Chapter 729 - 654: If You Don’t Work Hard Enough, You Should Be Eliminated

Chapter 729: Chapter 654: If You Don’t Work Hard Enough, You Should Be Eliminated

In Chen Yu’s view, there were gaps between rookies and veterans, and even between one star player and another.

Rookies lacked experience.

In a fast-paced, ever-changing game, opportunities often lasted for just an instant. You simply didn’t have time to overthink. The technical moves and tactical positioning practiced countless times on the training ground became difficult to execute.

Everything came down to instinct—to the experience accumulated from countless offensive plays against different opponents, allowing you to make the most logical move in the heat of the moment.

For star players, the difference was talent.

They had plenty of experience, refined skills, and a deep understanding of the game, but their talent placed a ceiling on how far they could go.

The Pioneer lacked both.

They were too young and lacked sufficient experience.

Nash could be called a star player, but compared to Kobe, one of the four great shooting guards of his era, there was an insurmountable gap in talent.

Thus, the scales of the game were slowly tipping in the Lakers’ favor.

Rivers hadn’t devised any particularly effective strategy to counter Kobe.

’The only deciding factor—the Pioneer’s only hope of winning the game—has to be the bench,’ Chen Yu thought.

"My personal understanding, and this is something I’ve explained to Director Yuan and other leaders, is that professional sports are a form of entertainment."

"Why is the National Football League so successful? Because it excels at the entertainment aspect, just look at the Super Bowl."

Chen Yu spoke while watching the game, giving an exclusive interview to Su Jun.

"But in China, whether it’s soccer or basketball, many teams don’t value these things. They just subconsciously assume that as long as we win games, spectators will buy tickets and come to the stadium, and they will support us."

"But that’s not how it actually works."

Su Jun had originally planned to rely solely on his memory, but upon hearing this, he couldn’t resist pulling a notebook and a voice recorder out of his bag and starting to take notes.

"So, Dr. Chen, when you invited top stars like Batty and held fan meet-and-greets, it was all based on this line of thinking."

Several rounds into the Chinese Super League season, the fact that Tianhe Sports Center was sold out for every single game had attracted considerable attention.

Many industry professionals and media outlets couldn’t figure it out. They could understand people buying tickets at the beginning out of curiosity, but with the Pioneer Club playing so poorly and losing every match, why were there still so many fans?

Was Batty really that beloved?

In many people’s minds, if you’ve gone to the trouble of bringing in Batty and Cannigia, shouldn’t you be winning consistently and contending for the league title?

But that’s not what the Pioneer were doing.

They were raking in money hand over fist while continuously losing games.

Chen Yu nodded. "That’s right. Everything our club has done—the various fan meet-and-greets, adjusting the pre-game bus arrival route so more fans can see the players, organizing community matches, and all the commercial activities to increase exposure for Batty and the others—it’s all based on that same consideration."

"Think of it this way: in professional sports, or rather, commercial sports, our team is a storefront. Our product is the game itself. We have to use all sorts of marketing tactics to attract customers, get them in the door, and have them buy our product."

"Only by providing them with good service can we be profitable."

Su Jun’s brow furrowed slightly. It was the first time he had ever heard such a brutally frank explanation.

"Is that still considered sports, then?"

he retorted.

In Su Jun’s mind, sports were supposed to be about being "faster, higher, stronger"—about the pursuit of honor and pushing one’s limits.

According to Chen Yu’s logic, it was nothing more than a business.

"How is it not sports?" Chen Yu said with a small smile. "I know you’re talking about honor and the spirit of competition, but business doesn’t have to conflict with those two things, does it?"

"If it were really all just a business, those guys down there wouldn’t be playing so hard."

Chen Yu pointed to the court below, his expression turning serious. "Once you survive, once you’re thriving, the things you want will naturally follow."

It was just like the NBA.

Before Stern took over, the NBA had merely survived, but it wasn’t thriving.

Then Stern took over, and under his leadership, the NBA Alliance’s revenue grew from 157 million to a full 2.7 billion US dollars last season.

Player salaries also rose from an average of hundreds of thousands of US dollars to the current level of millions and even tens of millions.

That was what it meant to thrive.

And only when you’re thriving and have a high level of public attention do you see so many stars emerge. Only then do you get so many glorious moments and so many heartbreaks on the road to pursuing honor.

"If all you want is honor, then you can just fund it yourself. Go train a batch of players for the National Team, and you can pursue your ’higher, stronger’ all you want."

It’s like the Five Major Leagues in soccer; when it comes to national honor, you don’t see a ton of top stars rushing to play in the Olympics.

Su Jun nodded. This was probably why the Sports Bureau was pushing so hard for commercialization while also selecting a group of young players for Chen Yu to take to the United States for training.

He asked about how those young players were doing.

"They’re doing well. It’s a long-term investment; we won’t see results anytime soon."

Su Jun did some quick mental math on their ages. He figured this group was being groomed for the ’08 Olympics and the ’10 World Cup.

"Dr. Chen, does that mean that in the future, the National Team will no longer select players from the domestic league? If so, what happens to the current generation of players?"

On the soccer side, many of the starters from the ’02 World Cup team had already retired. Basketball was in a better position; the roster was still young and should be able to make it to the ’08 Olympics.

But the Sports Bureau had spent a fortune for Chen Yu to develop this new group of players; they weren’t just going to leave them on the shelf, were they?

In that case, come ’08, wouldn’t a huge number of players from the current National Team be replaced?

For many athletes, making the National Team and earning that title wasn’t just about honor; it was also tied to significant financial benefits.

A spot on the national roster made it easier to land endorsement deals.

What Chen Yu was doing was, in effect, smashing a lot of people’s rice bowls.

"And another thing—you just said that for the Pioneer basketball club, you plan to bring in players from the NBA Development Alliance. You also said the league will continue to relax restrictions on foreign players over the next two years, possibly even allowing all-foreign rosters. The games might become more exciting, but a huge number of domestic players would be forced out."

"Isn’t the impact of that too great?"

It was like smashing the rice bowls of another huge group of people.

A lot of players in the youth academies were scraping by on salaries of a thousand-odd yuan a month, waiting with desperate hope to finally make it to the CBA and earn the big bucks. But in two years, they might look up and find there was no place left for them, that no one wanted them.

All their effort from the past ten years would have been for nothing.

Su Jun had never considered this angle before. Thinking about it now, he was struck by how cruel it seemed.

Even if, as Chen Yu said, a better league and higher salaries would force players to train harder and be more competitive, it still meant that the current generation was essentially being sacrificed.

Chen Yu glanced at Su Jun.

’As a professional journalist, his questions were sharp and got right to the heart of the matter.’

"If you absolutely must have an answer, then my answer is: it can’t be helped."

"If they can’t see that, or if they aren’t working hard enough themselves, then they deserve to be weeded out."

Since it was a business, it was just that ruthless.