Looking at the specific competition time, location, hotel accommodation... and other information written in the letter, Henry Bolton was very excited—sure enough! As a specially contracted player, that is, if he himself participated in an important event, there was a chance to receive a reward!

His main purpose in participating in these two events was to get rewards. He actually didn’t have high expectations for the final result, but if just participating could earn him a reward, why not?

He hadn’t expected that even the Adidas training camp he signed up for on his own initiative would also offer rewards. But this also made Henry Bolton’s backup plan much more feasible—if all else failed, he could play in lower-level leagues or organized streetball tournaments.

The Adidas ABCD training camp—Pierce attended it last year—was an event organized by Adidas to compete with Nike in the basketball shoe market, a similar promotional competition. But the level of competition was the highest among all the major sports brands’ training camps.

Generally, this competition didn’t have any senior (fourth-year) high school players. By this time, the talented seniors had already been recruited by major colleges, so usually it was sophomores and juniors who could make it into the top 100 high school players in the country who participated. The final high school all-star lineup players would almost all go on to join NCAA Division I teams.

Henry Bolton was clearly an exception. This year, he received the invitation largely because the host city had a large Chinese community.

Henry Bolton felt he had to work hard and try to see if he could get the recognition of a college coach, just like Coach Scott Collins from Inglewood High School, who saw his ability and talent and selected him.

College coaches have a lot of power, especially in scholarship arrangements and player selection—the head coach’s word carries a lot of weight.

But when he thought about college... Henry Bolton still got a headache. He had sent his game videos and resume to 22 Division I colleges, but so far only 9 had replied.

Most of the colleges that replied were interested in his SAT scores. Henry Bolton figured that if he applied to college not for a basketball scholarship but purely based on his academic performance, those schools would be much more enthusiastic.

Carrying three letters back to his room, Henry Bolton handed Pierce’s letter to Pierce, and opened his own reply from the McDonald’s High School All-American Dunk Contest.

The Adidas training camp was being held in San Francisco this year, and the McDonald’s High School All-American Weekend was in Los Angeles.

For the McDonald’s All-American Weekend, check-in at the designated hotel was on the 24th, and the 25th-26th were the selection games, including the dunk contest preliminaries. The McDonald’s High School All-American was modeled after the NBA All-Star rules, but with selection games—the first two days were for selection, the 27th was the high school all-star game, and the 28th was the three-point contest and dunk contest.

The most important and the only event broadcast live nationwide was the dunk contest. The three-point contest also got national coverage because of the dunk contest, but probably not many people paid attention to it.

As for the all-star game, Henry Bolton didn’t receive an invitation, but in the past few days, Henry Bolton learned about this all-star event and found that the selection process was quite odd. From all the state championship teams in the East and West, experts would pick one player from each state champion high school assigned to the East or West. Sometimes, the best players didn’t even get a chance to participate.

Pierce also received an invitation but declined, because it wasn’t necessary.

The Adidas training camp was different. Henry Bolton was a special case, while most of the other participants were sophomores and juniors. First, there was a week-long training camp, during which various selection games were held. In the end, an all-star lineup was chosen. At the end of the NBA regular season and before the playoffs, they seized the opportunity to hold an NBA All-Star-style event, with two teams made up of high school players from the East and West.

After paying attention to this event, Henry Bolton saw on the Adidas high school basketball training camp’s promotional poster that the cover player was the nation’s top high schooler from Farragut High School, Kevin Garnett... After deliberately looking up the current Garnett, Henry Bolton finally understood why this guy went straight to the NBA instead of college—his grades were just too bad. What kind of study enthusiasm would it take for a senior to only get a little over 300 on the SAT?

At the end of April, there was an ACT exam, and in early May another SAT exam, but this academically challenged Garnett wasn’t even trying to study to get into college, and instead came to participate in this event. Maybe he never even considered going to college... or never had the chance.

The Adidas training camp wasn’t broadcast live, but compared to the McDonald’s training camp and all-star game, it got even more attention! The MVP of this event almost always made it to the NBA, and the final 18-man roster for the event almost every year all entered NCAA Division I teams.

The McDonald’s High School All-American game was almost just a formality, and the dunk contest was only about physical ability and creativity, while the final game of the Adidas training camp was a real test of skill and basketball talent.

While Pierce was eating pizza, Henry Bolton used his computer to search for detailed information about this Adidas training camp event.

Back in those days, using a computer required a lot of patience...

“Yo-ho!”

Looking at the list of participants, Henry Bolton quickly found some familiar names—not people he knew personally, just ones he recognized.