The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 429 - 47 - Time Ends

Relying on Gan Guoyang’s efficient low-post ball handling, the Trail Blazers established a good rhythm on offense.

This made it very difficult for the opponents to catch up in scoring, as they worked to organize, coordinate, execute tactics, and make adjustments, only to finally put together a series of efficient offenses.

Then the Trail Blazers would spread out, and Guoyang would receive the ball in the low post and easily score a few, which would discourage anyone, making them feel that the game was unplayable.

If you protested? The Trail Blazers would say, "If you’re so skilled, then play like that too."

The Celtics could indeed play like that, as they also had a low-post scorer in Kevin McHale.

However, McHale did not have the stamina that Guoyang had, to support an entire game of continuous one-on-one play in the low post.

In the history of the NBA at that time, only Wilt Chamberlain could play like Guoyang, both possessing incredible stamina.

Typically, interior players are heavily involved in physical contests and, on offense, must rely on tactical coordination, playing simple balls, and finishing easy "pie" shots.

Otherwise, their stamina wouldn’t keep up. Guoyang’s extensive efficient low-post one-on-one play was, in itself, a tactical bug.

He could not only score simply and efficiently but also save his teammates’ energy and greatly reduce the team’s turnovers.

At the time, this was counterintuitive. Too much one-on-one play was often considered harmful to the team, undermining the enthusiasm of teammates.

Traditional basketball concepts encourage more coordination, more passing, and more movement to play beautiful basketball.

However, with the NBA’s year-round intensive games and the dense schedule, frequent and long travels make the players extremely tired.

As the season progresses into its second half, players often enter a state of trance.

Many NBA players, years after their careers, tend to completely forget their regular season experiences.

Because they are dazed and numb, like in a long-distance run, in the second half of the season, they are running and playing instinctively, forgetting about it once done.

The beautiful basketball with lots of movement and passing, like in college, works well in small regional leagues or in a month-long centralized championship.

But in professional basketball games, with increased teams and complex, challenging schedules, tactics of lots of running and passing often result in a greater consumption of stamina, leading to more mistakes as the season goes on.

Since the introduction of turnover statistics in the NBA, the average turnovers per game in the league were around 20 in the ’70s, gradually decreasing to 18 or 17 in the ’80s.

This season, after starting to let Gan Guoyang play one-on-one extensively, the Trail Blazers’ turnover numbers dropped to a historically low 14, 3 to 4 less than the average.

Similar situations were seen with the Chicago Bulls and the Dallas Mavericks, who, due to lots of isolations in their tactics and having Jordan and Mark Aguirre, also had turnovers reduced to below 15.

The Trail Blazers in the previous two seasons had relatively high turnovers, with many bold passes in their fast-paced offense, leading to surprising victories but also to many elementary mistakes.

This situation greatly improved this season. The Celtics’ situation was similar; they played slower this year, more reliant on the Bird-McHale duo in offense, and turnovers reached a historically low point.

In the second quarter, after Gan Guoyang came on and the Trail Blazers successfully took the lead, the Celtics immediately regained the advantage by relying on McHale’s low-post attack.

McHale had stronger one-on-one abilities compared to last season, and even when Gan was switched to defend him in the low post, he could still create space and score with his right-handed hook shot.

Defensively, to cope with Guoyang’s nearly unlimited low-post offense, the Celtics’ strategy was to contract as much as possible, conceding large perimeter gaps rather than spreading themselves thin.

The Celtics were not a defensively aggressive team. With the increasing physical strength of the league, their predominantly White player lineup appeared less aggressive on defense.

Their steal numbers were among the lowest in the league, but they had the best defensive formation maintenance, with an elastic and congested three-second zone that often forced opponents to take a lot of perimeter shots.

In the second quarter, the Trail Blazers’ outside shooting was average, and after Guoyang faced double teams when handling the ball, his several accurate passes did not result in assists.

This is one of the disadvantages of one-on-one play—teammates can fall out of form, or take time to warm up. Gan Guoyang tried to adjust by giving his teammates more opportunities to carry the ball and initiate the offense.

In the noisy environment of the Boston Garden, the game was interrupted intermittently by the referee’s sharp whistle. The play, which had flowed smoothly in the first quarter, began to be marred by an increasing number of fouls in the second quarter.

Gan Guoyang kept calling his teammates to the sideline for communication, asking Drexler, Porter, and Vandeweghe to increase their ball-carrying attacks. He would provide screens in the middle and attack the Celtics with offensive rebounds.

"The Bostonians want to disrupt our rhythm. Don’t be afraid, charge in and attack. I’ll support you with the rebounds," he said.

This was Gan Guoyang’s adjustment to the one-on-one tactics. Often playing a supporting role for the backcourt to initiate the offense, he would back up his teammates with rebounds and high-quality screens.

Porter capitalized on Gan Guoyang’s screens to hit consecutive mid-range jumpers, and Drexler also made aggressive drives to the basket. With Gan Guoyang following up, the opponents didn’t dare defend too tightly for fear of handing over rebounds and points to Gan Guoyang.

The Celtics still coordinated well on offense, with Larry Bird skillfully managing the team’s play, becoming increasingly like a dedicated point forward.

The two sides grappled throughout the first half. By halftime, the score was 54:54, tied, thanks to Bird’s buzzer-beating three-pointer at the end of the second quarter.

The fans in the Boston Garden erupted into cheers, but they failed to realize that despite Bird’s spectacular performance, they had only just managed to tie the score at halftime.

Throughout the first half, the Trail Blazers utilized a nine-man rotation, with substitutes Kenny-Carl, Jones, Curry, and Hornacek all taking their turns on the floor, playing significant minutes.

Meanwhile, KC Jones stuck mainly to a six-man rotation, which wasn’t even truly that, since the sixth man, Jerry Sichting, only played for 5 minutes. Kite, Roberterson, and others got a mere 2 or 3 minutes to give the starters a brief rest.

This was the most criticized aspect of KC’s tenure as head coach, his overuse of the starters. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Bird’s average playing time this season had reached an astonishing 40.6 minutes, nearly catching up with Gan Guoyang.

During halftime, in the poor visitor’s locker room in the Boston Garden, Gan Guoyang told his teammates, "In the third quarter, let’s take the game away together. We need to show the Celtics fans that the Bostonians’ Time has come to an end."

After experiencing the 1986 finals, the Trail Blazers players had lost all fear of the Celtics and the ancient and daunting Boston Garden.

They had won the championship there, and this year’s team was even stronger.

After the start of the third quarter, the Trail Blazers intensified their pace on both offense and defense.

A tighter offense than the first half, a more fierce defense than the first half.

Gan Guoyang didn’t just force his way in the low post but pulled up for mid-range and hit two consecutive jumpers.

Then, on defense, he joined Thompson in double-teaming McHale, forcing a turnover. Drexler went on the counterattack with a dunk.

Immediately after, they switched to double-team Bird. Although Bird successfully passed the ball inside, Gan Guoyang quickly returned to the paint to block Parrish from behind.

The Trail Blazers didn’t rush the counterattack but confidently played the half-court game. They cleared out the strong side for a Gan Guoyang one-on-one, the double came, and Gan Guoyang passed the ball out to Vandeweghe for a successful three-point shot.

Bird, in a panic, launched a quick counterattack. Parrish received the ball under the basket and went for the high-arc jumper, but it was disrupted by Gan Guoyang’s leaping block, and Drexler grabbed the rebound.

Drexler threw a long pass to the frontcourt, Vandeweghe received it and, facing Bird at a 45-degree angle on the left side, took another three-point shot and hit it!

In the first 4 minutes of the second half, the Trail Blazers made no mistakes, lost no balls, and went on a 12:0 run, silencing the noisy Boston Garden.

Afterward, having gained a 10-point lead, the Trail Blazers did not give the Celtics a chance to come back. Although the Celtics persistently tried to close the gap, the situation was entirely under the control of the Trail Blazers.

In the end, the Trail Blazers defeated the Boston Celtics 112:103, a 9-point advantage on the road, clinching victory in this clash of titans.

Auerbach left the bench with three minutes to go before the end of the game, his experience telling him that the Celtics were no longer a match for the Trail Blazers this season.

Perhaps the 80s, the decade that belonged to the Celtics, was indeed coming to an end.