The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 393 - 12 The Worst Batch I’ve Ever Taught

As September arrived, three months had passed since the Finals, and the heat of the 1986 championship had gradually cooled down, turning into a fond memory for the people of Portland.

Every team began to prepare for the 1986-1987 season, with the market alive with various trades and signings, strong teams strengthening and weak teams restructuring their lineups. Before the new season had even started, every team seemed to have a bright future.

Among the signings and trades, the most important and eye-catching one was between the Detroit Pistons and the Utah Jazz. The Pistons traded their star small forward Tripucka along with Kent Benson to the Jazz for the scoring champ Adrian Dantley.

This swap of star small forwards was a sign of dissatisfaction with their current situations from both the Pistons and the Jazz. They decided to exchange scorers at the same position, to see if it would revive the teams like moving dead trees to a new place revives them.

Chuck Daly had long coveted Dantley; in the defensive system he was trying to build, Dantley’s ability to draw fouls was crucial, as a large number of free throws could effectively slow down the opponent’s pace of attack.

At the same time, Dantley’s low-post offense was something the Pistons sorely lacked. Dantley’s arrival could enrich the team’s offensive layers, giving them more tactics to win in set-piece battles.

The Pistons had also picked a new small forward, Dennis Rodman, in the 1986 draft, and Daly believed he could replace Dantley’s position and contribute on the defensive end.

As for the Jazz, after acquiring Karl Malone, they were determined to build a new offensive and defensive system centered around him, making a low-post forward like Dantley somewhat out of place.

Furthermore, Dantley’s attitude toward training and games was not entirely satisfactory. The Jazz feared he might set a bad example for the young Karl Malone, so they decided to simply trade him for the more perimeter-oriented Tripucka.

For both teams, it was a swap of resources, each taking what they needed.

Another significant trade happened a bit earlier. Stu Inman was not entirely idle in Portland; his connections in the Northwest Region and his close ties with Seattle played a key role in the trade of Jack Sikma.

Sikma, who played nine years for the Supersonics and was a championship center, decided to leave the Emerald City after a poor 1985-1986 season to go somewhere he could compete for the championship again.

Though not among the top centers in the league, Sikma was much beloved in the Seattle area. The Supersonics had never thought of trading him—their general manager even said, "I wouldn’t trade Sikma even if Marilyn Monroe came back to life in my bedroom."

Marilyn Monroe would not be resurrected, the Supersonics did not want to trade Sikma, but Sikma wanted to leave.

At 31 years old, Sikma’s career was entering its twilight, and he wanted to taste the championship once more.

In the less developed medical conditions of the 1980s, 30 was often the dividing line for a player’s physical condition.

When Bob Lanier was sent to the Bucks, he was only 31 years old, but his knees were already shot.

Yet a half-disabled Lanier still helped the Bucks get past the Celtics, and now Nellie needed a new strong inside presence.

The trade of Sikma meant that all the members of the 1979 championship Supersonics had left.

A Chapter of Seattle’s history ended, and they were entering a new stage, looking forward to the arrival of a new team savior, just as they had welcomed Sikma and others ten years earlier.

Apart from these two conspicuous major trades, other various minor signings and trades also emerged from time to time to attract attention.

These deals might seem inconsequential at the moment, but because they involved a lot of future draft picks, looking back many years later, one would find that they had a significant influence on the league’s patterns.

In September, the Los Angeles Lakers made an important trade after Cooper decided to retire. Jerry West sent Kurt Rambis and a draft choice to the San Antonio Spurs for the Spurs’ second-round, 7-foot center, Kevin Duckworth.

The Lakers were considering finding a successor for Jabbar.

The rise of the Houston Twin Towers and Gan Guoyang made Jabbar seem so old, highlighting the Lakers’ weakness in the paint.

Ever since they had Jabbar, each summer the Lakers were always looking for backups and enforcer-type partners for him.

The Lakers favored those big men who had made a name for themselves on other teams. They had little interest in developing their own big men, preferring to sign ready-made or semi-finished products instead.

Players like Jim McDaniel, Kermit Washington, James Edwards, Dave Robisch, Jim Jones, Bob McAdoo, and Morris Lucas—all of them gained fame on other teams. They were substantial players, all-stars, and even regular-season MVPs, who, after their prime, were lured to Los Angeles, California, to become Jabbar’s backup and good partner.

Even Jabbar himself, as well as Chamberlain, were not Lakers’ homegrown talents but acquired from other teams.

This has long been the Lakers’ method of building a core lineup: nurture the guards at home, and snatch the centers from elsewhere.

Kevin Duckworth was an exception; the failed experience with Morris Lucas made Jerry West determined to develop a reliable successor for the frontcourt because, after all, Jabbar was already 40.

West’s most sought-after frontcourt player was the Trail Blazers’ power forward, Mychal Thompson, but the Trail Blazers had just won the championship and would not consider trading Thompson.

Apart from Thompson, it was hard to find a suitable, well-known but past-their-prime center, so West turned his attention to the rookies.

The trade of Kurt Rambis was firstly because West was optimistic about the growth of AC Green, and secondly, because Rambis had developed psychological issues after being outplayed by Gan Guoyang in confrontations with the Trail Blazers. West doubted his ability to play a key role in the upcoming season’s battles against the Trail Blazers and thus decided to let him go.

In terms of talent, acquiring Kevin Duckworth and trading away Rambis was a good deal.

Duckworth would soon prove that he was a center worth cultivating.

But the Lakers players had deep affection for Rambis, and sending him off felt similar to when Auerbach traded Maxwell, causing the players to doubt whether the Lakers was still a family.

Once they all lived in the Green Valley Circle apartment complex, living, training, playing, and competing together.

Now, as salaries increased and players aged and started their own families, they began to buy properties in Los Angeles, leaving the Green Valley Circle apartments vacant.

The days of living together like a family became beautiful memories, never to return.

On the other side, the Portland Trail Blazers’ rookies gathered at Portland Community College’s training hall in September, ready to start this year’s rookie training camp.

Aside from Curry and Hornacek, the Trail Blazers also selected five other players in the seven rounds of the draft, who came as sparring partners to the camp for tryouts.

If they performed well, the Trail Blazers might offer them a guaranteed contract, but of course, most of them would never have the chance to play in the NBA in their lifetimes.

Among the five players, aside from Sabonis, there was another Yugoslav player, Petrović, who was drafted but also couldn’t play in America due to nationality reasons.

The Portland Trail Blazers had tasted success with Gan Guoyang and favored these foreign players. They didn’t care if they couldn’t come; they picked them anyway, thinking maybe they could come over in the future.

Apart from the rookies, Gan Guoyang, as the team’s leading star, also attended the rookie training camp, which put quite a bit of psychological pressure on the newcomers.

Beelman, in his role as assistant coach of the rookie training camp, helped Rick Adelman conduct the training and observe the new players’ performances.

Gan Guoyang’s presence amplified the intensity of the training camp by more than a notch, starting at ten in the morning, resting for an hour and a half in the middle, and ending at three-thirty in the afternoon.

Around two o’clock, some were already struggling to keep up, and by the end of the training at three-thirty, only Curry and Hornacek had endured, with everyone else dropping out.

Hornacek was so tired he was gasping for air, looking like he might collapse, persisting to the end through sheer willpower.

Gan Guoyang, seeing Curry’s and Hornacek’s exhausted appearances, said, "Training is over, let’s do some extra shooting practice. Now is the best time to train shooting."

Curry and Hornacek were nearly at their breaking point, they were already so exhausted, how could they still do extra practice?

But there was no helping it, you have to listen to the team leader, and during the subsequent three-point practice, Gan Guoyang still maintained a high shooting percentage.

Even as time went on, he got more accurate and seemed to be in better shape, like some perpetual motion machine.

Meanwhile, Curry and Hornacek’s shooting was all over the place, especially Hornacek, who had no accuracy at all from the three-point line. It was clear he couldn’t shoot.

Gan Guoyang asked, "You can’t shoot threes?"

Leaning on his knees, Hornacek forced out a breathless, "No~ we didn’t have threes in college."

Gan Guoyang sighed and said, "You are the worst rookies I’ve coached. Keep practicing. From now on, after training, add one hour... never mind, half an hour of three-point practice."

[Being selected by the Trail Blazers was beyond my expectations; before reporting to the team, I had already secured a job at an accounting firm.

Before heading to Portland to attend the camp, I asked the company if I could work there in case I didn’t make it in basketball. They said it was no problem, and only then did I feel confident going to the tryouts.

I didn’t expect that on the first day of training, Sonny Gan would also show up. His presence turned the training camp into something terrifying, with such an intense level, everyone was very driven, as no one wanted to be yelled at or glared at by Ah Gan.

By two o’clock in the afternoon, some players couldn’t keep up, but I made it till three-thirty, together with Curry, and then Ah Gan had the two of us join him for three-point training.

To be honest, my hands were numb, and I shot a bunch of airballs. Ah Gan seemed a bit angry, saying, "You guys are the worst rookies I’ve ever coached!"

Haha, I later found out that he says this to every batch of rookies at the training camp every year.]

————In a 2010 interview show, Jeff Hornacek recalled his rookie season with the Trail Blazers.