How to survive in the NBA where monsters gather? PJ Tucker’s Way of Survival – NBA – Basketball | Sports Vision

When it comes to tough guys in the NBA, PJ Tucker is definitely on the list.

At 38 years old, he is already the third oldest player in the league. Behind him are future Hall of Fame stars LeBron James and Chris Paul.

As a second-round draft pick, it is truly remarkable to be able to persist to this age. However, a lot has been said about his story, so in this article, I want to focus on one question: why I think he fell to the second round in the draft due to his lack of talent. , even players who are forced to play for European teams after their rookie season, can they survive in the league for so long?

This can also be said to be the survival rules for players that I have summarized over the years of watching the NBA. If you are not the kind of player that everyone expects and the team is willing to invest a lot of resources in cultivating, then this method may be the model that most people will choose. Sometimes I even think that this kind of development model is also very suitable for ordinary people to use on their own. career planning.

The overall model can be divided into three stages. These three stages are closely related to the “irreplaceability” of the team. The higher the irreplaceability, the more popular the player will be in the free market and the less likely he will be short of the next job.

The irreplaceability gradually increases with the stages. These three stages are “selling strength”, “selling technology” and “selling brand”. The improvement of stages does not necessarily increase with time, but It depends on whether the key conditions have been met. There are many players who have not reached the later stages in their careers. It may be a matter of personal mentality, it may be that they were selected in the wrong environment, or it may even be because of injuries. That’s it. Silently faded out of the alliance.

Then let’s use PJ Tucker’s career to talk about his knowledge and opinions about each stage!

Stage one, selling physical strength

“Although you are in this alliance, you can feel that you do not belong here.”

The 6-foot-5-inch (about 196 cm) Tucker was selected by the Raptors with the 35th overall pick in the second round. He mainly played power forward in college, but pre-draft evaluations estimated that such a body would have no advantage in the penalty area. , and he does not have the outside and dribbling skills to move to the wing, so it is considered that Tucker’s ceiling is at best a bench player with a single function.

With poor congenital conditions and a low return on investment in skill development, Tucker would naturally not be favored by the Raptors. Therefore, during his rookie year, Tucker spent most of his time in the Development League and was even dismissed after the season. After being laid off, he began to wander around playing overseas.

And this is also a common feature of stage one: high substitutability.

Because young players have potential but have not realized it, most teams at this stage will evaluate the difficulty of training and the immediate combat ability the player can provide to decide whether to keep the player. During this period, most people have just entered the league. During the four years to the end of the rookie guaranteed contract, if you receive a non-guaranteed second-round contract, the time will be shorter, because it is easy to change in the free market or subsequent drafts. Can find young players who can replace him.

In other words, most of the young players at this stage of 19-23 years old will make the team willing to invest because they are young and have potential to gamble on the possibility of converting them into immediate combat power.

Therefore, players at this stage usually want to stay in the league, and their first task is to develop their main skills.

The so-called main skill is a skill that can be immediately transferred to the league. This skill can be defense, shooting, organization, off-ball movement, etc. In short, it is an area where you can make a “stable” contribution “immediately” when the coach sends you on the court.

If you can establish a main skill in your rookie year and polish it to specialization, then your chances of staying in the league after the rookie contract ends will be greatly improved. If this area happens to be an area that the team lacks, then play The chances will increase and even enter rotation.

A very common problem at this time is that some players have more than one skill package, so they will think about multi-line development, sometimes practicing organization, sometimes practicing defense. However, such a policy is very demanding on personal learning ability. If you master it quickly, it will be impossible. It is possible to enter the second stage faster, but more people have become masters of everything and masters of everything, and “can’t do anything”.

Another common problem is more non-combat crimes, that is, the positioning of the team. If there are many players who need to be developed in this position, and the team coach cannot effectively allocate resources to allow the players time to play and hone their main strength. Skills, then it is likely to be delayed until the player’s rookie contract ends, and other teams are not sure what kind of contribution he can make.