The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 139 - 39 Uneven

The game had just started when Ramsay customarily knelt on one knee by the sideline to watch.

He liked observing the court from this angle; it was a very unique perspective.

To the audience, the game is seen from a god’s view, where players appear like chess pieces on a board. Hence, spectators often express incomprehension towards some of the choices players make on the court.

For example, why not pass the ball when there’s clearly an open spot in the corner? Why break through from the right when there’s an opening on the left?

If you switch to the player’s perspective, you’ll understand that moving from a high vantage point to ground level, the ten giants on the court can block your line of sight like a forest.

Furthermore, the players have a limited field of vision when standing on the court, and their brains have to process many things at once. Making choices on the court is not an easy task.

The coach’s perspective is between the audience and the players; they can see aspects of the game the players cannot, while also empathizing with what the players feel on the court.

Ramsay, however, takes it even further. He kneels on one knee and observes every move of the players from a special lower angle.

This perspective allows him to overlook the players’ hairstyles, facial features, flailing limbs, and the thrown basketball—often the most eye-catching parts of a player.

He pays more attention to the lower body, watching the players’ movements on the court, their legs in action, their running postures, and those easily overlooked details.

Not to mention the audience, sometimes even the referees are more drawn to the players’ upper body movements. After all, this is basketball, not soccer; hand movements are key in determining fouls.

Therefore, some wily old veterans on the court secretly trip and obstruct their opponents while staying out of the referees’ sightlines.

And Ramsay sees all of this.

Five minutes before, he had warned Gan Guoyang to watch out for Phoenix’s three big men, stating tonight’s game would surely be different from the last one against the Supersonics.

If Gan Guoyang indulged in the ease of scoring through fast breaks, he would definitely learn a tough lesson tonight, a lesson the Trail Blazers had already learned last season.

Five minutes after the game started, Ramsay wondered, how could this kid play so smartly? He seemed born for the game of basketball.

After Gan Guoyang won the jump ball at the start, he called for the ball in the low post. He used a turnaround fake to shake Edwards then drove in for a layup, drawing a foul from Edwards.

This offensive move at the game’s outset immediately put the Suns’ interior defense on the back foot. Ramsay couldn’t fathom why an experienced veteran like Edwards would make such a rookie mistake.

Because Ramsay didn’t know that as soon as Gan Guoyang stepped onto the court, he had begun to mock Edwards’ Fu Manchu moustache. He insisted it was racially insensitive, and argued Edwards shouldn’t use the nickname "Buddha"; he said Edwards looked less like Buddha and more like Zhu Bajie.

Although Edwards didn’t understand what Zhu Bajie meant, he knew it wasn’t anything good. In a short time, Gan Guoyang had managed to irritate the tall interior player.

Americans’ understanding of "Buddha" clearly differs greatly from that of Chinese people, and Edwards’ personality is definitely not that of a "Buddha-like" player.

As a center who came up in the ’70s, being tough in character and in playing style was a must. Entering the ’80s, with the League cracking down, player conflicts became somewhat less common.

Yet Edwards still warned Gan Guoyang to play it cool on the court—this was Phoenix, after all.

Gan Guoyang immediately responded with a fake move and by drawing a foul; he made both free throws. Then Edwards attempted to respond on the offensive end.

But before he could catch the ball, he was intercepted by Gan Guoyang, who had circled in front of him. The ball went back to the Trail Blazers, and Vandeweghe nailed a shot during the fast break.

Gan Guoyang then blocked Alvan Adams’ layup attempt and, on the counterattack, didn’t employ a move-hook but instead slowed down to reset in the half-court.

Receiving the ball in the same low post position, he turned inside against Edwards. Edwards dared not reach in, helplessly watching Gan Guoyang score a left-handed layup for two points.

Next, Gan Guoyang played tough defense again. The burly Edwards found he couldn’t shake off Gan Guoyang’s tenacious defense; he couldn’t receive the ball.

With their three big men on the court, the Suns lost the fluidity of their ball movement. They intended to play high and throw the ball into the paint to attack the Trail Blazers’ rim.

Nance’s layup, disrupted by Gan Guoyang, missed. On the counterattack, using highly deceptive movement, Gan Guoyang caught a pass from Parkson and sank a 12-foot jumper.

An 8:0 run to start the game put the Suns on hold. Gan Guoyang had 6 points, 2 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 steal, easily dismantling the Suns’ so-called trio of big men.

No, they were angry. Edwards, returning to the bench, threw down the towel handed to him by a staff member and complained to his coach, "That kid is much stronger than I thought!"

At a time when NBA players generally didn’t work out much, relying on their natural frame and muscle, Gan Guoyang’s strength already stood out, despite not being heavy.

During the timeout, Ramsay didn’t have much to say. He simply asked Gan Guoyang, "Gan, just talk about your thought process. Why are you good at handling tall lineups?"

Ramsay thought Gan Guoyang would talk about speed, agility, or his ability to shoot from distance. Instead, Gan Guoyang simply threw out one word: "Positioning."

One word summarized Gan Guoyang’s entire essence when facing tall lineups, aligning with what Ramsay had observed from the sideline earlier.

Yet Ramsay was still curious about how Gan Guoyang determined his approach to the game since he hadn’t started the prior two matches this way.

As the timeout neared its end and Ramsay didn’t give any tactical instructions, he pulled Gan Guoyang aside again and inquired, "What were you thinking, Ah Gan, how are you dealing with their three tall guys?"

Gan Guoyang stood up, unsure why Dr. Jack was so insistent on asking today, and said, "I don’t care about their several big men. I’m just focusing on one. And besides, they’re not even."

Gan Guoyang, after all, had been exposed to more advanced basketball concepts that followed. He understood the importance of space, and looking back through NBA history, successful tall lineups are few and far between.

In reality, effective tall lineups aren’t elevated at the center position but on the wings, especially the small forward. Even in the early days of the ’50s and ’60s, there were no precedents for stacking centers to achieve success.

The most successful Celtics instead had an agile shorter center, accompanied by guards and forwards who were excellent shooters and enthusiastic runners.

The biggest problem with having too many tall players on the inside is the uneven distribution of space on offense and defense. Basketball is a game of scoring through shots and a game of battling for space; once your space occupation is uneven, you give your opponent too much room to maneuver.

Gan Guoyang’s movements are about utilizing these spaces to obtain relatively easy scoring opportunities.

His sensitivity to court space is stronger than that of some shooting guards.

The timeout ended, and after a brief adjustment, the players returned to the court. The game had only just begun.

The Suns Coach McLeod realized the "three big men" approach wasn’t quite effective, so he substituted Kyle Maxi in for the veteran Adams.

In the absence of core shooting guard Davis, McLeod tried to compensate by using three bigs.

The first three games worked well, winning easily against the Warriors, the Supersonics, and the Clippers, with the trio scoring over 50 points every game.

However, the start of this game was clearly not as effective; Gan Guoyang’s playing style made McLeod feel as if the three big men on the court were like three dumb donkeys wandering aimlessly around a millstone.

Alvan Adams, only 30 years old this year, seemed old and slow in front of Gan Guoyang as if he were already 50.

Although he could shoot from mid-range, Gan Guoyang’s timely defense made it impossible for him to hit accurately.

Right, Gan Guoyang had to single-handedly guard Edwards on defense and also help defend against Larry Nance and Adams. This seemed utterly impossible, but he did it.

This rookie, like a newly born foal, was lively and jumping around, covering everywhere on defense. This sort of inside player had never appeared in this era, and it wasn’t until more than ten years later that two number 21s were recognized as his successors.

Lacking a guard to transfer the ball and tear through with dribble penetrations, the Suns’ offense was very rigid. After Maxi came on, the Suns’ offense began to flow again.

Scott hit an outside shot after receiving a pass from Maxi, breaking the Suns’ scoring drought, followed by Edwards successfully making a fadeaway jumper after receiving a pass.

But the Trail Blazers, having gained the upper hand, suppressed the Suns on both offense and defense. Parkson used his agile positioning to repeatedly cut to the basket and score.

The Suns also hit consecutive shots, and Suns Coach McLeod kept adjusting his troops and substituting players. To maintain the team’s vitality on the court, he stuck to a 10-man rotation, which he would expand during the regular season.

But McLeod soon found himself somewhat desperate to discover that no matter how he rotated his players, that number 11 Trail Blazer rookie remained as unyielding as a rock on the inside defense.

He maximally disrupted every Suns’ approach to the three-second zone, and even outside it, he’d take the chance to interfere, making you uncomfortable whether shooting or passing.

This kind of stable defensive interference could be deadly. In one quarter, it might reduce your points by one and lower your shooting percentage by three or four percentage points. Over four quarters, that’s four fewer points, eight points, enough to decide the outcome of a game.

"Fuck, how can this guy defend from inside to outside? Where isn’t he?" McLeod was exasperated. At that moment, he particularly missed Davis; if only they had a scoring expert to blow up Ah Gan.

In the 80s, most defensive centers were rather "lazy," squatting in the three-second zone to protect the rim, securing backcourt rebounds, and then passing the ball to the guards without any mistakes was considered adequate defense.

An extensive defensive coverage like Gan Guoyang’s was basically unheard of. It required a keen defensive instinct, good positioning control, and a continuous supply of abundant physical energy.

Such tiring and dirty work was mostly left to power forwards, but Gan Guoyang was obviously doing it better.

He played the entire first quarter and kept the Suns’ score down to 19 points for the period. The Trail Blazers lead 24:19.

Midway through the second quarter, McLeod, refusing to concede, sent the three bigs back on. He specifically instructed Adams to act like a small forward.

"I know you’re agile, Alvan, keep moving around the perimeter and pressure them with your shooting!"

McLeod knew Vandeweghe was a poor defender and wanted to exploit him with Adams.

But Vandeweghe adopted a strategy of guarding against drives but not shots, sticking close—since he couldn’t stop your drives anyway, he might as well let you have them.

Gan Guoyang, like a fierce beast, stood guard in the three-second zone. After two massive blocks, Alvan Adams gave up trying to drive to the basket with the ball.

On the counterattack, Drexler took to the air, soaring for a dunk and adding finger-roll layups to further widen the margin.

When the Trail Blazers led by 13 points at 44:31, McLeod finally realized the futility and pulled Alvan Adams from the game.

For the rest of the game, he never put three big men on the court at the same time.

When there were only two or one of the three big men on the court, the Suns’ offense immediately regained fluidity.

By halftime, they had reduced the deficit to 9 points, 51:42.

McLeod, in the locker room during halftime, wielding the stats compiled by the data analysts, lambasted his players.

"16 points, 11 rebounds, 5 blocks, 2 steals, that’s the stats he put up in the first half!"

"Anyone who didn’t know better would think he’s been in the NBA for 10 years, an old pro!"

"Nance, Lucas, you two better take care of him in the second half!"

McLeod hadn’t given up on the idea of crushing Gan Guoyang with his big men.

After all, he had plenty of big men at his disposal; these were all originally prepared for Jabbar.

Now, it was time to give a rookie a proper NBA shock. His stamina should be running low in the second half, right?

That’s what McLeod thought.