The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 627 - 24 Close Friends

In the 1988 finals, Gan Guoyang led the Trail Blazers to crush the Washington Bullets with ease and captured the three-peat championship.

During that series, Charles Barkley’s performance was terrible, except for the third game; the rest were disastrous.

One could say that Barkley propped up Gan Guoyang to the first peak of his basketball career.

As for Gan Guoyang’s three consecutive championships, Barkley was convinced, truly defeated.

The Bullets, a jalopy cobbled together, raced on the highway at 120 miles per hour and simply couldn’t hold up as they were about to cross the finish line.

Following the next season, the Bullet Team fell from the glory of ’88 and began to disband.

Although Bernard King’s condition improved, Charles Barkley entered his prime, and Moses Malone along with Moncrief still had some fuel left, Malone’s relationship with the Bullets grew tense; he wanted a bigger contract, which the Bullets were reluctant to offer.

The honor of entering the finals made the entire team more ambitious, and, despite losing their roles, many still gained greater fame.

Throughout the season, Moses Malone was at a stalemate with the Bullets, with Charles Barkley vacillating between him and the team.

Dick Motta demanded even more from his players, yet they began to resist, having fought tooth and nail last season now they couldn’t enjoy the fruits of their labor?

The Bullets still made it to the playoffs in the regular season, but their ranking was only seventh in the Eastern conference, and they faced the New York Knicks in the first round.

As a result, they were eliminated 1:3 by the young Knicks duo of Ewing and Oakley; their appearance in the 1988 finals seemed like a mere flash in the pan.

Barkley not only faced failure on the court, but off the court, his troubles were just beginning.

That summer after making it to the finals, Charles Barkley was pulled over on the Atlantic City expressway by New Jersey State Police, who suspected his Porsche might be carrying guns and drugs.

He had just finished attending a children’s basketball camp and was on his way home.

Police searched his vehicle and found a loaded 9-millimeter black Kohler Kock semi-automatic pistol, but Barkley did not have a gun permit in New Jersey State.

Barkley was consequently arrested for possessing a dangerous controlled weapon—a charge that could lead to up to five years in prison.

And that was just the beginning of Barkley’s arrested life.

Later Barkley explained that he carried the weapon out of fear of racism, concerned that as a black athlete, something terrible might happen; he wanted to protect himself.

He was bailed out, and then a judge ruled that the police search was illegal, so the charges against Barkley were dropped—and the substantial bail money was provided by Gan Guoyang.

The reason Barkley didn’t pay himself was that although he had assets worth tens of millions of US dollars, he couldn’t access a significant amount of cash.

His financial situation was a mess, and a big one at that.

Even though he followed Moses Malone’s advice and stopped wasting his salary on meaningless things, he was still clueless about managing money, as someone who had grown up impoverished, he was insensitive to money.

He overly trusted his agent, Lance Lucchinnici, with whom he had signed an agreement when he first contracted, granting Lucchinnici the authority to deposit, withdraw, and borrow money.

He handed his salary directly to Lucchinnici, who took 10% and also had control over the remainder.

Lucchinnici invested Barkley’s money into hotels, car dealerships, and a bank, all of which failed miserably.

He also poured $900,000 into a land deal in Texas for cattle ranching and pecan farming; the land barely worth $300,000 meant that Barkley was already hundreds of thousands in the hole upon purchase.

In the summer of ’88, the "Daily News" exposed that Lucchinnici was suspected of bribing high school and college coaches to secure the signing rights for star players; the report also revealed Lucchinnici’s past record of stealing client funds and various problems with his tax filings.

When Barkley was arrested and found he couldn’t even scrape together bail money, he knew he was in deep trouble.

Gan Guoyang, being as generous as ever, sent Gan Guohui with a team to audit Barkley’s finances for free.

Unbeknownst to them until they audited, not only did Lucchinnici fail to make profitable investments for Barkley, he also left Barkley with a massive debt.

If being in debt wasn’t bad enough, Lucchinnici failed to file Barkley’s taxes on time, resulting in four years of owed taxes and penalties, and there was a considerable deficit on his accounts.

Ultimately, Barkley sued his agent and terminated the contract, and the court ordered Lucchinnici to compensate Barkley with 5 million US dollars.

However, Lucchinnici was out of money. All his clients had severed ties and sued him. Lucchinnici declared bankruptcy and ended up penniless.

Barkley had to swallow the massive financial loss; the money was gone, but at least he still had a generous contract with his team and a lucrative deal with Avia.

The dreadful summer of ’88 tormented Barkley, preventing him from having a good offseason to improve himself; naturally, the ’89 season wasn’t shaping up to be much better.

By ’89, Barkley’s fortunes hadn’t turned around.

Moses Malone broke off talks with the Bullets and left for the Atlanta Hawks.