The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 152 - 50 The Circle is Really Chaotic

In the afternoon, during the contact-training session, Drexler had a fierce argument with Adelman.

The reason was that Drexler found that no matter how he was fouled or bumped by the opponents, Adelman, acting as referee, didn’t blow the whistle.

Drexler was already in a bad mood; he now arrived at the training gym without being late, much earlier than last season.

But today, shortly after arriving at the gym, Adelman called him into the video room, where, accompanied by Ramsay, he watched a ten-minute video montage.

It was all about Drexler’s performance in the last and previous few games, with clips of him playing both well and poorly.

The montage on Drexler’s shooting alone lasted more than five minutes.

To Drexler’s embarrassment, his shooting form was basically inconsistent throughout these five minutes.

From the position of his hands to the bend of his legs, there was no unified standard, making it seem like different people were shooting in the blurry video.

Drexler explained that it was to adjust to the optimal balance, and as for the hand position, it was purely based on the feeling at the moment of shooting—if he felt he could make the shot that way, he would shoot it.

Ramsay had recently not criticized Drexler much, but today it all came at once, as he critiqued most of Drexler’s choices on the court.

He even called Drexler "the epitome of human shooting forms," which hurt Drexler a bit, confirming his previous lack of scolding was merely an illusion.

In the training, after being bumped repeatedly without getting a foul call, Drexler took his anger out on Adelman, and the two nearly came to blows.

Ramsay scolded them, and Gan Guoyang, Vandeweghe, Thompson, and others came over to pull them apart, with Drexler hurling some trash talk at Adelman.

Adelman didn’t talk back but just took off his whistle and left for the locker room, causing the halfway finished scrimmage to be temporarily called off.

Ramsay told everyone to go home and rest as they had a game tomorrow, but Drexler couldn’t let it go, deciding to stay behind for extra practice.

Actually, since the start of the training camp, influenced by Gan Guoyang, Drexler had been practicing extra every day, but shooting wasn’t something that could be mastered overnight.

Some people simply have a talent for shooting; with just a bit of practice, they’re an excellent shooter, while some players train desperately and can only maintain a fairly good standard in the end.

Drexler belonged to the latter, and furthermore, his practice volume was only average. His free throw percentage in his rookie season was just 72%, low among perimeter players.

Yet Drexler was a player with many ideas. Besides shooting, he excelled in other areas, especially in finishing at the rim and his passing vision.

He believed in playing to his strengths and not fixating on his weaknesses, and he should leverage his advantages. He often played some beautiful miraculous shots, and dunks were his forte.

As for shooting, he figured that as long as he practiced hard and built up slowly, he would reach a respectable level someday, so there was no need to rush.

That was until this year when Gan Guoyang joined the team, and as a center, his free throw percentage was the second-highest on the team, behind Vandeweghe’s 89%.

Gan Guoyang’s performance on the court and the coach’s praise both stung Drexler deeply.

Today’s argument with Adelman left Drexler filled with frustration, which he channeled into his shooting practice.

Gan Guoyang, Vandeweghe, Parkson, and others also stayed back to practice shooting.

Half an hour later, Parkson went back to the locker room to get dressed and left.

One hour later, Vandeweghe wiped off his sweat and said goodbye to the two men.

Two hours later, as it got completely dark outside, Drexler felt his limbs start to weaken from practice.

Yet Gan Guoyang showed no signs of stopping as he went to the gym for several sets of bench presses before coming back out to continue shooting.

Then he ran off to do several sets of dumbbells, came back to shoot, and even did some pull-ups followed by more shooting.

"Fuck you, Gan, are you a robot? Why don’t you get tired?"

"I’m more afraid of losing than getting tired," Gan Guoyang replied.

Drexler gritted his teeth and decided to emulate Gan Guoyang, using strength training to tire himself out, then continuing with the shooting practice.

It wasn’t until past dinner time, as their stomachs began to grumble, that they finally ended practice, by then the gym was deserted.

They drove to a restaurant in downtown City of Portland for a meal, the first time the two had dined alone together; his relationship with Clyde was not as close as with Kossie, Thompson, or even Kolter.

Because they were so different, this showed during their meal as they discussed various issues.

For example, Drexler had no particular plans for his career, having not hired an agent since his rookie season.

He had casually hired a temporary agent just to deal with signing his contract with the Trail Blazers, and after the contract was signed and the agent’s fee was paid, the employment relationship was terminated.

Drexler wasn’t interested in hiring a steady, energetic agent because he felt that he was just signing a contract, and the next time he signed he could just consult a professional. What was the point of having an agent on standby for three years?

But Gan Guoyang was different; he knew well that an agent could effectively expand his influence and fight for the most benefits. Fleisher would play a crucial role in Guoyang’s development.

Not only did Gan Guoyang have a powerful agent, but Jordan also had a reliable agent, David Falk, who was a new generation business agent, different from Fleisher. He would showcase his talent in maximizing Michael’s commercial value.

Drexler had no thoughts or concept of this; in fact, his dunks and all-around talent, if well-packaged, wouldn’t have left him being picked so late by the Trail Blazers. The Rockets would have definitely chosen Drexler with the third overall pick in ’83, which would have led to a very different fate for him and the Rockets.

Gan Guoyang could feel Drexler’s yearning for Houston. He would occasionally talk about his time in Houston, and he would surely return to Houston during the summer off-season.

Of course, Guoyang respected Drexler’s own career planning and thoughts. Everyone has a different personality; Drexler had a romantic sense of freedom, which gave his play on the court a casual, graceful beauty.

In their private lives, the two were also headed in different directions. Guoyang had a steady girlfriend and was very faithful to her; he disliked wasting his energy on romantic flings.

And according to his plan, he would marry Wang Fuxi in the future, establish an ordinary family and stay together for a long time.

Drexler, on the other hand, told Guoyang that he had no plans to marry. He enjoyed dating different beautiful girls.

Of course, he didn’t fancy the girls in Portland much, finding them too conservative. He preferred girls from Los Angeles and Houston. He and Magic Johnson were very good buddies.

Gan Guoyang was surprised. He knew Drexler loved to play, but he didn’t expect him to hang out with Magic Johnson, which meant Drexler must be partying big.

The guy seemed refined, with a high nose bridge rare among black men, but it turned out he had quite the roguish streak.

When talking about marriage, Drexler said he had no intention of marrying, and he confided in Guoyang, "But I’ll tell you, I have a newborn child."

Guoyang, who was drinking water, almost spat it out and said, "But I thought you didn’t plan to marry?"

"Yeah, but I have a child, a daughter."

Thinking of the common phenomenon of absent fathers among black Americans, Guoyang felt this was very plausible.

"What about your daughter’s mother, won’t she come looking for you?"

"Oh no, we’ve broken up. I’ll go see her and my daughter when I return to Houston in the summer."

"Uh... don’t you want to bring your daughter to live with you?"

"God, no, why would you think that? I’m a guy in his early twenties, with training and games every day; how could I possibly take care of a baby?"

"You’re right, that makes sense, that makes sense..."

Seeing Guoyang didn’t quite understand, Drexler explained that this was common. Magic Johnson also had a three-year-old and Larry Bird had one, too. He had married and divorced in college but had a daughter, who I guess must be in elementary school by now.

Gan thought to himself this circle was really chaotic, and he immediately realized he couldn’t let his father, Gan Youwei, know about such things, or he’d find another reason to urge him to get married and have kids, "Look at what others are doing..."

After dinner, it was quite late, and Guoyang didn’t go back to Lake Oswego, especially since Wang Fuxi wasn’t there. He stayed directly at Drexler’s apartment in the center of the City of Portland.

Drexler had rented a house in Lake Oswego for the convenience of training and bought an apartment in the city center for the convenience of playing in the evenings, which was very close to the Memorial Coliseum.

"I can’t help loving to sleep in, so the closer, the better. It allows me to sleep a bit longer," Drexler explained. His tardiness for training was due to his love of sleeping in.

However, ever since Guoyang joined the team, this habit had improved quite a bit.

That night, Guoyang slept in the guest room and Drexler in the bedroom. Drexler wondered what time Gan would get up the next day.

In his memory, every time he woke up, Guoyang was surely already up, either running in Lake Oswego Park or washing the car in the yard.

The fatigue from intense training sunk Drexler into a deep sleep, and in the morning, he was awakened by the sound of doors opening and closing. Getting up, he saw Guoyang, dressed in sportswear, drinking water.

"Hey, you got up so early?" Drexler, rubbing his eyes, looked at the clock. It was just past six.

"I’ve been back from exercising for two hours, and you’re awake? I heard you sleep until 11 every day; sorry for disturbing you."

"You’ve already come back from exercising? You... you woke up at four in the morning? You maniac, don’t you need to sleep?"

"Of course, I need sleep. If I’m fatigued from playing, I sleep a lot, but I didn’t do enough exercise yesterday and couldn’t sleep."

"Damn it, you’re not human. I’m up too; let’s go practice shooting together!"