The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 212 - 99: Bewitching
"I’m quite sure that Ah Gan has a bewitching power. The first time you compete on the same court as him, he will definitely use a kind of mesmerizing talk to lure you into his trap. After that, throughout your career, you’ll be sucked into a strange, unbalanced rivalry with him. It’s like he’s installed a switch on you, and when he presses it, bad things are about to happen."
After becoming the manager and coach of the team, I would remind those rookies who just entered the NBA every season to be cautious when facing Ah Gan; he’s like a succubus. I like talking trash because I enjoy the constant flow of words, enjoy mentally and competitively pressuring my opponent. But usually, after I finish, I forget about it, like a talk show host, as long as I make everyone laugh, that’s good enough."
Ah Gan is different, he’s like an orator and an ambitious man, who from early on starts weaving a huge trap, intending to capture everyone in his net. (The above content is released with Ah Gan’s permission, and you can also regard this passage as one of Ah Gan’s traps.)"
————Published in 1999, written collaboratively by Larry Bird and Jackie Macmullan, an excerpt from "Bird Watching".
At the jump ball, Guoyang was the first to touch the ball, passing it to Valentine as the game began.
Robert Parish was slightly slower, whether it was due to his age slowing him down or a bit of preoccupation on his mind.
Just now, Guoyang had hit the nail on the head; Parish indeed harbored a bit of disdain for Larry Bird.
Although in Boston everyone loves Bird, he’s the darling of the team, the deserved boss.
Everyone admires his confidence, acknowledges Larry’s profound understanding of basketball, and his work ethic that goes beyond the ordinary.
But on the subject of trash talk alone, Parish did not appreciate Bird; this silent, tough traditional big man didn’t like Bird’s incessant chatter.
In last year’s game between the Celtics and the 76ers, Bird constantly humiliated Irving with "42:6," and Parish didn’t think this was right, believing Bird had crossed a line.
So when Irving swung at Bird and Malone ran over to hold Bird to take a punch, Parish didn’t step in to help.
Parish thought this was what Bird deserved, that he had earned a chance to trade blows with Irving through his own words, so he wouldn’t help.
As for Moses Malone stepping in, that was Malone’s business, it had nothing to do with Parish.
In the 1981 Finals, Larry Bird shouted at a Celtics fan rally, "Let Moses Malone eat shit!" which caused quite the controversy, and Bird later had to apologize.
Therefore, when Moses Malone came over to break up the fight, it was understandable, and he thought Bird’s foul mouth could use a couple of punches anyway.
Parish didn’t like trash talk; he played the game diligently, using basketball to defeat opponents.
If an opponent was really bothering you, making you angry, just punch him, rather than babble endlessly.
As for the Trail Blazers’ number 11, from December onward, he had been rampaging through the league, throwing down two of the most feared big men.
When he threw down Lan Bi’er, everyone in the Celtics cheered, and Auerbach even said that if he crippled Lan Bi’er, the Celtics would retire his jersey for him.
When he threw down Gilmore, Parish was shocked; someone actually dared to mess with the train. This guy was terrifying.
And when Guoyang shattered the backboard during the morning warm-up, Parish even felt that what Guoyang did was beautiful and right.
Parish didn’t rush into the arena then; he waited outside, going in at 11 o’clock, thinking that rushing in early and driving people away was impolite.
But Bird, McHale, and Ainge, those three White guys, were too arrogant, and they learned their lesson.
When Guoyang slammed the ball at Ainge, no one on the Celtics dared to stand up for Ainge; they just watched as they strolled out of the arena.
Before this game, the Celtics knew the Trail Blazers were a hot team and talked about giving this young team a bit of a scare; little did they know they’d run into a tough nut to crack.
Parish’s mind had just wandered a little, and on the Blazers’ first offense, while Guoyang lingered at the high post, he suddenly cut into the basket.
Thompson at the high post made a direct pass to Guoyang, who caught the ball and neatly finished with a left-handed layup; Parish was too slow to keep up this time.
The rest of the Celtics didn’t expect that the Blazers would begin with a center’s cut for the first ball; there was nothing like this in the videotape.
The Trail Blazers scored first, and Bird brought the ball to the baseline to inbound, reminding Parish, "Robert, stay focused!"
Parish didn’t say anything and just ran headlong to the frontcourt. He knew he had been distracted and shouldn’t think about anything unrelated to the game anymore.
The sensation of playing in the Boston Garden was indeed different from any other arena.
The parquet floor here at the Boston Garden was unique, not because the Celtics wanted to be different, but because, when the hockey arena was first laid with a basketball court, they couldn’t afford high-quality long strip hardwood floors, and had to settle for parquet flooring.
It is said that there are undulations and dead spots on the court, where the ball doesn’t bounce properly, leading to player errors and Celtics steals for fast-break opportunities.
Aside from being familiar with the performance of each piece of the parquet floor, the Celtics players also minimized dribbling and prioritized passing during offense to prevent the ball from hitting a bad spot and getting stolen.
Therefore, the Celtics might be the team that dribbles the least and passes the most in the whole League, a philosophy that has continued from the 1950s when Auerbach coached the team up until today.
The Celtics quickly made a basket, with Bird catching Dennis Johnson’s pass on the perimeter, suddenly shooting over Vandeweghe and scoring two points.
After the shot, Bird looked at Vandeweghe and said, "Damn it, Doc Jack got you guarding me alone? No double team? Does he have a grudge against you?" 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺
Vandeweghe attempted a comeback; he faked a shot on the baseline, blew past Bird and drove to the basket. Parish came to help on defense, Thompson received Vandeweghe’s bounce pass and prepared to lay up, but Dennis Johnson, from seemingly out of nowhere, came from the side and swatted Thompson’s ball away.
With the ball out of bounds, the Celtics put together a decent defense; scoring easily under the Celtics’ basket is not such an easy task.
This freckle-faced perimeter player had excellent defensive skills, always able to provide help and cover up any mistakes on the inside.
Gan Guoyang was inbounding the ball from the baseline and noticed Parrish wasn’t facing him directly but was instead protecting the post area.
So Gan Guoyang faked a throw to the outside, misleading Parrish’s gaze, and suddenly bounced the ball off Parrish’s back.
The ball rebounded back, Gan Guoyang entered the court, grabbed the ball, dribbled along the baseline, and scored on a reverse lay-up.
"Sonny Gan bounces the ball off Parrish’s back, grabs it himself, and scores on the lay-up! This smart young man is cunning as a fox," Most praised the visiting player generously.
The Celtics conceded two easy buckets to Gan Guoyang under the basket, which irritated Bird somewhat.
He said to Parrish, "Pay attention, Parrish, that’s two now."
The usually stoic and tenacious Parrish replied, "Same goes for you; don’t get faked out."
Bird couldn’t believe his ears that the Chieftain talked back. He said, "I was just reminding you."
Parrish retorted, "So was I."
As they spoke, Parrish passed the ball to Dennis Johnson.
Johnson, sensing some tension between the two, dribbled the ball and yelled, "Offense, let’s play offense! Cut the chatter!"
A little dispute occurred between the two players, but it didn’t affect the Celtics’ smooth performance on the offensive end.
In narratives written by some authors looking back on this period of history, the Celtics and the Lakers are depicted as two sides of a coin; the Lakers being fast and light, while the Celtics slow and heavy, as if the Celtics were a defensive team.
But in reality, the Celtics, like the Lakers, were adept at fast breaks, with their scoring on fast breaks comparable to the Lakers’.
This was an ironclad principle of early basketball philosophy: always initiate the fast break, as the success rate of scoring on the fast break is much higher than that of set offense.
This principle remained crucial in the 80s, and it wasn’t until the 90s that some teams deliberately slowed the pace and reduced, or even abandoned, fast breaks, breaking the traditional rule with new tactical concepts.
However, in the first quarter, the Celtics didn’t get any opportunity to counterattack quickly because, firstly, the Trail Blazers had a high success rate in their opening attacks, leaving no defensive rebounds for the Celtics to launch fast breaks.
Secondly, Gan Guoyang consecutively grabbed offensive rebounds, not giving the Celtics the chance to grab the board and counterattack.
When Gan Guoyang grabbed his fourth offensive rebound and then chose not to attack but instead passed the ball to Vandeweghe on the perimeter to slowly advance the play, Bird, who was sore from Gan Guoyang’s aggressive rebounds, said, "You got the rebound; don’t you dare to take the shot yourself?"
Bird was exceptional at protecting rebounds; as a forward who could play both the 3 and 4 positions, he had been averaging over 10 rebounds a game since entering the League.
In the 1981 Finals, he pulled down 21 rebounds in two consecutive games under difficult scoring conditions, averaging 15 rebounds per game in the series to counter Moses Malone’s offensive rebounding onslaught for the Rockets.
Yet tonight, in the face of opposition, he found that this rookie, Ah Gan, was even stronger than Moses Malone; Bird could barely budge him.
Instead of engaging in a war of words with Bird, Gan Guoyang asked, "If I play against you today, will your teammates come over to help?"
