Old Tim McConnell stared at the mobile phone screen and cried.
As a high school basketball coach, he has a high professional quality, and usually does not bring a mobile phone when training, but that afternoon was an exception.
The mobile phone was in his pants pocket, and he was distracted by the bombardment of messages from relatives and friends one after another.
At 3:15, he received the message that he will never forget——
"Your son is now an NBA player."
At that time, the Philadelphia 76ers released their list for the 2015-16 season. This includes the son of Tim McConnell, TJ McConnell.
Old Tim is famous in Pennsylvania. He is the most famous young coach in Pennsylvania, while his sister Susie McConnell is Olympic Games The gold medal winner, a superstar of WNBA, was selected into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008. Therefore, TJ McConnell is also a second generation star. He studied at the Charles Valley High School, where his father coached. In his senior four years, he averaged 34.2 points, 8.2 rebounds and 9.1 assists per game, and led the team to 29 wins and 2 losses.
As a matter of principle, there should be a lot of schools to rush, but in fact, TJ only received a scholarship from one university - Duke University. In the past 20 years, only one player, Mike James, has been sent to the NBA, which is still a loser.
And when McConnell received the scholarship, the head coach of Duke University, Efhart, was questioned in person, "When did you start recruiting water?"
Two years later, McConnell transferred to the University of Arizona with the identity of the best defensive team in the division and the player in the third formation. At the end of the junior season, McConnell drove to the home of the 76ers with the father of the 76ers' diehard fans to watch several games. He suddenly asked his father a question, "I don't know if there is any chance, but I think I can challenge the NBA. If not, I will go overseas to seek opportunities. But why can't I be the person who attacks the NBA?"
This question is not difficult to answer NCAA The road to the NBA is reasonable but cold. They generously give all opportunities to those young people who are full of "talent", but it is extremely harsh for these "public basketball fans" with ordinary physical quality.
In his senior year, he was a member of the first defense team and a member of the division. He was nominated for the best team in the United States, and then he was unsurprisingly defeated at the NBA draft convention.
At the University of Arizona, McConnell and Aaron Gordon, Stanley Johnson, "Jordan Kobe ”Hollis Jefferson was a teammate
McConnell seems to be the one who does not have any NBA level physical conditions at all. In the physical measurement of the rookie, his palm size is the smallest in NBA history, with a hand length of only 19 cm and a width of 17.7 cm; The arm span of 1.88 meters was the second to last among the rookies of the same session; With a height of 1.85 meters, he has never completed a live dunk. In other words, no matter where you see him, almost no one believes that he is a basketball player who wants to play professionally.
Thanks to his father's face, he was invited by his hometown team of 76 to participate in the summer league.
In Xia Lian, he averaged 7 points, 6.4 rebounds and 7 assists in 18.8 minutes per game.
As a result, he really stayed.
McConnell is not unlucky. In 2015-16, 76 people are in the stage of "belief process". The list includes several future CBA foreign aid, such as Sony Wims, Jakar Sampson, Christian Wood, Carl Landry, and Jalil Okafu. Their final record this season is 10 wins and 72 losses, and then they are selected as they wish- Simmons 。
The five competitors of rookie McConnell in this season are Tony Rotten, Ismail Smith and Phil Prasi. Isaiah Kanan and Kendall Marshall, except for Ismail, who has always been at the bottom of the league, have only names left. This also gave young McConnell more opportunities to perform, so in the opening game, he got a full 27 minutes of playing time, 2 out of 5 shots, a total of 4 points, 1 rebound, 4 assists and 3 steals.
Looks good, doesn't it? He doesn't think so himself.
"Isaiah Thomas scored 27 points on my head like a joke, which seemed to teach me a lesson, 'Welcome to the NBA, rookie'. That day was tragic for me."
But in fact, the situation is not so bad. Although the 76ers have lost 18 games in a row since the first game, McConnell has three assists in double figures. For this team who can't score a few goals in total, McConnell is one of the few teams that seems to be able to play. He played 81 games at the end of his rookie season, and scored 6.1 points, 4.5 assists, 1.2 steals in 19.8 minutes per game, Both assists and steals rank second among rookies; Then the next year Simmons was injured, and McConnell played a full 51 starts, with an average of 6.9 points, 6.6 assists and 1.7 steals.
But these are useless. In the eyes of Philadelphia management, who are eager for talent, McConnell has never been a member of the team's long-term plan.
Enbid once cut a space after McConnell took cover, hit a mid-range shot, and still shouted at McConnell when he came back. Sometimes the basketball world is so cruel and unreasonable. You are wearing the same team's jersey, but it is likely that they did not treat you as a teammate.
After a four-year rookie contract that played well, the 76 players didn't mention it in a row. After all, McConnell was 27 years old at that time, which was the age when the 76 players should be eliminated. The Pacers signed him as a substitute point guard after opening a contract worth 7 million yuan for two years.
During the two years in Indiana, people gradually realized that McConnell was not just a "trick to brush the data. Without the 76ers, they could not play in the NBA". He proved that he is a player who can make the team better with his performances at both ends of attack and defense.
On March 3, 2021, the Pacers defeated the Cavaliers by three points away, and McConnell came on as a substitute. He made eight shots and scored 16 points. But what's more shocking is that he still had 13 assists and 10 steals, including 9 in the first half, creating a historical record of half steals in the NBA. In this season, his total number of steals reached 128, ranking first in the league, 20 times more than Jimmy Butler behind him.
When it comes to steals, McConnell has his own ideas. "Mentality is very important," he said. "Sometimes I get tired of chasing my opponent all the time, but I will never give up. I will keep telling myself that I am not tired, and my endurance is better than theirs. I will persist until the end, and there is a small motor in my body that continuously delivers energy to me."
But perseverance is far from enough. McConnell said that he would spend a lot of time watching videos every day to study the game tendency of the next player to go to the match, especially when the other side would hesitate and choose to move the ball substantially. "I can't catch up with them all the time, but they also relax sometimes, and I will surprise them."
"Not many players will defend the whole game," he said. "I mean, since I am a missed draft, I should have some different characteristics."
Although McConnell is fierce and difficult to deal with on the court, and has been regarded as a tough defender throughout his career, he has never been said to play dirty. His style of play is tough, but there is no excessive action. He is very serious on the court, but he seldom looks provocative.
He won the vote of the sixth best player and the fastest improving player in the 2020-21 season. Then in the summer of that year, McConnell and the Pacers completed the renewal of the contract, which reached 33.6 million yuan for four years.
As a traditional point guard, he can always comfortably feed the ball to the position that every teammate likes; As a defender, he infected every teammate with hard work; As a player, he has been seeking to become more comprehensive.
He knew that he needed to improve his projection ability to adapt to this era, so he worked hard to practice every offseason. In the last two seasons, although he didn't shoot much, his three point shooting rate exceeded 40%.
"I think it's instinctive," he said. "If someone tells me, 'You need to rest', I will understand that my intensity is not enough, and then I will make twice as much effort. You can't fight hard, and everyone can see whether you can help the team, and they can see clearly."
This season's Pacers returned to the playoffs after four years and reached the second round. This team is full of undervalued players, and almost every player has played far more than his performance in the draft, while TJ McConnell, sitting on the bench, average Send out every hundred rounds 13.5 assists ranked first in the league. After Halliburton is strictly guarded, Carlisle can calmly send his most trusted field master.
The former "water boy", now nicknamed "field commander", is called the "heart and soul" of the team by the coach.
He also conquered his opponents with performance.
Di Vincenzo was angry with the difficult McConnell in the game, and Hart and Brunson said in the podcast, "McConnell is the kind of guy. You fight with him, and it's not enough to just knock him down. You have to kill him."
"He is a disgusting little bastard. He runs all over the court and creates chaos. When he is on the court, the competition intensity is too strong..."
"So we know that once Halliburton goes down, we can't relax, because McConnell, he can be a starting point guard in any team in the league."
