The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 201 - 91 The Shadow So Huge
The third quarter ended with the Trail Blazers overtaking the score, 92:88. The Blazers scored an astonishing 44 points in the third quarter, ousting the Lakers 44:22 to complete a spectacular turnaround.
Gan Guoyang hit six three-pointers in a row, scoring 28 points in a single quarter, which was more than the entire Lakers team.
The Lakers, who had been playing effortlessly in the first half, were flummoxed by Gan Guoyang alone.
His high success rate on offense meant the Lakers no longer had the chance to launch fast breaks and had to slowly grind it out in the set offense.
As the game went on, their form just got worse. By the time Gan Guoyang made his fourth three-pointer, the Lakers players had the thought, "Let’s not play anymore, just watch him shoot and see how many he can make."
After all, it was just a regular season game. Even though Riley had said before the game that they must win, the players still lacked the urgency of win-or-go-home, and were caught off guard by the sudden barrage of three-pointers.
During the break between the third and fourth quarters, Riley was already so angry that his neck turned red. He fully understood a saying by Adolph Rupp:
"I have always envied those coaches who can lose their minds completely. No one will know the difference."
In Riley’s eyes, Rupp was a strict, rational, highly disciplined coach who emphasized the most fundamental aspects of the game every day.
That’s why he could lead a team comprised entirely of white players, with a starting center at only 195 cm tall, to the NCAA finals.
But Rupp often said that puzzling statement, and not until Riley became a coach himself, in moments when he was nearly mad, on the verge of losing his sanity but still desperately trying to control himself, did that sentence replay in his mind, and he began to deeply understand the strong contradictions inherent in being a coach.
Tonight, in this moment, those contradictions peaked, and Riley could no longer control his emotions.
He jabbed his marker fiercely on the tactical board, breaking it, and then roared at the players, "You just stand there watching him make three-pointers! What the fuck are you doing? Are you all blind, crippled? Why don’t you rush over and give him a punch! Even if you get thrown out of the game, you can’t let him attack like that!"
In the summer training session in Palm Springs, Riley had laid down a rule forbidding easy layups, demanding the players to do their utmost in disrupting every offensive attempt, even if it meant pulling the opponent down.
Their imagined adversary was the Boston Celtics, determined to have their revenge in June ’85, but they never anticipated employing this tactic against the Trail Blazers.
The players were also speechless. It was you who, during the timeout, told us to stick to the established strategy for defense. Why are you now asking us to use our hands, to punch Gan Guoyang? Are you dreaming?
Magic Johnson saw that Riley had lost his cool and said, "Coach, that’s Gan Guoyang. Who dares to hit him? He’ll throw them to their death."
Recollecting himself, Johnson’s words made Riley realize, yes, if Gilmore and Lan Bi’er could be body slammed by Gan, who on the Lakers could withstand him?
If they actively swung at Gan, it could trigger a brawl, and the Lakers would gain nothing. It would also harm his own image, followed by a media storm after the game.
Riley took a breath, straightened his hair, tightened the tie around his neck, relaxed, and said, "Cooper, if Gan Guoyang gets the ball on the outside, you stick close to him, don’t give him the chance to shoot. If he goes inside, Karim, you take over on defense."
That was the normal defensive arrangement. Just assign one extra person to him. Though it could cause some issues with defensive rotation, it was still better than letting Gan Guoyang continue to shoot threes.
Meanwhile, on the Trail Blazers’ bench, from the coach to the other players, no one spoke. Ramsay stood there with his arms crossed, wearing a light blue suit and velvet trousers on the first day of the new year 1985, which already seemed out of place in the new era.
What felt even more alien to him were his tactical thoughts and the changes happening on the court. He could not fathom how a center could consecutively hit six three-pointers. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
So far this season, the record for the most three-pointers made in a game was held by the Cavaliers’ Ward B. Flynn, who went 5 for 8 from beyond the arc on December 27th last year in a game against the Bulls, scoring a team-high 30 points.
But the Cavaliers still lost to the Bulls because Michael Jordan scored 45 points, 11 rebounds, and 7 assists, rendering Flynn’s remarkable three-point shooting irrelevant.
Others like Darryl Griffiths, Sleepy Floyd, and Mike Evans had hit 4 or 3 three-pointers in a game, which was quite a lot at the time.
And their shooting percentages were high: 4 for 4, 5 for 4, 6 for 4—it wasn’t because they were exceptionally skilled, but rather because if they found they weren’t shooting well, they wouldn’t keep trying, only attempting more if they were really hot.
Gan Guoyang was the same: once he got hot, he couldn’t stop shooting.
But you’re a center, a dominant and ferocious presence inside. You played like Little Moses in the first half.
In the second half, Ramsay still thought that Gan was just mixing it up with mid-range shots, trying to combine penetration with shooting to rip through the Lakers’ defense.
Unexpectedly, when Gan Guoyang took his first three-point shot, Ramsay was already shrinking mentally.
By the time the sixth one went in, it seemed like his years of hair loss might be reversing, as if the bald spots were itching to sprout new hair.
"When you shoot, you must be decisive. As you release the ball, your eyes should see nothing but the basket, nothing else matters."
"If you’re shooting, you have to believe it will go in. If it doesn’t, that’s just the basket being crooked, not a problem with the shot."
"Three points are one more than two. If I had scored six two-pointers, we would still be down by two points now, so the three-pointer is a good thing."
During the halftime break, the success of his boasting had Gan Guoyang infecting everyone on the bench with his confidence.
He didn’t pretend to be deep and brooding; instead, he seized the opportunity to boost the team’s shooting confidence, which had indeed been terrible lately.
Recovery in regular practice and physical treatment are certainly important, but mental adjustments are equally significant. After this game, the Trail Blazers’ shooting percentage gradually began to rise.
By the start of the fourth quarter, when Pat Riley used Cooper to stick close to Gan Guoyang, it was already too late—the other Trail Blazers had caught fire.
Parkson and Vandeweghe could hit jump shots in the offense, and even Drexler dared to take shots from the outside—though they didn’t go in.
The Trail Blazers gradually widened the gap, from 92:88 to 110:102, and halfway through the fourth quarter, held an eight-point lead.
Just like the script of their first game at The Forum, Gan Guoyang exploded in the third quarter to blow away the Lakers.
Last time he scored 20 points in a row; this time it was an outburst of three-pointers, 28 points in a single quarter, single-handedly causing the Lakers’ offense and morale to collapse.
By the fourth quarter, the Lakers were struggling to continue and found it extremely difficult to regain their momentum and overturn the game.
The Lakers are an offensive team, and when their rhythm was disrupted in a crucial period like the third quarter, they found it hard to pick up in the fourth.
It’s like in a long-distance run—when you’re disrupted close to the finish line and slow down, it’s difficult to speed up and catch up again.
In the end, the Trail Blazers held onto their fruitful victory, securing a win at The Forum with a six-point advantage, 124:118.
With just 10 points in the first half, Gan Guoyang relied on his explosive third quarter to end the game with 42 points and 17 rebounds.
In the fourth quarter, he didn’t attempt another three-pointer. He knew he had used up his good touch, and to shoot more would have been a waste of possession.
Missing three-pointers could not only waste opportunities but also have a significant side effect; long rebounds can easily lead to the opposition’s fast break.
And with Gan Guoyang on the perimeter, without anyone to fight for offensive rebounds inside, the likelihood of getting outplayed by a fast break greatly increased.
Gan Guoyang did not want to miss shots and give the Lakers a chance for a fast break, especially if Magic could set the pace for a comeback in the final stages.
This kind of calm and rationality, not getting carried away because of his earlier shooting spree, helped the team preserve their victory and once again disappointed the Los Angeles fans.
Before leaving the court, NBC interviewed Gan Guoyang, asking for his thoughts on the successive three-pointers in the game. Gan Guoyang said, "Tonight I was just a bit luckier, the basket in The Forum felt as wide as the ocean, and I seized the moment to hit some shots that are usually hard to make. Every season has its moments like this; it’s about whether you can grasp it and turn it into a beautiful victory instead of just caring about your own performance. That’s it."
Meanwhile, in the Lakers’ locker room, a calmer Riley was individually addressing his team.
When he learned from Byron Scott that Gan Guoyang warmed up at The Forum in the morning and made super long shots from the second row of the stands, Riley flew into a rage.
He demanded that The Forum be closed to Gan Guoyang in the mornings, not allowing him to come in early for shooting warm-ups.
This rule was incorporated into the security protocol of The Forum and was strictly enforced by successive groups of venue staff.
It was enforced all the way until the Lakers moved from The Forum to the Staples Center, which just goes to show how deep the shadow was—just as deep as tonight’s basket seemed.
