The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 197 - 88: Watch and Learn Well

Byron Scott finally gave up the competition with Gan Guoyang, and was completely thrown off by Gan’s opening 5-point shot.

He obediently pulled out 20 US dollars from his pocket and handed it to Gan Guoyang, accepting his loss fairly, while Magic Johnson and Michael Cooper shook their heads as they watched from the sidelines.

When Scott suggested, "Why don’t you two challenge him?", both men shook their heads repeatedly, preferring not to embarrass themselves.

At noon, using the 20 US dollars, Gan Guoyang treated the three of them to a few drinks at the Forum Club. They chatted about everything except that evening’s game. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

After finishing their drinks and going their separate ways, when they met again at The Forum a few hours later, they wouldn’t be all smiles and laughter anymore, but would look at each other as if they were each owed a million US dollars.

On the evening of January 1st at seven-thirty, the Great Western Forum played host to the third regular season game between the Trail Blazers and the Lakers. In the pre-game television preview, Gan Guoyang was already being billed as the main attraction for the Trail Blazers, alongside Magic and Jabbar.

The television broadcast highlighted one particular statistic: in the All-Star voting for the starting center in the Western Conference, Gan Guoyang trailed closely behind Jabbar. The performance of both players in this game could very well determine who would be the Western starting center.

During the warm-up, Gan Guoyang could clearly sense that his teammates’ morale wasn’t very high; the passionate battle with the Rockets had drained their emotions, and their desire to win wasn’t as strong.

Even Jack Ramsay, a coach known for his competitive fervor and hatred for losing, only gave some simple instructions before the game, and his face showed more calmness than passion. This was ever since Dr. Ogilvy had diagnosed him with slight mental health issues, and his disposition had become more stable; even his baldness seemed more amiable.

On the other side, Lakers’ head coach Pat Riley was still slick and well-groomed, attracting the most television camera shots with his impeccably styled hair.

When it came to personal marketing, Jordan and Gan Guoyang had a lot to learn from Riley.

As a player, Riley was just an ordinary role player; in college at Kentucky, he was known for his fouls. With the Lakers, he rode the coattails of the stars to a championship title, and struggled to find a job after retiring, ending up as a Lakers gofer. His sideline commentary was met with disdain, and he wasn’t deemed qualified to coach.

Then the head coach Jack McKinney (who had just been fired by the Kings) had a cycling accident that damaged his head, and his assistant coach Paul Westhead took over. Needing an assistant coach, Riley got pulled in.

After winning the championship, Westhead was kicked out due to a disagreement with Magic, and Riley outmaneuvered two head coaches in succession to become the Lakers’ third head coach of the 1980s.

He picked up right where Jack McKinney left off, adopting the Showtime fast-break offense that McKinney had tailored for Johnson, and charged toward the championship.

The third in line for succession unexpectedly ascended to the throne within two years and seized the opportunity for a spectacular comeback.

The once naive student from Kentucky, sporting a student haircut, began to learn from his good friend, Hollywood star Michael Douglas. He dressed himself in Armani suits, combed his hair back slickly, and fully showcased his charisma under the spotlight at The Forum.

In the NBA, no coach drew more attention at courtside than Riley. He was not just an expendable nanny of the show-time, but a leading figure on the sidelines.

Of course, Riley was not just a figurehead. He was an ambitious man with strong arms, adept at solving all kinds of problems.

Though the Lakers were immensely talented, the more geniuses that gathered on a team, the more unimaginably troublesome they could become. Every player had a strong personality, had their own ideas, and in the past had been the protagonist of their own basketball stories.

The head coach had to make them work together within the same system, play in concert with one another, with sacrifices, compromises, persuading them to do tasks they had been reluctant to do in the past; it was not an easy job.

And under the endless exposure of the Los Angeles spotlight, the players would be bombarded with relentless media coverage, gossip, various negative news, and idle chatter.

Take Jabbar, for instance. He was recently in trouble again. Last time, his car collided with a bicycle, and he ended up suing the cyclist. Most recently, he was sued by his landlord for remodeling the rented house without permission, including pulling out the bathroom, parking on the lawn, and repainting the study.

Then Jabbar’s top-notch lawyer depicted the landlord as a selfish, greedy swindler to garner the jury’s sympathy, which eventually led to an out-of-court settlement. Yet, in the eyes of Los Angeles fans, Jabbar’s stature shrunk by three inches; he was not at all graceful or noble, just an unreasonable child.

Let’s not even talk about the pile of messes surrounding Magic Johnson. People were starting to notice that this guy was fooling around with women nearly every day, and not just once, but two or three times, or even more.

Even James Worthy from North Carolina was not much better. He had a steady partner and a happy marriage, but the tabloids reported that he liked to go to strip clubs where he enjoyed having strippers sit on his lap, gyrating, as he indulged in fondling their silicone-enhanced fake breasts.

There really are a lot of NBA players with messy personal lives. What else do you expect from a group of such energetically charged black players when they’re not playing basketball? Stay home and read novels?

But in Los Angeles, all of this would be placed under a magnifying glass, blown up so big that it affected the players’ performances on the court. And Riley had the ability to block all of this out off the court.

He had a strong belief and leadership, the oratory of a religious leader, which allowed the players to temporarily escape the worldly troubles and devote body and soul to basketball, as if to a deity.

To put it nicely, this is called influence; to put it bluntly, it could also be called brainwashing. Anyway, he had such an ability, and his brainwashing wasn’t just a day or two thing, or just a few words; it was long-term, persistent, lasting a whole season.

For example, he would hang a comparison of Larry Bird and Johnson’s stats in the locker room to motivate Magic, would cut out newspaper articles criticizing them and pin them on the wall as a reminder that enemies were everywhere, and he would write long speeches to be read before important games to boost morale.

Before the game against the Trail Blazers, he enlarged and printed a poster of Gan Guoyang’s stunning dunk during his first game at The Forum and pasted it on the inside of the locker room door.

"If you let Ah Gan dunk that easily again tonight, we’ll start training at seven o’clock tomorrow morning!" he reminded the players.

At that moment, the pain in the Lakers players’ eyes was evident; they knew all too well the horror that a 7 a.m. practice entailed with its length and intensity akin to torture in hell.

Consequently, when the game started, the Lakers went all out from the first quarter, assaulting the Trail Blazers’ defense over and over with their high-speed, aggressive play.

Magic Johnson went full throttle, James Worthy flew through the air with his goggles as if he were in the sky, and even Jabbar actively joined in on the fast breaks—a rare sight since the season began.

The Trail Blazers quickly fell behind at the start, with everyone but Gan Guoyang out of sync. Their defensive steps were slow, their passing sluggish, and their legs felt as if they were filled with lead, making it difficult to move.

At the end of the first quarter, the Lakers led the Trail Blazers by 7 points with a score of 31:24, quickly gaining the upper hand before starting the second quarter with an 8:0 run, dragging the Blazers across the court on a leash like a dog on a bike, completely unable to keep up with the pace.

After Riley adjusted the starting lineup, marginalizing Jamaal Wilkes, the Lakers became younger and faster overall, with the exception of the old man Jabbar.

On the bench, Cooper and McGee were both strong and fast players who could take part in the team’s quick offense, maintaining a high tempo for the Lakers and giving their opponents no chance to breathe.

The Trail Blazers indeed got no respite in the second quarter. They tried to keep up with the Lakers’ rhythm but their outside shots repeatedly failed to connect, with Vandeweghe and Parkson missing the mark.

In such a situation, the Lakers confidently focused on surrounding Gan Guoyang. Riley sent wave after wave of defenders at Guoyang, with McAdoo, Larry Spriggs, Rambis, and others taking turns to double team him.

Gan Guoyang struggled; with his teammates missing continuously, he tried to score more through offensive rebounds, but found himself unable to jump for the ball due to the smothering defense.

The referees showed no favor to Gan Guoyang either; in the eighth minute of the second quarter, they called a foul on him during an offensive play. It was his third of the half, forcing Coach Ramsay to take him out.

At that point, the Trail Blazers were behind by 16 points with a score of 38:54, and things looked grim. The entire team was clearly off their game.

Lakers commentator Chick Hearn, previously fond of mocking the Trail Blazers, gave a fair assessment, "The Trail Blazers’ shooting tonight is just terrible. Every team encounters three or four such games in a season when the rim seems to have a lid on it, and then that bad shooting touch spreads like a virus, but only to players wearing the same colored jerseys. Unfortunately, tonight that virus has exclusively infected the team in red."

When Gan Guoyang was taken off due to fouls, Jack Ramsay also stood up from his crouched position at the sideline and returned to the bench.

Dr. Jack seemed to have little hope for this game. Even though he was fiercely competitive, the wins and losses of the regular season had to be selectively tackled.

However, Ramsay noted that Guoyang’s demeanor remained calm; he was neither discouraged by the team’s overall poor condition nor upset about having to leave the court due to his fouls.

Many players, especially the younger ones, tend to get angry when teammates play poorly or if they themselves are targeted, sometimes lashing out at their teammates and blaming them for the bad performance.

Among them, the better ones, who manage to play well while their teammates do poorly, can still command respect and spur their teammates on with a mix of criticism and encouragement, pushing everyone to struggle forward.

And then there are the worst cases, those who don’t play well themselves, or only have good stats while neglecting defense and not moving actively, who only know to blame their teammates, eventually leading to disunity and discord.

Gan Guoyang, however, rarely criticized his teammates during games. He might occasionally point out defensive mistakes, but most often he led by example to motivate others.

Sitting on the bench and drinking water, his gaze was calm as he watched the court, observing everything that unfolded and reflecting on his own issues in the first half.

He had been too reliant on his experiences from the previous two games, wanting to continue to break the Lakers with his vigor and offensive rebounds. But tonight, the Lakers were well-prepared.

Larry Spriggs was a very strong power forward, gifted with exceptional lower body strength, functioning as an excellent ’enforcer’ at the four spot.

His role on the court was to hold back Guoyang and prevent him from going for offensive rebounds, and he himself didn’t go for rebounds, leaving that task to taller rebounding specialists like Worthy and Johnson.

Such tailored defense severely limited Guoyang’s rebounding strategy, and with the Trail Blazers’ outside shooting off the mark, they naturally couldn’t withstand the Lakers’ onslaught.

At the end of the first half, the Trail Blazers returned to the locker room looking dejected and exhausted. Last year at this time, they were enduring a four-game losing streak following Christmas.

During the halftime break, Jack Ramsay discussed tactical points and then turned to Guoyang, "Ah Gan, tell us, what should we do in the second half?"

After thinking for a moment, Guoyang said, "Actually, our biggest problem tonight is our terrible shooting. Recently everyone’s aim has been off. It happens, Kenny said it happens a few times each season, like hiring a prostitute and getting an ugly one. So here’s what we’ll do in the second half—I’ll teach you guys how to shoot. Just watch closely."

Upon hearing Guoyang’s analogy, everyone laughed, and the heavy atmosphere in the locker room became much lighter.

Kenny-Carl pinched his nose and muttered, "Why do you always have to blab... Blab on your own, why drag me into it?"

Guoyang, of course, had to include Kenny to avoid tarnishing his own reputation.

With particular emphasis, Guoyang reminded Drexler, "Especially you, Clyde, watch closely, learn well!"