once he worked through it, it was an objective assessment grounded in fact — and it deepened his faith in Yang Shuai's abilities.
"You said yesterday you already had a player in mind. Who is he?" That question was the very reason Cole had asked him out.
"I need to make contact with him first. A player's character and conduct matter a great deal too, and I need to confirm his interest in joining us," Yang Shuai said without answering directly. It wasn't that he wanted to be cagey — even if he named the player, Cole wouldn't react much. After all, Yang Shuai was a transmigrator, and Cole was not.
Cole's gaze shifted uneasily as he studied him, unable to tell whether this explanation was just Yang Shuai's way of stalling.
"The season ends in a month. Whoever your target is, you'd best have a result before then." He set a deadline.
"I'll get him," Yang Shuai said, brimming with confidence as ever.
At the door, as they said their goodbyes, Cole watched Yang Shuai's back, lost in thought.
In how he carried himself and in how he spoke, Yang Shuai hardly seemed like a student. If anything, he resembled a man who had worked for years — someone like Cole himself.
Above all, there was the unshakable confidence Yang Shuai always carried.
Cole didn't know where it came from, but it made people believe him almost instinctively.
...
Charlotte Christian School lay in the southeastern part of Charlotte, a college-preparatory school serving students from kindergarten through twelfth grade①.
In the school's basketball gym, an NAA② game was about to tip off, pitting Providence High School against Charlotte Christian School.
High school basketball in the Charlotte area wasn't strong overall, yet quite a few local fans had come out for this game. What drew them here was a player on the court who looked uncannily like an elementary school kid.
That, of course, was also why Yang Shuai had come.
Stephen Curry — the name carried some fame in Charlotte.
For one thing, his father, Dell Curry, had spent ten years with the NBA's Charlotte Hornets.
For another, over the past two years he had led the woefully weak Charlotte Christian School to back-to-back conference championships, twice earning conference MVP.
In theory, a player like that should have drawn intense outside attention and appeared high on the media outlets' high school rankings.
The reality, though, was that no media outlet rated him. In the media's rankings for the high school class of 2006, his highest placement was a mere 256th — among the stragglers at the tail end of the three-star high school recruits.
If one or two people had written him off, they might simply have misjudged. But when everyone wrote him off, then most likely something was wrong with the player himself.
Watching Curry warm up on the court, Yang Shuai had a similar thought: if he weren't a transmigrator, he wouldn't have picked the Curry in front of him either.
Curry was just too thin.
He looked about six feet tall in his shoes, but he probably weighed barely more than 150 pounds, and with that baby face, set against the other players on the court, he didn't look like a high school senior about to graduate — more like a middle schooler who hadn't.
But once the game started, that impression changed fast.
Curry's offensive skills were far more solid than his body — above all his three-point shooting, which almost never missed.
Yang Shuai picked up the camera he had requested from the scouting department and began filming.
For him, the hard part wasn't finding Curry — it was convincing the rest of the Demon Deacons that Curry could really make it.
That would be harder than convincing Cole he could be a scout. Words alone, at least, wouldn't cut it.
Charlotte Christian School ended up crushing their opponents 74–57. Curry went 10 of 18 from the field and 6 of 8 from three, scoring a game-high 28 points all on his own.
When the game ended, Yang Shuai headed straight down onto the court.
For all his 28 points, Curry didn't look particularly excited.
"Excuse me — are you Mr. Stephen Curry?" Yang Shuai walked up to him, smiling, and offered his hand.
"Yes, I'm Stephen Curry — just call me Stephen." Confusion showed on Curry's face, but he shook Yang Shuai's hand politely all the same.
"I'm Hansen, a scout with Wake Forest University. Could we talk for a bit?" Yang Shuai said, fishing a business card out of his pocket and handing it over.
Curry took the card and looked at it. The confusion on his face gave way to surprise, with a hint of excitement. "Right here?"
"If it's convenient, we could go to a café nearby."
"Give me a few minutes." With that, Curry jogged off into the players' tunnel.
When he came back out, he had changed into a sharp suit.
The sight of him putting on a suit and doing his best to look like a grown-up made Yang Shuai chuckle — and made him feel the youthful energy pouring off Curry.
"Do you know the Demon Deacons?" Yang Shuai made small talk on the way.
"I've gone to Winston-Salem to watch P3 play. I'm a fan of his." Excitement spread across Curry's face, his eyes lighting up.
Yang Shuai hadn't known Curry had this tie to Paul, but the surprise would make things a good deal easier.
"You know how, ever since P3 graduated, the talent in our backcourt has fallen off a cliff — the team badly needs to add a strong newcomer for the new season." By the time they reached the café and sat down, Curry was watching him expectantly. Meeting that gaze, Yang Shuai continued,
"I think you're that person — the one who can lead Wake Forest University back to the NAA Tournament."
"Me?" Curry's eyes went wide with disbelief. It took him a long moment to speak. "You really think that?"
Just as Yang Shuai knew, Curry actually received no small amount of outside attention. But because of his slight frame, the label had been slapped on him early: no future in the NBA.
It wasn't only the NBA, either — even the doors of the NAA had never opened to him.
Back in the summer before his senior season, he had attended Duke University's basketball camp and said outright that even without a scholarship, he would be glad simply to join Duke.
Yet the head coach of the Duke Blue Devils — the famed "Coach K," Mike Krzyzewski, long celebrated for his eye for talent — thought nothing of Curry at all, turning him down on the grounds that he was far too slight to handle A League physicality.
Afterward Curry paid a visit to the University of North Carolina, and the reply was the same: "too small and thin to handle the intensity of NAA play."
In the end, Curry's father, Dell Curry, had no choice but to swallow his pride and approach his own alma mater, Virginia Tech.
Dell Curry had played four years at Virginia Tech, pouring in 24.1 points a game in his senior season and earning Player of the Year honors in the Mer League (Virginia Tech's conference at the time) — a genuine legend in the school's record books.
On paper, with a connection like that, Virginia Tech should have taken Curry in, if only out of respect for old Dell.
Instead, for all the fanfare with which they dispatched a large contingent of assistant coaches and scouts to watch him at Charlotte Christian School, in the end all they would offer Curry was a place as their "redshirt"③.
In other words, they didn't want him either — they were only offering him a title to save Dell Curry's face.
Rejection after rejection had left Curry doubting himself. That was why a game-high scoring night brought him no joy, and why he had reacted the way he did upon learning Yang Shuai was a scout.
As he saw it now, merely making an NAA D1 roster — even as a starter for one of the middling or lower programs — would already be the best outcome he could hope for. And yet here was Yang Shuai talking as if he would be Wake Forest University's savior?!
"I know they all question you because of your body. But basketball isn't boxing. At its heart it's not about knocking the other man down — it's about putting the ball through the hoop. And on that score, you're no worse than anyone." Yang Shuai looked at Curry with complete seriousness, his tone carrying a conviction that came straight from the heart.
As a transmigrator, Yang Shuai knew Curry was destined to pioneer the small-ball era, to become the greatest three-point shooter in history, a star who changed the game itself. But all of that lay far, far ahead of the Curry standing before him now.
What he also knew was that in the original history, after Curry committed to Davidson College, he put together a dream season, leading an underdog run all the way to the Elite Eight of the NAA Tournament before falling just short against Kansas, the eventual champion.
So he knew Curry could not only play at the NAA level — he could thrive there.
"But..."
Curry's reaction at that moment was a carbon copy of Cole's back then. Yang Shuai had a kind of magic that made people believe him on instinct.
Still, reservations remained in his heart, because before Yang Shuai arrived, Davidson College out of the Southern Conference had already come recruiting, promising him the role of the team's lead guard.
Yet what Yang Shuai said next forced the rest of his words back down his throat and sent a storm raging through his heart.
"After Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia Tech turned you away in a way that bordered on humiliation — don't you want to join an A League team and prove them wrong by beating them head-on?"
———
① From kindergarten (usually ages 5–6) through twelfth grade (usually ages 17–18) — the shorthand covering preschool through high school education.
② The American high school basketball league.
③ A special status for American college athletes: a player in this status attends classes as usual and trains with the school team, and can even sit on the bench in game uniform during games, but may not take the court for the team.
Chapter 2