The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 219 - 105: Ah Gan’s Law

Gan Guoyang was unaware that his reputation for making delicious Chinese cuisine had spread throughout the NBA circle and had reached the ears of Chinese cuisine enthusiast Auerbach.

After the hook shot that sealed the Celtics’ fate, the entire Trail Blazers Team went into a frenzy, surrounding Gan Guoyang as they all ran back to the locker room.

Having showered and quickly packed up, they dashed back to the hotel, not wanting to spend another second in the Boston Garden. At that time, post-game interviews were not mandatory in the regular season, allowing players and coaches to skip questions from reporters and head straight out.

The entire team was excited until the next morning, and even after flying to Indiana, they were still thrilled with the joy of defeating the Celtics.

They wanted to share this joy with the Indiana Pacers’ fans, and in the game against the Pacers, they scored frantically, ultimately winning with a large margin of 131:101, a 30-point victory sweeping the Pacers.

This year’s encounters between the two teams thus came to an end, and the sinking Pacers would have to wait a long time before they could welcome their savior and a period of dominance. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

After playing the Pacers, the Trail Blazers made a trip to Kansas City, ending this brief away journey, and returned to Portland for rest and recovery.

Gan Guoyang’s successive outstanding performances had attracted nationwide attention, and in the recent All-Star voting tally, Gan Guoyang had surpassed Isiah Thomas, Ralph Sampson, and Julius Erving, hot on the heels of the popular idol Magic Johnson.

However, on January 19th, in the Trail Blazers’ home game against the Lakers, the Purple and Gold Legion, fresh from their Eastern campaign and successful conquest of Boston Garden, powered through like a sweeping storm at the Memorial Coliseum, defeating the Trail Blazers with a 15-point advantage, 135:120.

Entering the new year, the Lakers’ form kept improving, as they drew from the Trail Blazers’ experience in defeating the Celtics. In the Boston Garden, they managed a narrow victory over their opponent with a score of 102:100, a 2-point advantage.

The Lakers rarely dragged the Celtics into a slow-paced mire, and in the final moments, Jabbar scored a deadly hook shot, while Bird’s buzzer-beater failed to hit, granting the Lakers the victory.

In the game against the Trail Blazers, the Lakers were even more spirited, with Pat Riley devising a more comprehensive strategy to counter Gan Guoyang—secretly referred to within the team as the "Ah Gan Rules".

The first rule of the Ah Gan Rules was contributed by shooting guard Byron Scott, who stated the most fundamental requirement of guarding Guoyang: don’t provoke him, but rather, go along with him.

So-called stubborn donkeys should be stroked gently, and Scott believed that instead of stimulating Guoyang into a fully concentrated battle mode through fierce physical confrontation and verbal provocations, it would be better to let him relax.

It was said that in high school, Ah Gan had suffered from repeated praise by opponents, which led to him performing poorly, although they won the game, his performance and stats were just average.

This tactic was experimented with amidst Pat Riley’s doubts, and the man to guard Gan Guoyang was Kurt Rambis, who was not averse to this defensive strategy.

Wearing glasses, Rambis was different from many other players—he was an oddball. When he first joined the team, while other players lived leisurely in Fox Hill, he chose to stay at his friend Ritchie Brown’s house, sleeping on the dining room floor.

In his closet hung nothing but one set of poop-brown suit, two stiff-collared shirts, and he would take home soap, soda water, beer, cotton swabs, and toilet paper from the locker room in a tote bag after games, so that he didn’t have to spend money on them.

While odd, he was nevertheless tough. Upon arriving at the Lakers, he wasn’t trusted by anyone; he just didn’t look like a basketball player should.

During training camp, he was roughly handled by the other players—being run through like a punching bag during drives, rebounding drills, and scrambles for the ball.

But they soon realized that this punching bag was not filled with ordinary sand, but with iron filings—they had met a tough cookie. This interior lineman from Santa Clara University was not as physically weak or quirky as he appeared.

So Rambis stayed and became an important member of the Lakers, gradually gaining acceptance from Los Angeles fans. Whenever the team needed strength inside, to plug the holes in the line, they called on Rambis, and he always did a good job.

Until Gan Guoyang beat him down.

Rambis’s memory of that first Lakers vs. Trail Blazers game, especially the dizziness from that elbow hit and the confusion upon waking up, was imprinted deeply in his mind.

Even years later, he would occasionally wake up from nightmares, shouting "I’m already dead." So when Pat Riley said "You take care of Ah Gan," Rambis felt an uncommon resistance in his heart.

Now that was resolved. Riley told him to just guard Ah Gan as usual, not to be too aggressive, to chat with him nicely, and even compliment him and see how it would go.

Rambis liked this approach to defending Ah Gan. From the start, he began chatting with Gan Guoyang, who quickly grew impatient but had no way to deal with Rambis’s relentless praise.

Gan Guoyang wouldn’t punch a smiling face, and naturally, he had no way to say anything as impolite as "You’re already dead."

After the game, Rambis told Riley, "This way of defending him works quite well—at least I was able to keep my emotions stable the entire game and do many things that needed to be done."

Of course, relying solely on the first rule would not suffice, and the Ah Gan Rules included a second one. Any player who was near Gan Guoyang had to divide half of their attention onto him, especially the perimeter players like Cooper, Johnson, and Scott.

This rule was actually about illegal defense, early double-teaming. Riley had realized that the Trail Blazers’ offensive fluidity relied heavily on Gan Guoyang. Although he didn’t have many assists, his extensive screening, ball-receiving, and powerful offense drew the defense, creating shooting space for the perimeter players, along with a notably stable supply of defensive rebounds.

If they could disrupt Ah Gan’s offensive rhythm, it also meant disrupting the Trail Blazers’ offensive rhythm.

One person definitely couldn’t disrupt him; it had to be two, or even three—a primary defender with others following close behind like hounds.

At the time, NBA rules didn’t allow zone defense or early double-teaming of a player without the ball, but starting in 1985, many teams began to skirt the edge of defending.

Because some star players in the league were becoming increasingly powerful on offense, one-on-one defense simply couldn’t contain them, necessitating that two players be ready in advance.

If Gan Guoyang caught the ball in the interior, Jabbar, Larry Spriggs, and others could quickly come over for a double-team.

But Gan Guoyang could also initiate an offensive from the outside after catching the ball, and his three-point shots were genuinely fearsome; preemptive defense would inevitably challenge the rules.

In this game, the Lakers were called for illegal defense three times, but they persisted with their edge-skirting advanced double-teaming to disrupt Gan Guoyang’s ball-handling rhythm.

The strategy had an effect; Gan Guoyang’s coordination and passing were not yet at a master level, unable to use assists to punish the Lakers’ defensive tactics.

The Trail Blazers’ fluid set offense suffered as its most crucial pivot point was broken and surrounded, making linkage with other players difficult.

If Gan Guoyang tried to single-handedly break down the Lakers like in previous games, the Lakers were already prepared, with two or three players hunting him from the first quarter, preventing him from getting a good shooting rhythm.

Seeing Gan Guoyang with the ball outside the three-point line, Cooper and Byron Scott immediately went up to hassle him, refusing to let him easily take the three-point shot.

After this series of maneuvers, Gan Guoyang managed to score 20+ points and 20 rebounds in a game, but his ability to drive the whole team significantly weakened.

A star grabbing high stats for himself isn’t difficult, but to win, you must be able to drive the whole team; otherwise, even if you score 60 points, that’s just over half the team’s total while the opponent can still score 130 or 140 points and easily win the game.

Besides, how many games can you score 60 points in one season? Even Wilt Chamberlain, with an average of 50.4 points per season, couldn’t lead his team to a good record or win the championship.

The first two rules of the Lakers’ ’Gan’ doctrine were targeted at Gan Guoyang’s offense; regarding his defense, the ’Gan’ rules specified: avoid Gan as much as possible in the offense.

Riley had studied the Trail Blazers’ defense repeatedly and found that they heavily relied on defensive traps, driving opponents toward the team’s strongest defensive point and letting Gan Guoyang solve the problem.

However, the Trail Blazers’ defensive lineup, especially on the perimeter, was quite weak—Vandeweghe was a big sieve, Parkson a smaller one, Drexler and Kossie were green, and Thompson could defend McHale but not Jabbar.

Many teams fell into the Trail Blazers’ trap, persistently challenging their strongest defensive point, allowing the Trail Blazers to conceal their weaknesses.

Especially when they attempted to draw fouls on Gan Guoyang, hoping to force him off the court; in the end, their offensive efficiency declined while Gan Guoyang remained safely on the floor.

Riley suggested a reversal in thinking: I won’t attack your point, Ah Gan, anymore. Whoever Ah Gan guards, we’ll pass the ball away, and other teams might lack firepower, but the Lakers don’t.

They had too many explosive players—Jabbar, Johnson, Worthy, Scott, Wilkes— all high-level players with independent scoring abilities.

When Gan Guoyang was the primary defender on Jabbar, Jabbar even stepped out and shot two mid-range shots, pulling Gan Guoyang out of the three-second zone.

Worthy, Magic Johnson, and Scott attacked the basket in turns from the weak side to avoid the strong side, where Gan Guoyang was the defensive focal point.

After this set of plays, the Lakers finally found their own game rhythm. Coupled with their recent excellent form, they triumphed over the Trail Blazers at Memorial Coliseum, avenging the previous six-game loss.

It was from this game that it became clear Gan Guoyang had become the subject of the whole league’s comprehensive study and targeting, as everyone began to exhaust all means to find the weaknesses in both the Trail Blazers and Gan Guoyang.

In the subsequent games, though the Trail Blazers played at home, their record began to fluctuate, winning and losing in equal measure. Gan Guoyang could still put up good numbers, but victory for the Trail Blazers was becoming more difficult.

After the widespread adoption of videotape technology, the exchange and dissemination of tactics became much faster than before; teams began establishing video analysis groups, drawing experience from others’ games.

Teams started to mimic the Lakers, using edge-skirting illegal early double-teams and avoiding Gan Guoyang’s defense to challenge the Trail Blazers. Although they couldn’t necessarily win, they made it tough for the Trail Blazers to play.

Gan Guoyang noticed that suddenly the league’s players had become more friendly; before games, everyone would take the initiative to greet him, and even after making a basket, opponents would offer praise for a good shot.

It made him feel somewhat embarrassed to trash talk or upset their mentality.

Thus, in January, the Trail Blazers’ results were erratic, winning as often as they lost.

But Gan Guoyang’s popularity remained high; he eclipsed Jabbar to be selected as a Western All-Stars starter for the All-Star team.

And the coach of the Western All-Stars was none other than Pat Riley, the one who had crafted the ’Gan’ rules.