The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 274 - 16: Flight 1

The Trail Blazers’ preseason games were unremarkable, acting as warm-up matches that focused on training rookies and getting the court ready.

Terry Porter boldly took outside three-point shots during the games, with Jack Ramsey tacitly approving.

Praise was out of the question—it was Ramsey’s final pride as a traditional coach, but he had still prepared a few three-point strategies in his tactical manual.

In the sixth game of the Western Conference Finals, they were just one three-pointer away from forcing overtime. For the first time, Ramsey realized the importance of the three-pointer—it could change their fate.

After a few preseason matches, the team reorganized and trimmed down the lineup, with Ken Johnson, as the 12th man, staying on the team.

Compared to Scheffler, who was just too mediocre at the age of 30, Ken Johnson had the advantage of youth. He could step in to give other big men a break.

In the 1980s, NBA teams generally preferred to stockpile frontcourt players, and at the end of the bench, a team would typically have a big guy on hand, as the value of small guards had not yet been fully appreciated.

Gan Guoyang played relaxed during the preseason, and Ramsay tried pairing him with Walton.

Defensively, Walton squatted in the three-second zone, while Guoyang roamed the periphery, disrupting the opponent’s ball handlers.

Offensively, Walton left the low post entirely to Guoyang, moving high up, just as he used to do for Lucas.

Everything connected naturally, their cooperation was seamless, and Walton integrated flawlessly into Ramsay’s offensive system. There was no issue of compatibility.

If there was any change, after playing a few games, Walton felt that the Trail Blazers’ offense was more free-flowing than in the past, with players frequently making unconventional plays.

Such as Gan Guoyang suddenly firing from the top of the arc or even beyond the three-point line, Vandeweghe’s one-on-one, Drexler’s fancy behind-the-back passes and layups.

Even Mychal Thompson, who was always by-the-book in his gameplay, tried a couple of baseline drives for reverse layups, unafraid of hurting his old back.

Walton was in good physical shape. He could run, jump, and even dunk.

Before every game, he spent a considerable amount of time warming up to get his bones and ligaments ready.

The team’s trainer, his good friend Calvin, would lend a hand, as if starting an old steam engine that needed the boiler heated up for a long time to warm the water.

In contrast, Gan Guoyang was brand new, a truck that could start with just a spark. He felt lighter and more agile than the previous season, and as if he had endless energy in his body.

The bland preseason wasn’t worth mentioning, but just before the regular season started at the end of October, two interesting things happened.

The first was that a dolphin at the City of Portland’s Ocean Park swallowed a large gold ring that a visitor dropped. The aquarium lacked the tools to remove the ring without hurting the dolphin.

Gold is heavy and couldn’t be naturally expelled through the digestive system. If left inside the dolphin for too long, it would endanger its life. The visitor also badly wanted the ring back—it was gold, after all.

The caretakers tried to extract the ring by hand, but couldn’t reach it, and were considering surgery to open the dolphin’s stomach. That’s when a fan of the Trail Blazers suggested that Ah Gan had long arms and big hands; perhaps he could do it.

Hence, the aquarium called the Trail Blazers’ fan liaison office, who reached out to Gan Guoyang to inquire about the situation. Guoyang agreed to help and successfully retrieved the gold ring from the dolphin’s second stomach after applying some lubricant on his arm.

Ocean Park made a bronze plaque for Gan Guoyang and placed it beside the dolphin pool to commend his contribution to saving the dolphin’s life.

This was a good deed, not only saving a dolphin but also recovering a ring, and in the NBA, a ring symbolizes a championship.

The second event was even more bizarre. Two days before the regular season started, with the preseason over and the Trail Blazers players ready for the new season, two monks arrived at the Trail Blazers’ headquarters from San Jose, claiming their temple’s abbot had died. They were in Portland to find the successor for their temple.

And the successor was none other than Gan Guoyang, as personally appointed by the abbot, who insisted on this before passing away peacefully.

When Bud Walton heard this news, he was baffled but shaken. He called Gan Guoyang and asked if he wanted to become a monk.

This was even more inconceivable than asking Gan Guoyang to cook for the entire Trail Blazers team. Guoyang was stunned for a while but after understanding the situation,

he racked his brains and finally remembered that he had taken shelter from the rain in a temple in San Jose during a high school championship, where an old monk had read his fortune.

But after the reading, the monk didn’t say anything, and Guoyang left without giving it much thought, soon completely forgetting about it.

If it weren’t for the unexpected visit from the two monks, he would have totally forgotten the incident within a couple of years and wouldn’t have remembered it at all.

It turned out that the old monk did not say anything after staring at him for a while because he had chosen him as his successor. That old monk sure had grand plans.

Gan Guoyang decisively refused, and the two monks did not persist. They parted ways, leaving only a message that if Gan Guoyang ever found the secular world dull, he could come to San Jose, where the position of abbot would be kept for him.

Having given up the opportunity to become an abbot, the 1985-1986 NBA regular season was about to start, with the Trail Blazers facing off against the Phoenix Suns at home on October 25th.

Last season, the Trail Blazers also faced the Phoenix Suns early on, and at that time Suns guard Walter Davis was absent due to injury, while in this game Larry Nance was out due to injury as well.

Injuries are the last thing any team wants to face, and clearly, the Suns were not going to have an easy time in these years.

Their star player Davis only played 23 games last season due to injuries, making for a mediocre performance.

But what really hurt him was not just the injuries, but also drugs.

The more experienced players all knew Walter Davis took banned substances; they could tell by his expressions and certain little gestures whether someone was high.

During the peak of the league’s drug problems in 1978 and 1979, Davis was seen using drugs in the locker room in front of the entire team, and no one thought it strange.

That year, Davis made it to the All-Star team and, with the Suns, reached the Western Conference Finals, where they lost 3:4 to the eventual champions, the Seattle SuperSonics.

On one hand, these players really had excellent physical fitness, and on the other hand, it showed that the level of the league was not very high, because it was infested with drug addicts.

At night, the Memorial Coliseum was no exception with its tickets sold out, and ticket prices had reached the highest regular season level since the 1980s, truly making them hard to come by.

The Governor of Oregon, Victor Atiyeh, and the Mayor of Portland, Bud Clark, both arrived on the scene to watch the game, and took the time before the game to shake hands and take photos with the Trail Blazers players.

Clearly, Portland and all of Oregon had great expectations for the Trail Blazers, excited by their performance last season, as well as the return of the old MVP, which sparked everyone’s imagination.

Mayor Bud Clark, who had just won the election in January, was a political novice with no prior political experience before running for office; his job was that of a bar owner.

To attract enough voters, Clark always claimed he was an ardent fan of the Portland Trail Blazers and a die-hard fan of Ah Gan.

He invited Gan Guoyang to his bar, located in a very famous inn at the city center, where many celebrities had left their mark.

But Gan Guoyang refused; first, he didn’t drink alcohol, and second, he didn’t easily lend his support to others, unlike Walton, who was always eager to show his political stance.

Clark didn’t mind, he knew that in terms of popularity, Gan Guoyang was much more beloved in Portland than him, the mayor.

During the handshake, he suddenly told Gan Guoyang, "You guys will win tonight. Davis got completely drunk at the Goose Valley Bar last night. He won’t be in good shape."

Alcohol is the second biggest scourge in the league after drugs, and once a person starts using drugs, they often turn to heavy drinking as well, preferring to hit two birds with one stone.

When the game really started, Gan Guoyang quickly noticed that Walter Davis was not normal; his eyes were glazed, his footsteps floated, his drives were weak, and his shots were inaccurate.

Whether a player worked hard in training during the summer and properly built up his fitness could be clearly seen in the first game of the regular season.

Not only had Walter Davis not rested well the night before after getting drunk, but he also hadn’t trained seriously all summer, likely indulging in drugs and alcohol.

In fact, it wasn’t just Davis; the entire Suns team was out of sorts. In contrast, the Trail Blazers, despite a slow start, got better and better as the game went on, leading the Suns by 10 points by the end of the first quarter.

Gan Guoyang made all 6 of his shots in the first quarter, scoring 12 points, in stark contrast with Davis’s 1 out of 6, with the Trail Blazers exuding a completely different spirit and energy from the Suns.

Into the second quarter, as Bill Walton took off his jacket and stepped onto the court, the entire arena erupted in a huge cheer and applause, with Bill Schonely using his loudest voice to introduce the former King of Portland.

Immediately, he blocked Adams’s hook shot in defense, followed by Gan Guoyang’s quick break on the counterattack. He received the ball and charged inside like a rugby running back, colliding with the defending Davis.

Davis jumped and was knocked into the air, falling past the baseline and lying on the sidelines unable to get up for a while. Gan Guoyang stood under the basket with the ball, watching as the Suns’ trainer came over to check the situation, thinking to himself, why would you exert yourself like this—have you fried your brain with drugs?

It was a play that clearly couldn’t be stopped. Not only did he get himself knocked half to death, but he also got hit with a blocking foul.

Soon, Walter Davis was carried off the court by the trainer, becoming the first casualty of the new season from a collision with Gan Guoyang.

His explosive power on impact had become even stronger since last season.