The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 1554 - 25: A Difficult Decision
On January 18, the Trail Blazers visited the Washington Wizards.
Gan Guoyang and the Trail Blazers didn’t show any courtesy to the people of the capital and the Commander-in-Chief, easily defeating the Wizards at 116:102, extending their winning streak to an astonishing 38 games.
It’s already near 40 games, and the Trail Blazers remain undefeated.
Gan Guoyang scored 38 points, grabbed 19 rebounds, and made 11 assists, achieving a triple-double tonight.
His performance was as outstanding as ever, and the Wizards had no ability to resist.
The traditional front-line duo of Rashid Wallace and Juwan Howard seemed as fragile as paper in front of Gan Guoyang.
Two young players, famed in NCAA, found themselves very unadapted to Gan Guoyang’s varied playstyle.
Juwan Howard’s size was a hard weakness, and his physical fitness could only be described as average — a major reason why many who shined in NCAA cannot reproduce glory in NBA.
Meanwhile, Rashid Wallace’s terrible offensive rebound defense let him suffer greatly in the rebound battles, with Gan Guoyang snatching 7 offensive rebounds.
During the game, the NBC commentator exclaimed: "Ah Gan and the Trail Blazers have surpassed this era; their basketball is something other teams cannot touch and find hard to comprehend."
Gan Guoyang’s playstyle was indeed too advanced; he truly achieved Dr. Naismith’s ultimate basketball dream: wherever the ball is, initiate the attack from where you got the ball.
In these regular season encounters, watching film isn’t helpful; once they play, it’s clear they can’t withstand it.
Everyone is accustomed to grinding out position battles, used to contesting defenses; this set of Trail Blazers catches everyone off guard, mismatched from lineup structure to rotation, tactics, and match details.
After the game, teams were left puzzled from top to bottom, questioning how games can be played this way.
Some smart people figured out a bit of the taste, yet haven’t fully understood, only to face the next game, returning to the usual rhythm.
Meeting the Trail Blazers next time, still unable to win, coaches don’t have any good solutions — true systematic study and targeting can only wait until off-season.
In this season anyway, wait, wait for the Trail Blazers’ own slump, wait for their ugly maiden nights.
The Trail Blazers achieved 38 straight wins, but this news wasn’t the next day’s headline, as another explosive story emerged.
Just three days after Clinton was accused of sexual harassment, on January 19th, the President held a televised news conference.
At the conference, Clinton stood with his wife Hillary, admitting to cameras that he had contact relations with White House intern Levinsky.
On television, Clinton held his wife’s hand, tearfully apologizing for his behavior, stating he is willing to accept any punishment, including losing the presidency.
This news was immediately spread across All-America by television media, then impacted globally, becoming January 1998’s most shocking news:
The American President admitted to making a mistake that any man can make.
Gan Guoyang saw this news while back in Portland, resting at home.
The Eastern away trip ended, and the teammates were quite exhausted, fortunately, the schedule provided two days of rest.
This season’s Trail Blazers schedule arrangement can be described as very friendly, with many home games at the start, less back-to-back, and only two away back-to-back.
After each away trip, two days or even more rest was arranged, then several back-to-backs at home.
This is very beneficial for players’ physical recovery, as well as organizing life and match rhythm.
So far, within the Trail Blazers, there have been no major injuries, only some minor, insignificant issues.
These are all prerequisites for the Trail Blazers to win all the way until now, which can be said to be a combination of timing, geography, and harmony allowing the Trail Blazers to go this far.
So far that even the Trail Blazers players, coaches didn’t quite dare to believe, reaching mid-January 1998, yet have not lost a game.
But even more unbelievable was their President admitting on television to having relations with an intern.
"America as a country is done for, the President could do such things, what is this? When a nation is about to perish, there will be evil."
Gan Youwei sat on the sofa, watching the news and expressing his thoughts.
Over the past two years, Gan Youwei’s condition tended to stabilize, without very obvious dementia symptoms, which was Gan Guoyang’s greatest comfort.
Whenever home, he would take time to watch TV with his father, watch the news, and chat simply.
Gan Guoyang enjoyed discussing past events with Gan Youwei, using games as temporal anchors to continuously stimulate Gan Youwei’s memory.
For example, the 1986 Finals, the 1991 Finals, losing at the 1989 West Finals, wrestling Malone in 1992, and so on.
Gan Youwei remembered most of it clearly, able to articulate what happened that day and his feelings.
Every time Gan Youwei freely discussed past events, Gan Guoyang felt relieved to concentrate more on games.
Besides talking about the past, Gan Youwei liked to point out American social news and make statements from his perspective.
As a person ages, coupled with no work, reading, newspapers at home every day, inevitably generating various random thoughts.
Gan Youwei saw a dignified country president, admitting his follies on TV in front of the nation and the world, feeling his worldview was bombarded.
