The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 211 - 98 You Don’t Appreciate Larry, Either
When they left the arena and got back into the car, everyone on the Trail Blazers was saying Guoyang had done a beautiful job.
Any player who has been in the NBA for two years, as soon as they come to play in Boston, there’s no avoiding getting a hard time.
In recent years, the Celtics have been at the height of their powers, especially last year when they defeated the Lakers to win the championship, reaching a peak in prestige.
Even a dog passing by would be harassed twice just to experience the enthusiasm of the Bostonians.
Even Vandeweghe, who’s usually gentle and polite, cursed, "Damn Boston, damned Celtics."
Vandeweghe recalled his rookie period when he came to play in Boston for the first time at the famous Garden Arena.
Boston is relatively friendly toward white people, but Vandeweghe still suffered attacks from the fans, only scoring 5 points the whole game.
At that time he was still fighting for rebounds, grabbing 6 rebounds throughout the game, with an average of 5.6 rebounds per game during his second year, the peak of his professional career.
"However, the second year I scored 40 points at the Boston Garden. Although we lost, I felt very good about it," Vandeweghe added.
Vandeweghe definitely has talent in scoring, and just in terms of accuracy, he might even be better than Bird.
Bird once said, "Some guys don’t touch a basketball all summer, then walk into the gym and drop fifty points," and the man he was talking about was Vandeweghe.
However, in terms of training, Bird outdid Vandeweghe. He wasn’t the kind to stay away from basketball throughout the summer.
On the way back to the hotel, everyone cursed the damned Celtics and Boston as the worst city in the world.
At the same time, they acknowledged that the Celtics were indeed a very strong team, nearly invincible, especially at their home court.
Everybody was contributing ideas, hoping to come up with a way to counter the Celtics.
Ramsay was excited to see everyone so energized and united against a common enemy for the first time, and finally, they came up with a good winning strategy:
"Give the ball to Ah Gan! Let him shoot threes!"
Gan Guoyang was confused and said, "Give the ball to me? Do you think I’m God or something, that I can hit six out of six threes every game? I barely touched the ball today, except for that one hit on Ainge! I’d be accurate if you wanted me to smash him tonight, but asking me to shoot threes? I’ll first hit 10 bricks to test my touch."
"Or maybe you should just guard Bird, no one knows how to defend small forwards better than you."
"What about McHale then?"
"I’ve got McHale, I’ll take care of him. The kid’s been too cocky recently; it’s time to teach him a lesson," said Mychal Thompson.
Thompson was McHale’s senior at the University of Minnesota and understood McHale very well.
"What about Parrish? What about Parrish? Are we going to have Cheche guard Parrish?"
"Didn’t you say no one knows one-on-two better than you? Leave Parrish to you as well, I’ll handle the offense," Vandeweghe replied.
Gan Guoyang was speechless, everyone laughed, and the air in the car was filled with joy.
Despite all the lively discussion, in the end, it all came down to squeezing their core, Ah Gan.
Of course, everyone knew it was a joke. Guoyang was strong, he once crushed the Lakers in a single quarter, but such games were rare and not to be expected.
The Celtics were a formidable adversary, just like the Lakers, especially their frontcourt with Parrish, Bird, McHale, Maxwell, all all-stars.
In the backcourt, they had Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge, with strong players at every position and the home-court advantage of the Garden Arena. To say anyone could come up with a surefire winning strategy was just wishful thinking.
In the end, it was Ramsay who summed it up, "We are also an excellent team. The Celtics should be the ones worrying about how to deal with us. Right now, we’re second in the Western Conference, not far behind the Celtics in wins. We’ve defeated the Lakers, we’ve defeated the 76ers, teams that are on par with the Celtics. So don’t think of us as challengers; the Trail Blazers are the Celtics’ equals. We need to play to our strengths, not always think about how to counter the opponent. The game changes moment by moment, with the flow and situation. I believe in you, believe that you can get a win here." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶
By the time the car reached the hotel, taking only 20 minutes for the return trip, Ramsay had just finished speaking.
Back at the hotel, everyone discussed how Dr. Jack was changing, how he rarely used to encourage players like this before.
In the past, he was always fretting over tactics and details, preparing meticulously and thoroughly before games.
But often, no matter how clever, you can’t cook without rice, or plans fail to keep up with changes, or the players don’t perform as well as hoped.
Whenever they lost a game, Jack Ramsay would be very, very depressed and often would not speak for the entire day.
If they lost an away game, he would even sneak out of the hotel at night and wander around the city or head to dangerous places alone.
One year after losing to the Chicago Bulls on the road, Ramsay roamed around Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhood at night.
In his terrible mood, he half-hoped a couple of muggers would appear and shoot him dead on the streets of Chicago.
Ramsay’s character was just that obsessive, with a touch of radicalism.
He was a talented coach, but his impulsive aspects actually limited him.
Now the players could clearly sense a change in Ramsay. Mychal Thompson said, "It must be the treatment from Dr. Ogilvy that’s worked."
Drexler said, "No, it probably didn’t work; I still feel like he doesn’t like me."
Vandeweghe said, "Nonsense, it’s normal that he doesn’t like you. Jack only likes Ah Gan; liking you wouldn’t serve any purpose."
Drexler said, "Everyone loves Ah Gan!"
"No, tonight’s Boston fans definitely won’t like him," Vandeweghe said confidently.
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At night, the old Boston Garden Arena was brightly lit.
This might be the shabbiest arena in the league, built above a subway station with trains passing by underneath from time to time.
The facility was built in 1928, and over fifty years had passed with hardly any updates.
Although the Celtics were one of the most successful teams in the NBA at the time, they were actually quite poor.
The team’s ownership had changed hands eight times within ten years, like a hot potato.
There had been times when the team couldn’t pay their salaries, and championship-winning players had to go door-to-door asking for their wages.
Because they ran up hotel bills on credit during an entire season and couldn’t pay, the next season hotels would no longer extend credit, only accepting cash.
Even the team office’s phones had been disconnected due to unpaid bills; the phone company demanded a $2,000 deposit for the service to be reconnected.
So, such a team that had won the most NBA championships didn’t have, and it was impossible to get, the money to renovate their home court where they played their matches.
But even with the poor conditions of the Garden Arena, it couldn’t stop basketball fans in Boston from coming here to watch the Celtics play in the 1980s, even selling seats behind pillars.
"Hello everyone, I’m Johnny Most, once again high above courtside, bringing you the play-by-play of the basketball battle between the Boston Celtics and the Portland Trail Blazers,"
By 7 p.m., many Celtics fans who couldn’t even get seats behind the pillars could only tune into the sports channel on their TVs, turn off their television volume, and turn on the radio to listen to the game commentary on Boston stations.
Lakers fans in Los Angeles did the same, as the Celtics had a broadcaster who was a household name like Chick Hearn, known as "the voice of the Celtics" Johnny Most.
For every home game, Most would set up his table on the high stands early before the game, adjust his microphone and headphones, ready to bring vivid live commentary to fans across New England who couldn’t be at the game.
His hoarse yet booming voice was always filled with passion, and his opening remarks before the start of the games hadn’t changed for decades; fans had grown accustomed to starting their viewing or listening experience with Most’s introduction.
The players on the court couldn’t hear Most’s voice; their ears were filled with the noisy shouts of more than 14,000 fans in the venue.
The dome of the Boston Garden was specially designed, with an effect like a theater that concentrated sound, making the noise in the arena particularly loud.
Gan Guoyang, coming from the shabby visiting locker room of the Boston Garden to the court, felt his ears buzzing from the noise of the venue.
Boston fans had put together a variety of banners to "welcome" Gan Guoyang and the Trail Blazers.
As the current phenomenon of the league, Gan Guoyang naturally encountered some special attention from the league’s Demon King.
However, when Gan Guoyang and his teammates were warming up with shooting practice, no one from the Boston side dared to come and interfere.
Even Bird, who usually liked to trash-talk the visiting team before a game, was quiet as a chicken on the other half of the court.
That aggressive dunk from the morning had subdued the proud Celtics, and with Gan Guoyang’s previous notoriety, they knew he wasn’t someone to mess with.
American society has a distinct feature: the fiercer and braver you are, the more respect you get; on the contrary, the more you’re bullied as a matter of course.
The Trail Blazers’ starting lineup was unchanged, while the Celtics’ starters were Larry Bird, Parrish, Maxwell, Dennis Johnson, and Danny Ainge.
Kevin McHale sat on the bench as a substitute, giving Gan Guoyang the chance to directly match up with Bird from the start.
He would defend Bird, Thompson would take on Parrish, and Vandeweghe would guard Maxwell.
Maxwell, the 1981 Finals MVP, had declined severely after receiving a big contract.
However, Ramsay rejected this plan, opting for stability during the regular season; there was no need for surprises.
Such an unexpected tactic would be better saved for the playoffs.
"Playoffs? Celtics are in the Eastern Conference, so that would be the finals," Gan Guoyang said.
"Didn’t you say we could still be back here in June?" Jack Ramsay recalled what Gan Guoyang had said in the morning and threw it back at him.
Without an argument, Gan Guoyang obediently followed Ramsay’s arrangements and prepared to jump ball with Parrish at center court.
While the referee was still preparing, Gan Guoyang suddenly asked Parrish, "Hey Chieftain, why didn’t you help out when Irving played against Bird?"
Caught off-guard, Parrish, nicknamed "Chieftain," thought to himself, you sure are nosy, but such instigating questions weren’t something he would answer.
Disliking verbal disputes, Parrish chose silence. But Gan Guoyang, undeterred, added another line, "You don’t really admire Larry, do you?"
Parrish’s eyes shifted, but he remained silent. At that moment, the referee threw the ball into the air, and the game began.
