The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 536 - 39 Turmoil

The Bullets and the Bucks finalized their trade on the last day of the trade deadline, just 12 hours before the trade window would close permanently.

This last-minute trade shocked the League, indicating that the Washington Bullets were determined to make a bold push for the championship, no matter the cost.

Jeff-Malone was 26 this year, averaging 19.5 points, 2 rebounds, and 3 assists per game, a strong scoring guard who was still young and had not reached his peak.

On the other hand, Moncrief was already 30, and since the 1986 season, he suffered from plantar fasciitis, with his condition rapidly declining.

From an all-star guard averaging 20+5+5, he suddenly dropped to an ordinary player with 11+3+3, and his playing time fell from 37, 38 minutes to 25 minutes. Moncrief went from being the absolute core of the Bucks to a significant role player.

It might seem like madness for the Bullets to trade the peaking and further improving Jeff-Malone for the past-his-prime and rapidly declining Moncrief.

But a team is a whole, and stacking more scorers does not necessarily make a team stronger.

The Bullets were taking a slower, defensive route, and they already had more than enough scorers.

Moses Malone, Bernard King, and Barkley all had strong scoring capabilities.

At this point, Jeff-Malone’s scoring was not so critical.

What the Bullets truly lacked then was the defensive ability in the backcourt, especially those guards who could bite into the opponent’s key players and provide help on defense.

The Bullets certainly couldn’t have gotten Moncrief at his peak.

But the declining Moncrief, who still retained sixty to seventy percent of his abilities, became the Bullets’ desired target.

Last season, in the Eastern Conference first round, the Bullets devastated the Bucks, and the interior pairing of Barkley and Moses Malone completely undermined Jack Sikma’s trade to the Bucks.

In the summer, Don Nelson left for the Los Angeles Lakers, and with Del Harris assuming the head coach position, the Bucks didn’t tank but continued to compete with a structure built around Terry Cummings, Pressey, Pierce, and Sikma.

The once-core Moncrief gradually became marginalized, while Pierce, due to injury, missed all the games in the first half of the season, returning after the All-Star Game.

The Bucks hoped to acquire a strong, scoring guard to fill the gap in the team’s offense.

The Bucks previously made a bold trade by swapping Marques Johnson for Terry Cummings, and this time they went bold again, targeting Jeff-Malone, who cut through the Bucks’ defense in the previous postseason, offering to exchange him for Moncrief.

Both sides struck a deal swiftly, each getting what they needed, and the trade was successfully completed.

Malone and Moncrief swapped their Eastern teams, further complicating the dynamics in the Eastern Conference.

Since 1980, the Eastern has always been more brutal than the Western Conference and more fiercely competitive since the East is a developed region.

In the early years, the rivalry of the 76ers, Celtics, and Bucks dominated, with the 76ers gradually falling behind and the Celtics reigning supreme.

In recent years, the 76ers have completely faded, the Bucks are slowly declining, the hegemony of the Celtics has shown signs of waning, and Detroit, Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta are on the rise.

It can be said that the Eastern Conference is a stage of constant changeovers, while the Western Conference is much simpler: the Lakers and their challengers.

Over the past two years, the West has gradually evolved into a rivalry between the Lakers and the Trail Blazers.

For Gan Guoyang and the Trail Blazers, the Eastern Conference may be full of excitement, but in the end, only one team will stand on the stage of the Finals, which could be anyone.

As for the Western Conference, they only have one true enemy, the Lakers.

You can’t expect another Houston Rockets to arise and defeat the Lakers prematurely.

The Houston Twin Towers have collapsed this season, with Ralph Sampson unable to recover to his pre-1986 condition due to injuries.

The Rockets ran out of patience and decided to trade him away before the trade deadline.

When Gan Guoyang arrived in Los Angeles by plane and stepped out of the airport, Beelman came over and said to Gan Guoyang, "Sampson was traded. He’s been sent to Golden State, exchanged for Joe Barry Carroll and Lloyd."

"What? The Rockets traded away Sampson?"

"Yes, they ran out of patience. The Warriors likewise had no patience, how many times did you score 50 points against Carroll?"

Gan Guoyang, in fact, facilitated this trade.

The Warriors were disappointed with how Joe Barry Carroll was explosively scored on by Gan Guoyang time and time again.

They and the equally disappointed Rockets hit it off and completed a swap of top draft picks.

The Rockets gained a new Twin Towers, and the Warriors got rid of Carroll—who treated playing like clocking in at work—and also threw in Lloyd.

This indicates the Warriors still have high hopes for Sampson, after all, he’s only 27 years old, and his past brilliance still resonates.

While the Rockets gaining a tower and a guard averaging 20 points per game, the management believed it was a lucrative deal.

That’s how trades work, both sides take what they need, both believe they’ve come out ahead.

But looking back, perhaps neither really won, or possibly both lost.

"It seems like there’s a lot of activity before the trade deadline this year, with everyone trading back and forth," Gan Guoyang felt nostalgic.

This season has seen everything from the Trail Blazers to the NBA, and even the entire world, in a state of flux.

Michael Jackson’s album "Bad", released in late summer 1987, seemed to foreshadow that things were getting worse.

SInce February 1988, the Iran-Iraq War in the Middle East has plunged into a brutal siege warfare.

The two nations were bombarding each other with high-tech ground-to-ground ballistic missiles, akin to monkeys wildly clashing with AK buttstocks.

In Europe, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries fell into economic hardship, with corruption festering and crime rates soaring. The Soviet Union aimed to change this through reforms, but the situation was far from optimistic.

Reagan’s Star Wars program, through an arms race, was gradually hollowing out the Soviet Union’s foundation, and Europe was on the eve of turmoil.

Across the ocean in China, there were equally troubling concerns. A myriad of social issues emerged during the reform and transition period, and the abolition of the dual-track price system led to skyrocketing prices and inflation.

In 1988, a wave of panic buying began to sweep across the country. People used the money they had to buy anything they could, hoarding it to protect against currency devaluation.

In Japan, the economic bubble was being inflated to dangerous extremes, on the verge of bursting.

The side effects of the Plaza Accord were gradually becoming apparent, with the Japanese economy entering a frenzied endgame.

Meanwhile in America, Ronald Reagan was entering the last year of his term.

From 1980 to 1988, Gan Guoyang was about to finish the Reagan era in America.

This year’s playoffs would determine if the period from 1984-1988 could be considered the Gan Guoyang era to be written in NBA history.

On the evening of February 26, the Trail Blazers challenged their biggest rivals, the Lakers, at the Great Western Forum.

Although Pat Riley had left the Lakers, the Great Western Forum still adhered to its rules that morning, forbidding Guoyang from warming up in the arena before noon.

The Lakers’ coaching staff was replaced with the Nielsens, father and son—Don Nelson and his son Donnie Nelson, also known as Little Nelson.

They had not made any major differences in the team’s configuration or tactics compared to the past.

Nelson did not make drastic reforms upon joining the Lakers, as they had excellent foundations that needed no significant changes.

Their only issue was not being able to beat the Trail Blazers, or rather, they couldn’t handle Ah Gan.

Nelson had ingeniously combined the bombardment strategy with Showtime.

He greatly increased Byron Scott’s role and the number of three-point shots, making the Lakers’ offense faster and more efficient than last season.

But when a new coach comes in, changes are bound to happen to the team.

The first thing Nelson brought to the Lakers was his distinctive defense.

Nelson relied on the guards to construct a cunning defensive web with the Bucks.

Upon his arrival at the Lakers, the Lakers’ backcourt resources were not a bit inferior to the Bucks’.

Nelson brought over the Bucks’ borderline pseudo-zone defense strategy, with one purpose—to preemptively double-team Ah Gan.

The Lakers suffered a severe defeat to Gan Guoyang in ’87.

The loss of two home-court advantages led to a complete passive state in the series, with no rhythm, and a year’s worth of effort went down the drain.

Ultimately, it led to Riley’s resignation and departure. Johnson not only lost the regular-season MVP, but also the championship title.

Magic Johnson later recalled that the 1987 loss was even more painful than the loss in the 1984 Finals.

Because that year they were so excellent, so full of championship and vengeful aspirations, and the whole team’s confidence was incredibly high, the championship seemed within easy reach.

The more inflated they were, the more horrific the explosion when burst, similar to Japan’s real estate bubble. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The abrupt halt, like the guillotine, brought sudden death, making it the worst summer for the Lakers players.

"That shock, for many years afterwards, made people restless and filled with immense regret," he said.

The second thing Nelson brought was a release from the mental strain for the Lakers players.

The Lakers players had been oppressed by Riley for too long, especially after losing to the Trail Blazers, which led their spirits to the brink of collapse.

Riley had lost the players’ trust, and his departure was inevitable.

After Nelson’s arrival, he rebuilt the trust between the coaches and players. His open style of play and his passionate yet not rough coaching style won the support of the Lakers.

These two points, along with the Lakers’ original strengths, allowed them to once again stir up a yellow whirlwind, sweeping the League and also the Trail Blazers.

Contrary to what many expected, after Nelson’s arrival, he did not discard Jabbar, or further reduce Jabbar’s role.

On the contrary, Nelson, who never coached a superstar center and had only used the later years of Lanier and Sikma, finally got to experience what it’s like to have a superstar center—even though Jabbar had already aged to the point of losing all his hair.

But Jabbar is Jabbar, not something other centers could be compared to.

Each game, Nelson still arranged one-on-one tactics for Jabbar and asked Johnson to slow down appropriately, to take care of the old man.

Nelson knew that Jabbar was still the best weapon against Ah Gan.

Before the game, in the Portland Trail Blazers’ locker room.

Gan Guoyang rarely gave a pre-game speech, demanding a must-win for this game, or else losing four regular-season games to the Lakers would create too great a psychological disadvantage.

Before taking the court, he specifically said to Gilmore, "We agreed to take down Jabbar, chances are few, we have to keep our word."

Gilmore clenched his fists, ready for battle.