The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 576 - 3: The Lion and the Tiger
Gan Guoyang was not very fond of golf.
Compared to basketball, football, and other sports full of confrontation that stimulate the adrenaline, golf seemed a bit too genteel.
Moreover, playing golf was more about competing with oneself than with an opponent. When swinging the club, there was only the club, the ball, and the wind.
Golfers are always pondering the strength and angle of their stroke and the wind speed, constantly competing with themselves, which is quite similar to shooting baskets.
Many NBA players enjoy golf, which is an important symbol of entering the elite class and a way for them to stimulate themselves during leisure time and avoid pressure.
Gan Guoyang never liked to compete with himself, so he didn’t enjoy participating in this sport thick with elite vibes, although sometimes he had to for the sake of socializing.
Like his good friends Jordan and Barkley, who were avid golf enthusiasts, Gan Guoyang would play a few rounds with them in his spare time.
Unexpectedly, among the three, Gan Guoyang’s golf skills were the best, which drove Jordan crazy.
This guy always believed in the magic of power; he would swing hard without much thought and then the landing spot would always be decent.
Perhaps due to his long-term practice in shooting, Gan Guoyang had a remarkably good judgment of distance and angle, and his shooting felt first-rate.
Jerry West was also a golf enthusiast. After retiring in 1974, he spent much of his time on the golf course of Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles, playing with Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery, Ryan Martin, and even the famous Barron Hilton to pass the time.
Even after becoming the general manager of the Lakers, he would still take time out to play golf and relieve his stress.
So, even if he didn’t like it, Gan Guoyang still needed to visit the golf course to meet Jerry West.
Before meeting West in private, Gan Guoyang didn’t think, "I want to recruit him to be the general manager of the Trail Blazers."
Although West was good, he hadn’t been successful since 1985, and it was Gan Guoyang who had kept him out of the championship circle.
Gan Guoyang admired West’s reputation and work capacity, and hoped he could mediate with Tang Jianguo, so that the Trail Blazers could have a relatively stable environment to play in.
After all, old Tang was too troublesome, and needed someone to install brakes and a thermostat for him. The always stoic West was very suitable for this role.
Moreover, with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Orlando Magic joining, the NBA environment became increasingly complex, and the draft process more troublesome.
The Trail Blazers needed an experienced helmsman to steer the situation.
If West was unwilling or unable to come, Gan Guoyang didn’t think it mattered, as he could lead the Trail Blazers to a championship himself.
I’ve been involved in coaching work anyway; I might as well take on some management duties for extra pay. It’s not that difficult, after all.
More than recruiting, Gan Guoyang wanted to see what Jerry West was like off the court.
After all, he was a legend of the game, and if he could learn something from West, that would be great.
NBA’s star players are all quite individualistic, and spiritually a bit troubled, to some extent.
The earlier the era, the more mental problems; the later the era, the more normal the intellect and personality.
For these problem children, as the director of an orphanage, Gan Guoyang was always very interested.
In the morning, Gan Guoyang and Tang Jianguo drove to their destination—Bel-Air Country Club.
The country club is located inside UCLA, serving as a social club for the school community and the main venue for the UCLA men’s and women’s golf teams.
Two years ago, Jerry Buss extended a goodwill gesture to Gan Guoyang by offering him a membership to the Bel-Air Country Club.
Now, he was about to poach the Lakers’ meritorious general manager with Tang Jianguo.
However, Buss had started a conflict with West first, siding with Don Nelson between the coach and the general manager.
Emotionally, Buss favored West, but the problem was that the Lakers had not been able to win a championship since 1985.
During the 1989 playoffs, the Lakers finally overcame the formidable challenge of Gan Guoyang, thanks to Don Nelson’s three-guard strategy.
As a result, Nelson won Buss’s trust, while the incident of West stopping Buss from trading Worthy in 1986 became an insurmountable barrier.
Because they lost to the Detroit Pistons in the finals, and Mark Aguirre was on the Pistons’ team.
Before the start of the 1988-1989 season, West vowed that if he couldn’t win the championship, he would resign.
For the championship, he had been preventing Jabbar from retiring for three years, making many promises and expending a lot of goodwill.
He changed coaches and personally fired Pat Riley, which was quite painful for him.
He was continuously looking for trades, spending a lot of time scouting new players, hoping someone could stand up to Ah Gan.
He even went overseas to scout the Yugoslavian center Divac, in hopes that he could carry on Jabbar’s legacy.
Still, he didn’t win the championship and he couldn’t allow himself to remain.
Jerry Buss could have persuaded West not to leave, as with Bill Sharman nearing retirement, West could take over as president of the team.
But considering that Don Nelson was interested in taking on the role of general manager, Jerry Buss did not immediately step in to persuade West.
As a result, West resigned in a huff after the finals, and although Buss soon regretted it and wanted to persuade him, West shut his doors and would not meet with him.
Then, Tang Jianguo seized the opportunity.
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When Gan Guoyang saw West on the golf course, at age 51, he looked in very good spirits.
His expression was still stoic. When shaking hands with Gan Guoyang, he showed not a trace of a smile and said, "You lost in the Western Conference finals."
Gan Guoyang tightened his grip, West’s face was expressionless, but cold sweat was streaming down his face.
After holding on for a while, Gan Guoyang finally let go, and West’s face turned pale, unable to speak for a long time.
"Nearly lost my life there," West silently thought to himself.
The group then took a golf cart to the first tee, with four people per cart.
Tang Jianguo, Gan Guoyang, West, and Jack Nicholson rode together, with Tang Jianguo driving.
Jack Nicholson is a well-known die-hard Lakers fan and a friend of Jerry West.
Nicholson expressed both anger and sympathy for West’s resignation; he disliked Don Nelson’s coaching style.
He believed Don Nelson missed the essence of "show-time" and was too lax, unlike Riley, who was strict.
Nicholson was particularly indignant about Don Nelson muscling into the nest like a cuckoo, covertly pushing West, whom he recruited, out the door.
The reason he told Tang Jianguo about West’s resignation and hoped that Tang would recruit West was partly because he wanted his friend to have a new job instead of rotting and gathering mold at home, killing time on the golf course.
On the other hand, Jack Nicholson truly hoped that West would make more contact with Gan Guoyang, preferably taking a position with the Trail Blazers for a time.
Once they got to know each other better, he could then find a way to bring Gan Guoyang to the Lakers, like how Jabbar came to the Lakers back in the day.
Nicholson’s idea was outlandish, but not impossible to achieve.
As NBA fans, there wasn’t a team that didn’t want to get Gan Guoyang.
In the summer of ’88, Gan Guoyang only signed a four-year contract, which meant he would soon become a free agent.
At that time, Gan Guoyang would only be 28 years old, at the absolute peak of a player’s career.
If West could leverage this relationship to pry Ah Gan to the Lakers, the Lakers could experience a revival.
Another team’s superstar center is just so much better to have around.
How else to explain it? He’s a famous Hollywood actor; Nielsen’s plan had a taste of Mission: Impossible.
After hearing his good friend’s unreliable plan, West scoffed at it, saying he hadn’t planned to move to another team, let alone to an old rival like the Trail Blazers.
"To the Trail Blazers? I might as well go to the Celtics and assist Auerbach," he said.
He might say this, but West didn’t refuse the meeting with Tang Jianguo and Gan Guoyang.
His thoughts were actually similar to Gan Guoyang’s; he wanted to meet privately with this young man who had once struck fear into him.
Since the 1986 season, Jerry West had been worried about one thing: that the Portland Trail Blazers would become the next ’60s Celtics, and that Ah Gan would be the next Bill Russell.
The three-peat had proven his fears to be real, and the failure in 1989 was mixed with many non-basketball factors.
Moreover, it was precisely because West witnessed the Trail Blazers’ and Gan Guoyang’s failure to defend their title that he genuinely felt the overwhelming power of this player.
In May, West attended Larry Flesher’s memorial service, and he knew of the deep bond between Gan Guoyang and Flesher.
Having experienced the death of a loved one himself, he understood that feeling; at that time, West thought that the Trail Blazers were finished, that they would lose to the Suns in the semi-finals.
To his surprise, Gan Guoyang stubbornly made it to the Western Conference finals and even managed to tie the score after being down 0:2.
At that moment, West and the whole Lakers team were truly panicked, in a way they had never been before.
If they were to lose in that situation, West didn’t want to have anything more to do with basketball for the rest of his life.
On the day of the crucial Western Conference game, West did not go to the venue; he hid at home, sleeping.
It wasn’t until late at night when his son came home and told him the results of the match that West breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Then he asked how Ah Gan was doing, and his son said, "He pulled a muscle in his calf, but he insisted on finishing the game with 33 points, almost turning the tables."
In just one sentence, there was so much thrilling competition and fierce rivalry, and West could fully imagine it.
The series with the Trail Blazers drained the Lakers, and West believed that the Pistons were not really the Lakers’ rivals; that was the best Lakers team since 1980.
At the moment they defeated the Trail Blazers, the Lakers players thought they had won the championship, like they had finished the journey, and they became complacent.
Now, the two men were sitting side by side on the back seat of a golf cart, both very tall, which made the seat somewhat crowded. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮
They began discussing topics, but it seemed to have nothing to do with basketball.
"Lions and tigers, who fights harder?"
"Obviously, it’s the tiger, because the tiger is from China," Gan replied.
"No, according to Roman Colosseum records, lions won more often," West countered.
"Wrong! The Roman Colosseum battles were between Barbary Lions and Caspian Tigers; the Barbary Lion, being 20% larger, won easily. Later, after introducing the fierce Bengal Tiger, the lion stood no chance. Besides, the majestic Barbary Lion is now extinct, leaving only the uglier, smaller African Lion, which is even less a match."
"The Bengal Tiger isn’t Chinese."
"But China has the larger Siberian Tiger."
"That’s called the Siberian Tiger, and because of their habitat..."
Sitting in the front, Tang Jianguo and Nicholson looked at each other, wondering what these two were talking about.
They’re high schoolers, aren’t they? Why are they discussing such things?
You’re basketball giants; why argue over a fight between lions and tigers?
Nicholson asked Tang Jianguo, "Donald, what do you think?"
Tang Jianguo replied, "No one knows more about beast fights than me... I’ll settle this argument."
