On the grain drying field in Yunling, Guizhou, ten-year-old Zhou Ye used a bamboo basket as a basket and a mud-wrapped rag as a basketball. The year Yao Ming retired, he was accidentally bound to the "Harden Training System", but the system only gave a cold reminder: "Talent must be exchanged for blood and sweat."
In the third year of junior high school, he tied sandbags and ran on the eight-mile mountain road, and lifted stone locks in the leaky bullpen. His height jumped to 1.88 Meters, but he had never even played in a regular game. In high school, he was squeezed into the third worst middle school in the city. He wore out three pairs of rubber shoes on the cracked cement court. His ball-handling skills shocked the school team, but he was rejected from the provincial youth training because of his "wild background".
The university led three dark horses from other universities into the semi-finals of Cuba. His ankle still has the old scar from a fall on the mountain road in Guizhou. On the night when he was selected for the National Youth Team to compete in the World Championships, the scouting report was full of doubts: "There is no successful precedent for players from Guizhou." Wearing the Jiangsu team's No. 10 Jersey, he won the CBA trophy.
He landed in the NBA as a second-round pick at the age of 21. On the Lakers bench, he clutched a towel and listened to the boos in the audience, thinking of the bamboo basket in the grain drying field. When LeBron passed the key ball to the Guizhou boy, Zhou Ye took a step back and scored a three-pointer through the Staples Dome - all the sweat finally poured out the fateful return pass.
