The 2004 NBA Draft was held on June 22.

This year, the Celtics have both the first and second rounds in their hands, so there is still some room for maneuver.

Except for Gerald Wallace who was selected from the expansion draft by the Bobcats, the Celtics basically did not lose any players.

Among the players on last season's roster, except for a fringe player who Louis couldn't name, the only one whose contract expired was pure point guard Brevin Knight, who came to the team the year before last.

When Louis replaced Knight, he wanted to use his overall view to cure Tony Parker's problem of burning the CPU. Later, he chose Flawless, and Knight lost his position in the team, directly changing from the main rotation to being unable to play.

Although he expressed his desire to be traded during the season, Louis was trying to find ways to make money through the Celtics, and Ewing and Bird were in charge.

Knight wants to be traded, and of course Ewing is willing to help arrange it.

The Lakers, who were hungry for pure playmakers, came together.

The deal was close to completion, but was ultimately vetoed by Bird.

Because the Celtics were very competitive at the time, and if they played well, they might have a chance to enter the finals. Knight was useless to the Celtics, but to the Lakers, he was a good medicine to neutralize the conflicts between KG and KG.

The deal with the Lakers fell through, and Ewing was unable to get a valuable return from Knight's deal, so he kept suppressing the trade until the end of the season and let him leave as a free agent.

The Lakers, who have been longing for Knight for a long time, directly offered Knight a four-year, $12 million contract. There was a certain gap between this contract and Knight's expected four-year, $20 million contract, but Zhao Yuanzheng convinced him - you

Giving up 8 million US dollars, but may gain more than one championship.

Knight said this was reasonable, but one cannot hang himself from a tree, so he chose to sign a one-year base salary of US$1 million with the Lakers.

He doesn't even want 3 million, he wants 1 million. If he can win the championship, he will win it. If he can't win, he will be lucky.

Once Knight left, the Celtics had three vacancies.

Louis took a break from his busy schedule and took half a day to care about the team's draft.

Because the Celtics had such a good record this year, the draft pick came to No. 29 in the first round.

This makes it a bit difficult for them to choose people.

Louis made a deal with Miami. The Celtics sent their first-round pick plus cash in exchange for the 27th pick in the first round from the Heat.

After helping the team improve their draft position, Louis didn't care about anything. He only told Ewing and the others that he would visit them if he was free on draft day.

Ewing himself was wondering, what is Boss Lu doing?

Louis is indeed very busy.

Since he has created the American Tieba in advance, of course the American Youku can also do it.

On June 20, 2004, a video website named "Buzz" (an onomatopoeia for buzzing in English) was launched online.

Louis is also the first user of this website.

Through self-operated and self-sold viral advertisements on its own American Tieba, people in every community learned about the existence of "Buzz".

This large online community with over 40,000 registered users has a considerable number of users brought to Buzz by Louis. Despite the small base of these people, they are enough to serve as the initial base of the website.

The American version of Youku owned by Louis has the same attractive features as the American version of Tieba. It focuses on convenience, democracy, and freedom. When thousands of people start posting videos at the same time, the video library on the website will increase at an incredible speed, and then pass the initial

The original algorithm recommendation allows users to have a better experience. The second is its social features such as comments, likes and subscriptions. These features allow users to interact with other people and creators, build a sense of community, and discover through the recommendations of others

New content.

Everything Louis did was to promote the Celtics.

But he also knew that with the launch of these two new products, their value would surpass that of the Celtics in the near future, and that their value would be several times that of the Celtics. It would only be a matter of time before their value would reach dozens of times. But he vowed

, he was really just trying to improve the Celtics’ commercial value at first.

Louis gradually turned Buzz's personal account into a family account. Every day, he would upload some clips of his family's life.

As a result, what made Louis angry was that he found that among the videos he uploaded, the most popular ones were his wife wearing sexy new clothes and imitating a model catwalk at home, and his mother's beagle chewing his documents to pieces.

Later, he pretended to be innocent in the video.

On the day of the draft, Lu Wuxia was preparing to go to training. Seeing his father doing nothing, he couldn't help but ask: "Dad, why do I feel that you don't care about the team at all?"

"It's the offseason, what's there to care about?" Louis pointed the camera at his son, "Here, smile."

Lu Wuxia smiled professionally: "Hello, I am Wish, and the person who shot the video is my father. Although he is the owner of the team, he is also the president of the team, and he is the best basketball coach in history, but he is

On draft day, all I want to do is film around the house with a camera and not care about the team at all, is that right?"

"That's right!" Louis said happily, "This is the effect I want, you are awesome!"

Wu Xia couldn't help rolling her eyes: "I'm going to train."

"Come on, don't lose in the Eastern Conference finals next year. I and the hundreds of thousands of fans in Boston are looking forward to you winning another championship for Boston!"

Wu Xia waved his hand wordlessly and quickly left the camera of his loyal father.

After shooting the video, Louis took the film to someone for processing, and then calculated the time. If he takes his own plane to Boston now, he should still be in time for the draft.

Although it is a waste of time to take the time to care about the No. 27 pick in the first round, it is still a first-round pick, and he will not worry if he does not personally check it.

At 6:30 in the afternoon, Louis arrived in Boston. Bored, he used his finger as a gun to the head of his driver, forcing him to take him to the training base within 15 minutes. The other party successfully reached the destination in only 13 minutes.

"Great, Mark, now could you please order a dinner for everyone, I'm sure everyone is hungry." Louis signed a check, "Hurry."

"Okay, boss."

Louis, who was enjoying his role as an owner more and more, quickly came to the Celtics draft war room.

Ewing saw him coming and joked: "Aren't you busy working on your website where you can upload pornographic videos?"

"What pornographic movies? That was an accident. We are a regular and healthy video website with zero age restrictions. It is impossible to have videos like that!" Louis asked, "Who are you going to choose tonight?"

Ewing immediately said: "Our picks are at the bottom and there are no good candidates. I have to say that the depth of this draft is very average..."

"So who to choose?"

“Andy recommended that we choose Sasa Vujacic.”

Louis' answer reflected that he was not indifferent to the draft: "Why would we draft a player similar to Kyle Korver? Is the team short of shooters?"

"So I prefer Larry's suggestion," Ewing said.

"What do you suggest Larry?"

The candidate Bird recommended was Kevin Martin.

It has to be said that the country bumpkin has a sharp vision. If he can use a cutter like Martin to select him at the end of the first round, he will definitely make a lot of money.

But Louis still frowned.

It's not that it's bad, but they don't need Martin, just like they don't need Vujacic.

This is not due to skin color considerations, but entirely because Martin’s position and attributes seriously overlap with Wade and Ginobili.

As these two grow up, how to balance their playing time next season will definitely become a problem for Bird. This guy is okay, but he wants to make it even more difficult for himself.

Bird asked: "Do you have any concerns?"

Louis said bluntly: "We don't really need to supplement the second position, right?"

Then, Louis looked at Pat Riley, who was silent, "Any recommendations, Pat?"

"Oklahoma State's Tony Allen is a good choice," Riley said.

Louis' eyes lit up.

At this time, scouting director Andy Greer said: "Tony Allen is basically a rough version of D-Wade. Choosing such a player requires taking a lot of risk."

"It's not very big, right? After all, this is just the No. 27 pick." Louis thought for a moment, "Just pick Tony Allen. Coach Riley was the only one who advocated picking D-Wade last year. We should believe it again.

Him once."

It's not like Louis didn't know that selecting Tony Allen would make his vision of a black-free team drift away, but now his thoughts have changed a lot from what he originally thought.

The first thing he needs to ensure is that Wuxia can grow up smoothly, and the second thing is that he needs to have enough good helpers around him.

Wade is good. If Tony Allen, the future defensive anchor, is added to the mix, he will be even more assured.

This is the mountain of fatherly love!

Moreover, compared with the long-term plan of forming a black-free team to win the championship, it seems to be a more interesting thing when the owner racks his brains to increase the commercial value of the Celtics.

PS: Do you think that based on how the United States operates Mars Company in reality, when will Louis’ American versions of Tieba and Youku be labeled as “national security”? Considering this hidden danger, when is the most appropriate time to cash out?

PPS: But it seems pointless to think about this, because I won’t be able to write it at that time.

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Chapter completed!