The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 419 - 37: Maximum Eastern Finals
[In February 1985, I packed all my belongings into eight cardboard boxes, ready to head back to Taiwan for development.
Just the night before my luggage was shipped to the port, my graduation work "The Boundary" won Best Picture and Best Director at the New York University Film Festival. An agent from William Morris, one of the three major U.S. agencies, immediately offered to sign with me, saying I had a lot of potential in America and urged me to stay and give it a try.
At the time, my wife Huijia was still pursuing her doctorate in Illinois, with our son Lee Han, who was less than a year old. She was just half a year away from obtaining her degree.
I thought: The child is still young, and my wife hasn’t yet obtained her degree. It might be good to stay in America for a while longer to be with them and also to try my luck.
The agent was very generous with praise: "You’ll have no problems in America, and if anyone thinks being Chinese is a problem, that’s their problem."
I had no defense against such flattery; it felt as if it could indeed become reality, although of course, it eventually did, but who knew at the time.
In January 1986, Huijia graduated, and our family of three settled in New York from then on.
Carrying our young son Lee Han, and still new to fatherhood, I kept my head down, writing scripts and seeking opportunities.
In January 1986, after Huijia found a job following her graduation, she moved from Illinois to live with us in the suburbs of New York. The first six months were tough for her; she was so upset that she didn’t feel like living. But later, it seemed as if she’d made peace with our situation, acknowledging that as long as we got by, it was fine.
In the same year, I co-wrote a script called "Not Superstitious" with Joel Ross and started to try my hand in Hollywood, visiting over thirty companies in two weeks.
They had all seen "The Boundary," and their constant praise filled me with hope.
Some suggested that certain parts of the script needed to be modified. I would overhaul it and return two months later, only to be asked for more changes. And so it went back and forth without any pay.
For these scripts, if anyone expressed interest, they would ask you to rewrite them. After repeated revisions over one or two years, either nothing would come of it, or the process would continue, with budgets ranging from 600,000 to 7 million US Dollars. This is what is known as development hell in America. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺
It’s said that on average, it takes five years for a script to go from first draft to production, and that’s for the one in a million that actually gets made into a film.
Every so often during that period, someone would say that they loved my graduation work and suggest we talk about collaborating.
Because the agent would make a bunch of copies of the graduation work and send them to various companies to sell.
So it went, one project falling through just as another came along, always a few in progress, which is why I never completely lost hope. It was like being suspended in mid-air, never quite landing.
There was no progress in the film industry, but in December 1986, I saw an advertisement in a magazine from Portland’s Wieden-Kennedy agency seeking a collaborating director to shoot a basketball shoe commercial for NBA star Ah Gan.
Ah Gan was the pride of all Chinese in America during the ’80s. In 1986, he had won an NBA championship, as well as college and high school championships before that. He was a symbol of pride for Chinese people.
When I was in New York, I’d skimp on food for a month to afford a ticket to Madison Square Garden just to watch one of his games. He was an undisputed superstar who influenced many people profoundly.
I wasn’t very familiar with advertising, but I thought if I could make films, I could surely make commercials too. After reading an interview with Ah Gan in a magazine, I submitted my resume along with a script.
I didn’t have high hopes, but to my surprise, after Christmas, Wieden-Kennedy reached out to me to say they’d hired me and asked me to visit Portland to discuss our collaboration.
I found it amazing how things work out sometimes without even trying. After I arrived, I learned that New York’s Spike Lee had also been selected; he was already making a name for himself in directing circles at that time.
I was nervous, worrying I might not be up to par, and that the plan would fall through, but everything went very smoothly, from signing the contract to script approval, shooting, and completion.
I was responsible for the episode about Ah Gan and his father. I had read about the strong bond between Ah Gan and his father in a magazine, so the script focused on father-son affection. It depicted the contradictory feelings between the two generations in traditional Chinese families, where they are divided yet love each other deeply.
Ah Gan was incredibly charismatic. He was very young, and I felt utterly captivated upon meeting him, as if I were bathed in sunlight.
You couldn’t fend off his radiance and warmth; utterly irresistible. And then I knew exactly what the commercial had to capture.
The focus wasn’t on the shoes, but on Ah Gan himself. Like films and novels, commercials also strive to create a dream world and characters that people aspire to.
Eventually, I shot a commercial about Ah Gan’s high school days, where his father doesn’t understand his passion for basketball but still gives him a pair of new basketball shoes – Avia.
Wearing these shoes, he could stand up to Jordan on the court. This encapsulated an emotional understanding particularly relatable to Chinese people—of course, the first part of the saga was another story, featuring Jordan wearing Air Jordans competing against Ah Gan.
After that, I shot a few more commercials to support myself during those years after graduation when I had no job or projects, until I got the opportunity to shoot "Pushing Hands" in 1990, marking the start of my career as a film director.
I’m very grateful for my experience shooting commercials. It gave me the confidence and tremendous drive to keep going.
Later on, Wieden-Kennedy’s creative director Riswold told me the reason I smoothly became their collaborating director was that Ah Gan had given me the green light all the way. He said, "This director is good; let’s go with him."
I’m profoundly thankful for him.]
————Published in 2013, excerpted from the biography "Life of Pi to Brokeback: The Revolutionary Cinema of Ang Lee" by Zhang Liangbei.
Because he won a game of bowling against Jordan, they played cards together in the evening, and Gan Guoyang lost five thousand US Dollars to Jordan, soothing the latter’s fragile competitive ego.
However, Gan Guoyang noticed that Jordan had quite the gambling addiction, flashing his cash extravagantly at the card tables, with a mindset that anything could be wagered.
Even though Jordan wasn’t short on money—with his basketball salary, shoe endorsements, and numerous commercial deals—Gan Guoyang still warned him, "Getting hooked on gambling will get you into trouble, be careful not to let the gap between us on the court grow too large."
But Jordan retorted, "You know nothing, Ah Gan, nothing at all."
Gan Guoyang truly didn’t understand. Jordan was aware that, as Gan Guoyang won the championship, his own anxiety and unease grew heavier.
He had to release these emotions at the gambling tables to be able to live, train, and play normally, continuing to aim for surpassing Gan Guoyang.
He did have another path he could take, which was to hate Gan Guoyang, just as he hated Isiah Thomas, to see Gan Guoyang as a loathsome enemy, to beat him, to destroy him.
However, Jordan couldn’t do that. His simple view of friendship wouldn’t allow him to easily cast aside their relationship, even if Nike was constantly egging him on behind the scenes, he was reluctant to change his original intention.
On December 25th, the Christmas Battle took place at three in the afternoon.
American Airlines specially arranged a flight for the Chicago Bulls. They could board a plane back to Chicago at seven in the evening and reunite with their families.
Because Jordan was injured and out last season, the entire 1985-1986 season had been devoid of the anticipated "Gan vs. Jordan" matchup.
So tonight’s game was exceptionally eye-catching, receiving the opportunity for national broadcast, equivalent to America’s Christmas evening party.
Before the game began, the Portland Symphony Orchestra performed the national anthem live as a prelude to this Christmas Battle.
The players from both teams made their entrance, and Gan Guoyang and Jordan shook hands. From that moment on, they were no longer friends, but the greatest of enemies.
Compared with the stable lineup of the Portland Trail Blazers, the Chicago Bulls had undergone significant changes.
The head coach had changed from Stan Albeck to Doug Collins, marking the third coach Jerry Krause had employed in his two years of tenure.
Collins was previously an NBA player, spending his 8-year career with the Philadelphia 76ers, reaching the finals with the team in 1977 but losing to the Portland Trail Blazers.
Before becoming a head coach, Collins provided commentary for CBS, chatting about basketball and broadcasting NBA games alongside other hosts.
Born in 1951, he was four years younger than Jabbar, who was still competing on the court, while he was already suited up, directing games from the coach’s bench.
Therefore, Collins faced a lot of skepticism. The Bulls’ management was also seen as chaotic and disorganized—they had gone through nine coaches in ten seasons.
In the season opener against the New York Knicks, Collins, making his debut as head coach, was so nervous he trembled on the sidelines.
But Michael Jordan comforted him, "Don’t worry Coach, we’ll win. I’ll score 50 points."
And in that game, Jordan delivered 50 points, defeating the Knicks and handing Collins his first professional win.
From there, Collins showed many qualities of an outstanding coach—compelling, inspirational, and, as a former player, he understood the emotions of his players.
On the player roster, star forward Woolridge, who had previously partnered with Jordan, was signed away by the New Jersey Nets. According to the rules in place at the time, the Nets owed the Bulls some compensation.
The Nets gave the Bulls three draft picks for 1988 and 1989.
Jerry Krause also traded away Oldham and Sidney Green, acquiring several draft picks and role players like Earl Cureton, who averaged single-digit scoring.
Before the new season started, the entire Chicago Bulls team, aside from Jordan, had only one player who averaged more than 10 points per game in the previous season—Gene Banks, who had averaged 10.6 points in the 1985-1986 season.
With such a crappy lineup, Jordan was angered but also vastly motivated to win.
He didn’t argue with Jerry Krause, demanding that Krause use the pile of accumulated first-round draft picks to trade for star players. Instead, he helped the team win with his insane scoring performances during the new season.
In this sense, Jordan’s situation was far more difficult than Gan Guoyang’s. This year, there were only two players around him who could truly be trusted:
One was the sophomore newbie, the fuzzy-haired Charles Oakley.
The other was Jim Paxson’s younger brother, the 26-year-old guard John Paxson, who averaged 5 points and 3 assists last season.
With such a terrible lineup, even Gan Guoyang had to comment, "Michael, if I were leading this team, at most... I could reach the Eastern Conference Finals."
