The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 180 - 73 4433
The trip to Salt Lake City was brief, Drexler left behind a towering dunk but didn’t take any money, and returned to Portland with the team.
After that, the Trail Blazers had two days to recuperate, but on December 4th, they faced an unexpected loss at home against the Kansas City Kings.
One reason was that Valentine was absent from the game due to an injury; during the last match against the Jazz, he strained his leg while attempting to drive past Mark-Eaton.
It wasn’t noticeable during the game, and he persisted until the end, but afterward, he felt a pain on the inner side of his left thigh, and the Trail Blazers immediately started the medical process, demanding that Valentine rest and undergo an examination.
Such a general strain, in the past, could be dealt with and followed by a two-day rest before returning to the court, and now with the Trail Blazers on a good winning streak, they definitely wished to continue this momentum.
But with past lessons in mind, the Trail Blazers indeed have started to pay more attention to player injuries, as deeper into the season, the players are more likely to have more physical issues.
Many players don’t seem remarkable when they are playing, but it is only when they are absent that their importance to the team can truly be felt.
Valentine could contribute 10 points and 6 assists per game, and with him controlling the ball, the Trail Blazers’ offense was very stable, without worrying about not being able to pass the ball, trouble with offensive sets, or the opposing point guard easily breaking through the first line of defense and disrupting the Trail Blazers’ defensive formation.
Apart from lacking some mid to long-range shooting ability, Valentine was quite reliable; he played all 82 games in his rookie season under Ramsey and was highly trusted by Dr. Jack.
Additionally, he had a sturdy build; although he was only 6 foot 1, a height of 1.85 meters for an average person, he was one of the strongest point guards in the league, with very thick thighs.
Thus, Valentine’s perimeter defense was quite good; with two white sieves on the outside for the Trail Blazers, it was fortunate that they had a Valentine on the one-spot who could gnaw at the opposing team’s attacking guards and maintain some intensity in perimeter defense.
With Valentine injured, the only usable point guard left for the Trail Blazers was rookie Steve Colter, who entered the team along with Gan Guoyang and graduated from New Mexico State University.
He was the kind of point guard Ramsey liked, honed through four years of college, familiar with all the strategies, obedient, mistake-free, and capable of executing the coach’s intentions quite well.
The problem with him was that his defense was too mediocre, or even a bit worse, because he was too skinny, and he didn’t seem too bright either, which often made Guoyang wonder if he really understood his defensive commands.
One Valentine plus two sieves Guoyang could still manage, but with three sieves on the exterior, it’s something Guoyang truly couldn’t stand; the game needed extra pay.
In the game against the Kansas City Kings, no one on the Kings played exceptionally well, including Eddie Johnson, and nobody scored over 20 points.
But the entire team erupted, Johnson, Reggie-Seth, Mike Woodson, and others all scored over 15 points, with 7 players scoring in double figures.
The Kings roster wasn’t actually that bad; after a series of initial failures at the start of the season, they changed their head coach, with Phil Johnson taking over from Jack McKinney.
Phil Johnson, who had previously been an assistant coach for the Jazz and had been a head coach for the Kings in the 70s, came to the Kansas City Kings this season as a firefighter.
Although he wasn’t a big-name coach, his decade-plus stint in the NBA meant he had some skills. He was a student and star player of a high school championship team under coach Dick Motta and later served as Motta’s assistant with the Bulls, now able to hold his own.
After defeating the Portland Trail Blazers on the 4th of December, the Kings seemed to blow the horn for a revival, greeting a five-game winning streak in December, defeating strong teams like the Denver Nuggets and the Detroit Pistons, enough to show that there are no weak teams in the regular season, and often, the state and morale dictate the outcome of games.
Of course, Phil Johnson’s great work on the coaching position would start many years later in Salt Lake City.
In contrast to the recovery of the Kings, the Trail Blazers entered a period of fluctuating form.
Perhaps due to the approaching Christmas season, everyone seemed to be looking forward to the holiday.
After more than a month of high-intensity work, from the coach to the staff, and then to the players, the focus began to scatter.
Health issues like Valentine’s thigh injury, Vandeweghe’s back discomfort, and Jim Paxson’s ankle swelling began to emerge as games were played back-to-back.
Following a victory over the visiting Golden State Warriors on December 6th, the Trail Blazers ended their rest in Portland and embarked on a Western Conference away trip.
The first game of their journey to the West was on the Denver Plateau, facing this year’s rising strong team in the Western Conference, the Denver Nuggets.
The Trail Blazers and the Nuggets currently held the top two positions in the Western Conference, a situation no one had anticipated at the start of the season, and these two teams had just made a major trade in the summer.
The Nuggets benefited a lot from this trade, sending away a Vandeweghe who duplicated English’s role and position and had no defense, and they gained an excellent point guard in Fatt Lev, a reliable center in Wayne Cooper, and a powerful small forward in Calvin Natt.
Shipping off one player and getting half a team’s starting lineup, the Nuggets’ strength increased substantially. At the beginning of the season, they soared to the top of the Western Conference, stepping over the Lakers.
The main reason Stu-Inman traded for Vandeweghe was because of Vandeweghe’s potential; he was only 25 years old and still had room to grow.
However, once Vandeweghe really joined the team, Inman and the Portland fans discovered that his offense was indeed remarkable, with a kaleidoscope of outside offensive techniques, comparable to Larry Bird’s outside shooting abilities.
But besides that, his other aspects were really beyond words too: average assists per game were in single digits, starting with a 1; average rebounds were 3 per game, and both blocks and steals started with a 0 as a decimal.
These were still the stats that could be seen. There were also the invisible defects in his defense.
For example, he never boxed out for rebounds because he was focused on fast breaks.
He never went for help Defense under the basket because he was focused on fast breaks.
He never took the initiative to help defend his teammates.
How could he care for others when he couldn’t even handle his direct opponent?
Each game he was clean as ice, with an average of fewer than 2 personal fouls.
To this day, not a single technical foul, a true gentleman.
Having such a player at the 3 position was like a piece of tender meat to the super scoring small forwards prevalent in this league.
Mark Aguirre, English, Dantley, Worthy, and the like, all unsurprisingly scored over 40 points on Vandeweghe.
Despite being such a defensive sieve, the Trail Blazers managed to hold a record of 16 wins and 6 losses, temporarily ranking second in the Western Conference. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺
The reason was that the Trail Blazers were lucky to pick Gan Guoyang in the draft, who compensated for the problems from the Inman trade.
Gan Guoyang didn’t care about Vandeweghe’s poor defense; he had dealt with worse players who were not good on offense either.
Vandeweghe doesn’t box out for rebounds? No problem, I’ll protect the defensive rebounds. After 22 games, Gan Guoyang led the league in rebounding, far ahead of everyone else.
Vandeweghe doesn’t help on defense? No worries, the three-second area I guard does not need others to step in, with Gan Guoyang averaging the second highest number of blocks in the league at 3.2 per game, second only to Mark Eaton.
All Vandeweghe needed to do was focus on offense, especially his fast breaks, running faster than a rabbit, often being the weapon that widened the score gap for the Trail Blazers.
Although his average scoring per game was lower than last season, Vandeweghe’s shooting percentage was two percentage points higher than last season’s 55.8%.
He played more efficiently and more relaxed and sometimes paid more attention to defense, stepping up at critical moments.
A true superstar is one who makes his teammates better.
Before the match with the Nuggets on the 6th, the two teams had already played a fierce game in Portland.
Fatt Lev and others were quite familiar with the Trail Blazers and carried a strong desire for revenge and self-proving.
But in the end, they lost the crucial offensive rebound and suffered a buzzer-beating layup by Thompson.
This time, the Trail Blazers came to the Denver Plateau. Valentine was sidelined due to an injury and did not travel with the team from Portland. Vandeweghe had a back injury and was not in good shape, so the situation for the Trail Blazers looked grim.
But in this game, at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, under the witness of Denver fans, Gan Guoyang exploded with a stat line of 44 points, 33 rebounds, and 7 blocks, helping the Trail Blazers defeat the Nuggets 129:121 on the road. This victory marked two consecutive wins and officially started their Western Conference journey.
At the same time, their record rose to first place in the Western Conference. For the first time since 1978, the Trail Blazers reached the top spot in the Western Conference in December.
And the rivalry between the Trail Blazers and the Denver Nuggets this season was just beginning.
