“I found Myself Famous Unawares”

▽ ‘Do not consider me a coach’

Coach Lee made a relationship with Korea tender on first of June 2001. When he joined Samsung electronics in 1986, former head Coach Jin Hyo-jun called him coach.

Coach Lee had an unusual experience of working as salesman in Samsung electronics and in front of Samsung thunders basketball. He joined Samsung electronics as an assistant following Park Gwang-ho, former coach of Kookmin bank women team as he had good basketball skill, however, he broke his knee gristle in army and gave up basketball.

Coach Lee doesn’t show dignity to players. He doesn’t hide that team’s tactic is the work of former coach, as he didn’t have good experience as a leader.

However, his good point is to make play basketball freely and refinement to revive hidden talent of players. He allows drinking and smoking which is different from other teams, but he makes a condition that players should not hinder exercise and should complain before training, saying, ‘abstract me from training as my health is bad. ’

▽ ‘Let’s devote ourselves for being expensive ’

Coach Lee receives monthly salary. It is consideration of manager that other firm should not feel burden to carry the team.

Many players receive high annual salary, however, there is none who receives billions of annual salary among Korea tender players. In case the team is disbanded, as no firm wants to take over, there are few players who can go to other team having good talent. Korea tender worries about place for exercise, as it doesn’t have exclusive gym among 10 teams. That is why, Erick Ivertz and Andrew Peri declared, “our team will never enter strong six team ”, before season.

Therefore, though there is no exclusive gym and billions of annual salary, Korea tender carried on working. Spirit of leader and players in front of cliff was fearful. Until it recorded 10 wins 2 losses in practice game before opening season, people said it is ‘storm in a cup’, however, nobody denies it as a ‘real storm’ now.

▽‘It is not spirit of hunger but real ability’

Jung Nak-young who gets 95 million won of annual salary didn’t let Kim Young-man (SK nights) who gets 2 billion and 20 million won of annual salary score any point and Hwang Jin-won who gets 88 million won of annual salary scored more than 20 points per game. Therefore, other players also feel pride.

The secret was enthusiastic exercise. Though they borrowed gym and practiced, players exercised diligently. If it is hard to borrow, Korea tender players developed their strength running on mountains near the hostel. Coach Lee said, “There is no ‘surprise’ in the game that is played by hands. The result comes according to the amount of exercise.” Spirit of hunger also adds to one or two times; players now believe that the surprising result is from their real ability.

Sang-Ho Kim hyangsan@donga.com