The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 276 - 17 Falling Behind So Much_2

Vandeweghe and Drexler brewed some coffee and savored it slowly. They probably didn’t want to go to bed early tonight and wonder where they will have some fun.

Mychal Thompson and Kenny-Carl were discussing fishing. During the team’s summer trip to the Caribbean Sea, the two competed in sea fishing and ended up in a tie.

Jerome Kossie, now in his sophomore year, finally had a freshman little brother Terry Porter to boss around. He slapped Porter on the shoulder and told him he was going to take him golfing.

Kossie, once a poor kid, quickly adapted to his new role. Luxury cars and sports of the rich were arranged early on, and he was already a VIP member of the Oswego Lake Mountain Park Golf Club.

Walton felt like he was back in 1976 before Jack Ramsay coached the Trail Blazers when the team’s head coach was Lenny Wilkens, who was relatively lax with player management.

One thing that made a deep impression on Walton was that after the first half of the game, he returned to the locker room unhurried to rest, only to find that his teammates and staff had rushed back and were already in the locker room:

They were already drinking coffee, tea, and soft drinks inside, and some were even smoking. This was during halftime when there was still a second half to be played.

At that time, Lenny Wilkens was a player-coach. He had a good relationship with everyone but lacked a bit of authority, making the team atmosphere too lax.

After Jack Ramsay came on board, team discipline and style changed, and the Trail Blazers immediately experienced a positive chemical reaction.

Unexpectedly, in less than ten years, everything seemed to have reverted, yet it also felt somewhat different from the past.

To Walton’s query, Ramsay replied, "Listening to music and drinking tea is better than doing drugs and drinking alcohol."

That made sense; after all, it was only music and tea. Ramsay wasn’t as harsh on the players as before.

Of course, officially he couldn’t condone such activities. Whenever he heard Gan Guoyang playing music on his recorder, he would shout at Gan Guoyang, "Your machine is making noise again; you should get it fixed."

Gan Guoyang didn’t care; he just did what he liked, played seriously, and won games.

Occasionally, he would play some blues and jazz that Ramsay liked, and at those times, the old man would usually keep quiet, listen for a while, and then leave.

Defeating the Suns seemed effortless, and then on October 27, still at home, the Trail Blazers welcomed the visiting Golden State Warriors.

The Warriors’ center Joe Barry Carroll had returned from Italy, where he had wandered for a season before making his return to the NBA.

In the summer of 1984, Carroll sought a bigger contract, but just as in 1982 when Frank Mieuli and Bernard King had a long dispute and King still ended up in New York, Mieuli couldn’t come up with enough money to renew Carroll’s contract. (This included the 1980 trade of the third overall draft pick and Robert Parish to the Celtics. The underlying reason was still the team’s inability to afford Parish’s renewal fee, resulting in being robbed by Auerbach’s threats and enticements.)

Mieuli wasn’t meant to be a big businessman in the first place; his acquisition of the Warriors was sheer luck. After stumbling upon a championship in 1975, there was no ambition to grow big, and it was good enough to maintain a balance and make some money.

The incredibly talented and brilliant young Warriors of the early 1980s fell apart because the owner was too poor.

Carroll’s agent Bob Woolf was known for his toughness and never compromised with teams over salary, earning the reputation of the most despised intermediary by teams.

Eventually, in the summer of 1984, no team made an offer to Carroll. Carroll also didn’t want to lower his salary demands or waste a year of his career by sitting out.

So, he went to Italy to play for a season, and this summer he returned to America, where things took a turn.

The Bucks’ owner Jim Fitzgerald was planning to sell the team, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave the NBA scene; he wanted to play somewhere else.

So, he bought into the Golden State Warriors. Mieuli sold part of his stake to alleviate the team’s financial crisis and began to consider exiting the game.

The NBA’s business model had increasingly diverged from the past when owners were part of the game. They bought teams to become players, competing for markets and championships.

Managing an NBA team was their main business, the focus of their careers, like Jerry Buss for whom the Los Angeles Lakers was his most important asset, so he was particularly attentive to his players.

As the NBA market grew larger, especially since the 1970s, some big fish and wealthy tycoons started buying teams, becoming the new players in the game.

These new players already had vast assets outside of basketball, coming from various industries, and their reasons for purchasing NBA teams varied, be it for a hobby, wanting to enter the sports circle, or to promote their own brands, etc.

Regardless of their motives, they were very different from the previous owners: first, they were very wealthy and could afford to spend lavishly on signing players without worrying about the team’s financial issues.

Second, basketball was not their primary business, so whether the team was profitable was not too important for them—winning games was key, for which they could bear economic losses and costs.

This meant that owners like Frank Mieuli found it increasingly difficult to keep up, whereas Jerry Buss managed to support the Lakers through brilliant management, a bit of luck, and the sufficiently large Los Angeles market.

Jim Fitzgerald had started out in the oil business and later moved into construction engineering, after founding a group his industries included banking, financial services, and television broadcasting, among others, amassing a vast portfolio of assets.

Last year, he made an offer to Barry Carroll, but Carroll didn’t want to go to Milwaukee, so Fitzgerald thought, since you don’t want to come, I might as well buy your team to welcome you back.

As a result, Carroll returned to California, donning the Warriors’ jersey again, and in the season’s first game against the Nuggets, he punched in at work with a "triple-double" of 21 points, 14 rebounds, and 11 turnovers, casually adding 2 blocks and 3 assists.

Tonight, the Warriors were playing the Trail Blazers, which seemed easier for Portland since the Warriors, like the Suns, were affected by injuries, missing their 7th pick rookie Chris Mullin and Short due to injuries.

In the last game, the Warriors were easily defeated at home by the Nuggets, 119:105. They clung to the scoreboard for three quarters, only to be overrun in the fourth by a 41:25 run.

And Mullin’s absence was not just that simple—he hadn’t attended the team’s training camp due to an injury, and up to now, the Warriors hadn’t officially signed him—he was just a temp, that’s how poor the Warriors were.

Gan Guoyang was speechless about this. He and Mullin had trained together during the Olympic training camp. If he and Jordan were the top two training fanatics, then Mullin would be the third.

Especially when it came to shooting drills, Mullin wouldn’t stop until he was too exhausted to lift his arms, and the only reason Gan Guoyang could train longer was that his stamina was better.

Gan Guoyang still remembered training with the Warriors in Oakland, when they were a thriving, talented, and loving team.

Artur was a very good coach, and now he was the team’s general manager. His series of moves was as good as it could be, but the team was simply short on money.

In just a few years, the team had changed completely and had failed to make it to the playoffs, with little hope in sight.

Before the game, Barry Carroll and Gan Guoyang shook hands and greeted each other. Carroll said he hadn’t expected Gan Guoyang to actually make it to the NBA, reminiscent of the times Gan trained with Bernard King and Larry Smith, as if it were just yesterday.

"This feeling is really wonderful."

Gan Guoyang felt the same way, a good team was here one day and gone the next.

Carroll said he was looking forward to his first face-off with Gan Guoyang in an NBA game.

Gan Guoyang replied, "So am I."

That night, Gan Guoyang scored 50 points over Carroll’s head.

The Trail Blazers, at home court, thrashed the Golden State Warriors 131:89, a 42-point advantage, scoring two consecutive victories.

After playing that game, Carroll was in a daze, doubting his life. He wondered, is this Ah Gan? Isn’t this just a larger version of Bernard King who can defend and hook shot?

"Have I fallen behind this much just for not playing in the NBA for a year?"