March 12, Green Stadium, North Carolina.
The annual Atlantic Ocean Coast League Championship is underway here. The stands are packed, the air thick with the creamy smell of grilled hot dogs and popcorn, and the stands are divided into several noisy sections by Duke Blue Devils blue, North Carolina blue, and Maryland red.
In the media scout section of the middle stands near the aisle, Sam Presti was wearing a dark gray hooded jacket with the brim pulled low.
He had a scouting manual with a kraft paper cover spread out on his lap, a stopwatch in his left hand, and a sharpened pencil in his right.
Sitting to Presti's left was Gary Watson, the Atlanta Hawks' scouting director. The old man was stuffing a hot dog smothered in mustard while shaking his head and sighing at the roster, "Sam, you Boston guys have it easy, no need to worry about this year's draft. Look at this year's point guards, they're disgusting. That high school kid from Illinois, Shawn Livingston, is 2.01 meters tall but only weighs 170 pounds, skinny as a stick, a gust of wind could break him. And that Sebastian Telfair from Coney Island, New York, all thanks to his cousin Marbury paying the media to hype him up, he can't even touch the rim when he's on the court."
Presti smiled but didn't reply. His gaze swept over the throng of people and landed on the small point guard from Wake Forest University wearing the number 3 jersey.
Chris Paul.
At this time, Chris Paul was not yet 19 years old, and his registered height was 6 feet, but in reality, he was only a little over 1.8 meters tall barefoot.
Two years ago, during a high school game, this kid, whose grandfather had been murdered by thugs in his own yard, scored 61 points in a game a few days later. In the final moments, he stood at the free-throw line and deliberately threw out his 62nd point to commemorate his grandfather's 61st birthday. That game was made into a special program by ESPN and repeatedly broadcast across the United States, portraying Chris Paul as a filial, kind, and polite boy next door.
Fans throughout the Carolinas regarded him as a pure and innocent saint.
But in the eyes of professionals like Presti who specialize in watching video replays, Chris Paul on the court is a completely different person.
In the first ten minutes of the first half, Winston Salem, a freshman who grew up in the area, played with great flair. He kept his center of gravity extremely low while dribbling, and when facing the full-court press of the Maryland guards, he could always suddenly stop and change direction, leaving the defenders behind. He used screens to cut to the basket and pass, bounced passes to the inside while moving, and floaters off the backboard, organizing Wake Forest's offense in an orderly manner.
With two minutes left in the first half, a play occurred that made Hawks scout Watson spit out hot dog bits.
University of Maryland's starting point guard John Chris, dribbled the ball up the arc, closely guarded by Chris Paul. Taking advantage of a half-second gap when the referee's view was blocked by the interior player, Chris Paul subtly reached down with his left hand and poked Chris hard in the lower abdomen with his hard knuckles.
Chris gasped in pain, and in his youthful arrogance, he instinctively swung his right elbow back in an attempt to break free.
Chris Paul's reaction was astonishingly fast. The opponent's elbow had only grazed his jersey collar, but Chris Paul felt as if he had been hit in the nose by a hammer. His neck snapped back, he let out a shrill scream, and his whole body flew backward more than two meters, his back slamming heavily onto the floor and sliding a long way.
The referee immediately blew his whistle and called an offensive foul on Chris without hesitation, sending the Maryland guard to his third foul and out of the game.
Chris Paul, lying on the ground, covered his face and groaned twice. When his teammates reached out to help him up, he secretly glanced through his fingers at the furious Maryland coach. There wasn't even a red mark on his face. As he turned and ran back to the frontcourt, he casually brushed the dust off his shorts.
"That little bastard," Hawks scout Watson muttered, wiping the mustard from his mouth. "He has a baby face like he'd be singing in a church choir, but he does all the dirty work of Gary Payton and Stockton's Lao Liumang."
Presti noted in his scouting handbook. "Very intelligent, adept at using refereeing standards and flopping to draw fouls from opponents, with a cunning and ruthless playing style, completely opposite to the well-behaved image portrayed by the public."
But in the last eight minutes of the second half, Presti turned a page and began writing extensively in the section on weaknesses in the scouting manual.
The tide has turned completely.
University of Maryland head coach Gary Williams saw through Wake Forest's weakness. Maryland stopped sending smaller players to outmaneuver Paul in half- Chris Paul sets. Whenever Chris Paul called for a pick-and-roll, the 2.01-meter strong forward Nique Medley and the 1.98-meter backup wing would immediately rush in for a double-team.
Maryland's players didn't rush to steal the ball, nor did they engage in close combat with Chris Paul to avoid being tricked into committing a foul. Instead, they spread their long arms over Chris Paul's head, using their height and weight to block his passing lanes and gradually drive him towards the corner of the sideline.
The shortcomings of short point guards are immediately exposed in high-level games.
In college games, there's no three-second rule. With the opposing center lurking in the paint and two forwards around two meters tall blocking his face on the perimeter, Chris Paul couldn't just pull up for a tough shot like those tall guards. To avoid turnovers, he could only dribble back and forth with his head down outside the three-point line, using his back and side shoulder to push against the defenders and find gaps for passing.
Once, twice, three times.
The 35-second shot clock quickly dwindled to just five seconds, and Wake Forest's previously fluid movement came to a complete halt. Senior center Eric Williams was sweating profusely in the paint, reaching out for the ball, but it just wouldn't go in. He could only watch helplessly as Chris Paul twisted his body between two defenders and forced a fadeaway jumper.
The ball bounced off the front of the rim and flew away.
Presti looked down and wrote a line on the paper, "Limited by our height and wingspan, we have difficulty passing the ball when double-teamed by forwards over two meters tall. In the later stages of positional play, we tend to hold onto the ball for a long time, causing the team's offense to stagnate."
After writing that line, Presti looked up and stared at Chris Paul's reaction on the court.
More striking than the limitations imposed by his height is this young man's domineering temperament in the face of adversity.
In the next possession, Maryland launched a fast break, and Wake Forest's senior forward Jamal Levy was a step too slow on defense, allowing the opponent to cut to the basket and score a three-point play.
As soon as the referee blew the whistle, Chris Paul's baby face darkened instantly. He rushed over to Levi, who was three years older than him, gesturing excitedly with both hands and rattling off his defensive blunder of letting his man slip through his fingers.
The senior student lowered his head, wiping away sweat, his face grim, but dared not argue back because Chris Paul was the team's star player.
In the following rounds, Chris Paul, who was trailing, became extremely anxious.
As the Maryland forward squeezed through the screen, Chris Paul subtly raised his knee and nudged the opponent's inner thigh. While making off-ball runs around cones, Chris Paul grabbed the defender's shorts waist with his left hand for leverage, and incidentally nudged the opponent's ribs with his right elbow. When the team's offense stalled, he simply stopped passing the ball and dribbled up the court three times in a row, attempting to force his way through. On the last attempt, he tripped in the crowd and was called for a traveling violation.
Chris Paul jumped up with the ball in his arms, yelling at the referee, until head coach Skip Prosser rushed onto the court and pulled him back, barely avoiding a technical foul.
The final buzzer sounded, 86-87.
The University of Maryland eliminated Wake Forest by one point thanks to two successful free throws in the final moments.
The moment the whistle blew, Chris Paul shoved aside a Maryland substitute player who came up to applaud, ripped off his headband and threw it to the floor. As he walked off the court, head coach Prosser reached out to pat him on the shoulder to offer a word of comfort, Chris Paul twisted his neck, avoiding the veteran coach's hand, and quickly disappeared into the player tunnel with his head down.