Chapter 81 Easy Start 1
After all this confusion Jake returned to focus on his team, neither he nor coach Mike wanted to see the team relax and be very confident in the games of the state championship after all many cities would be competing in that championship and were the champions of all regions of Florida.
Even though Jake and everyone who played the national championship knew that the team had the strength to fight for the trophy, even so in so many regions they were participating it would not be strange to bring up a new player from the level of a future NBA star who would dominate the championship.
Although Jake was much stronger than his own age, he was sure that Michael Jordan was much better than he was at his age, what the system was for Jake was an unlimited future and not a supreme skill from the beginning, so he still could not contend with geniuses now, but could in the future.
That was the day of the first state championship game, the players were a bit tense before the game after hearing so many warnings from coach and Jake.
After the game began Elite team got possession of the ball and was passed to Jake organize the first attack.
As they had agreed Jake stood for a while and advanced slowly, when the opponent's defense also began to position itself slowly Jake suddenly gave a long high pass that ended in the hands of David who had run unmarked to score the first two points for the Elite team.
The idea is to start with a slightly more shocking move and thus take the advantage from the beginning, the move seemed to have made a mental impact on the opposing team that started its first attack, so Jake and his teammates were strongly marking the opposing team after passing through the middle of the court.
Coach Mike said before the game for everyone to press on the defense and not give room for the opposing team to organize calmly the attack was an exhausting style of play but Jake and his team endured.
And so the game continued, the opposing team was much weaker than the Elite team and so soon the advantage on the scoreboard began to increase, Jake with his passes destabilized the opponent's defense.
Whenever the opposing team closed the defense well on Jake's teammates, he made some signs and everyone shifted their positions, opening spaces so that Jake could give the pass and see his team-mates score the points.
Although this team was weaker than Jake's team, they were stronger than the Tigers' team, so the game was not as simple as it was shown on the scoreboard.
With the Elite team's tight marking the opponents still missed some attacks and had to get rid of the ball by finishing the time of possession of the ball, so the defense of the elite team was effective.
So after two periods of play in the interval the Elite team led the game by 22 points, it was an expressive advantage that showed the efficiency of the attack and defense of Jake's team.
In the third period of the game, the defense of the Elite team began to relax a little more, nevertheless, the adversary team had the lower morale by being so behind the scoreboard and thus still miss more attacks.
Jake also managed to get a lot of stolen ball guessing and intercepting passes and also taking the ball from the opponent's PG, it had been said if people had not seen other games of Jake would have confused him with a more defensive player.
But by this time of the state championship everyone already had a complete report of all the matches of Jake, so only of him being in court had to have at least two players marking him, even though he has not scored any points until now.
The reason for this was that no one had any idea why Jake was not doing stitches, he did it because he wanted to and had no restraint on him or something so everyone thought that if a game got difficult Jake could just start attacking and making several points.
Such a player was more dangerous and could not an opposing team organize a defense strategy that ignored Jake, the entire elite team knew how the dilemma of the opposing teams and whenever the defense tightened they passed the ball to Jake who almost always stood well in the line of 3 points, so the defense had no choice but to score.
So the third and fourth period passed and the game ended with Jake's team having won with a 32-point lead, it could be said an easy game because the opposing team never had the ability to threaten the Elite team but Jake's team showed that he would play every game seriously.
Today there were more reporters accompanying the Elite team game that was the favorite to win this state championship too, of course, Eric was there too, he did not care about the competition because he made a sure bet and was already following Jake's team from the beginning.
The most important thing was that he had a kind of friendship with Jake and knew how to get a good interview of him after the most important games were over, it was just him giving Jake a little publicity of the companies that sponsored him and he would talk to the greatest pleasure.
Eric was also anxious for the games to get tougher and for Jake to start scoring in the games, so he could take more pictures for his interview, especially if Jake made a point like the one Jake made in the final of the street in New York, so it would be incredible.
After the game ended Jake went home to tell the good news to his mother that he should be anxiously waiting at home, Jake could not wait for the cell phone to be more popular in Miami and so he could call her after every game.
But it was also a lie if Jake said he was no longer pleased when he saw his mother smile satisfied after giving the news of winning a game.
So he went home pleased, as he imagined his mother was very happy to hear about his victory, Eva knew he was getting closer to achieving Jake's goal for that season.
This was a stressful week for Eva, she had been very irritated with the way the principal and the school teachers treated her son just because he was smarter than the others, if Jake was more arrogant he might even think about not watching more the classes as he already knew what was taught.
She was calmer now because she'd talked to Anna and her friends about Jake's problems and how the women got mad and they were together they spent a lot of time swearing at Jake's school and then Eva calmed down.
Eva was very happy to have these friends and so was less stressed, it was nice to have people who cared about her and Jake and who liked them, Anna herself was the most outraged and even wanted to go to school to seek justice for Jake as a real grandmother would do so Eve who was angry before had to calm the agitated Anna.
Jake had already forgotten all this stuff, and classes in the week before the second game normally took place, the teachers treated Jake in class as invisible and did not ask questions and did not care about him.
Jake did not even care, after all, he had little to learn in those classes when there was something he did not know or did not remember for some reason he paid more attention in those classes, then Jake found that only a few of these teachers taught in high school also.
So he did not need to study with all of them all the way back to college, Jake never thought about canceling the contract to go to another school like someone who had worked in an office for a few years in his past life, Jake knew to suffer some problems.
So the day of the second game of Jake's team in the state championship had arrived, the team did not have much important information reported, they called themselves Hawks and they had a well-balanced team, their best player was Scott and he was the team PG.
This PG Scott was smaller than Jake and was known to be able to make 3-point shots, also if space was given to him, Scott had the ability to drive through the lane and make a layup, but what Scott stood out for was in defense.
That means that it was a bad game for the Hawks, and the Elite team is usually stronger than Scott had to score was Jake who did not try to score in the games, besides, Jake also stood out in defense, if not even David who should be better than Scott could easily score points on top of Jake he could forget.