The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 89 - 27: The Lost Things

Gonzaga made it to the Final Four, and the news exploded like a stone thrown into a pond after the game ended on the night of March 25th, rippling outwards and spreading across the entire America.

The final four is the ultimate stage of the NCAA each year, the ultimate dream of every college basketball player’s career.

Before this year, Gonzaga University hadn’t even made it to the NCAA Tournament, but this year they soared to the sky, which is precisely the charm of the NCAA.

You never know when a genius will suddenly emerge from your alma mater and lead the team to new heights, just like Larry Bird did in 1979 for Indiana State University, which had never made it to the NCAA Tournament before then.

And in 1979, their performance in the NCAA was just one step away from becoming a legend.

This year, the Gonzaga Bulldogs continued their solitary journey of creating history, and the location for the Final Four just happened to be in Seattle, the capital of Washington State, while Gonzaga hails from Spokane in Washington State.

The whole state of Washington went crazy for Gonzaga University.

On March 31st, Gonzaga University faced the University of Kentucky at Seattle’s Kingdome Stadium, a colossal sports arena that had set a record for the highest attendance in NBA history and could accommodate up to 40,000 fans, and once again set a new attendance record for a basketball game.

In a 1980 game between the Supersonics and the Bucks, the arena had set an NBA historic high of 40,172 attendees.

And for this game, with additional seating, the number of spectators reached 41,285.

However, the record would not last long, as it was soon to be broken by the championship game.

To watch the game, Gonzaga University suspended classes for a week, encouraging everyone to head to Seattle together.

The university president did everything possible to secure enough tickets for students and teachers to cheer on the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

The organizers had to add more seats to fulfill the overwhelming demand for tickets.

And Gonzaga University did not disappoint the alumni who had traveled far to support them, facing the Kentucky Wildcats with the Twin Towers of Sam Bowie and Melvin Turpin, Gan Guoyang dominated with 27 points, 21 rebounds, and 4 blocks, ruling the paint.

The highly performing Gan Guoyang single-handedly exploded the Wildcats’ interior Twin Towers, his statistics for scoring, rebounding, and blocks exceeded the combined totals of both players, making them seem like mere obstacles on the court.

Espn’s commentator Dick Vitale claimed during the broadcast, "Ah Gan is creating a new style of center play, never has there been a center like him – agile, strong, with long-range shooting and solid fundamentals. He’s a combination of Bill Russell, Moses Malone, Irving Hayes, and Jack Sikma. He is a center position’s Larry Bird, an unparalleled Chinese basketball miracle."

On the same day, after Gonzaga’s game against Kentucky concluded, the University of Houston Cougars won by a two-point margin against the University of Virginia, entering the NCAA finals for the second consecutive year, setting the stage for the ultimate showdown between the two teams.

Houston’s center Hakeem Olajuwon finished the game with 12 points, 11 rebounds, 5 blocks, and 2 steals, the Nigerian-born superstar center was a beastly presence in college basketball.

His overall performance this year was second only to Gan Guoyang, and their matchup in the finals sparked countless discussions.

It was as if people were transported back to 1979, to that epic battle from five years ago, still fresh in their memories.

That game saw an astonishing TV rating of 24%, with an estimated 35 million people in America watching the game.

This was a televising miracle for American basketball games, one that not even the NBA finals could match.

But on the evening of April 2, 1984, the eyes of all America were focused on the Kingdome Stadium, as countless families tuned their TVs to CBS, to ESPN, to the local sports channels, quietly waiting for the start of an epic final showdown.

In the eye of the storm, inside the locker room of Gonzaga University at the Kingdome Stadium, the Bulldog players were all very calm, going about their pre-game preparations.

"Gan, how many people do you think will watch this game?" Stockton asked as he was taping his ankle in the locker room.

"I don’t know, maybe ten million," Gan Guoyang said as he checked his basketball shoes, which were the fifteenth pair of Aivas he had worn out. Tonight, he had switched to a brand-new pair.

"Spokane has less than 200,000 people, and tonight I bet they’re all watching the game," Stockon thought of his hometown. Tonight his parents, girlfriend, and friends, they had all come to the game.

"Then maybe there will be twenty million people watching. If everyone gave me a dollar, I’d be rich," Gan Guoyang joked.

"A dollar a person? I’d be satisfied with a penny."

However, Gan Guoyang and Stockton still underestimated the impact of the game and the number of viewers.

In a commentator’s booth at the Dome Stadium, Seattle’s local television and radio commentator, known as the "Voice of the Supersonics" Bob Blackburn, was broadcasting the details of this major game to the television viewers and radio listeners throughout the Seattle area, not taking a single breath throughout his monologue.

"To all the viewers in front of TVs and radios, if you have any unfinished tasks at hand, please hurry up, quickly feed the kids, top up the dog’s food, hang up the clothes from the washing machine, take the cookies out of the oven, because this highly-anticipated game is about to start. According to predictions, the audience for this game could be close to forty million, yes, forty million, and as one in forty million, I hope you won’t miss this destined-to-be-classic championship final."

Blackburn’s voice was loud and sonorous, rattling off a long speech without a breath.

Players from both teams began to come onto the court to warm up, and the immense dome of the Kingdome made the players feel as if they were in a magnificent hall.

Gan Guoyang warmed up with some shots while his eyes searched the stands; he soon spotted Gan Guohui waving the "Gan’s Restaurant" banner, sitting next to him were his father Gan Youwei, and his uncle Gan Youtang and his family.

They had recently closed their business and come all the way from San Francisco to witness the most important moment of Gan Guoyang’s life so far.

Behind them was a huge group of Chinese fans. It could be said that every Chinese fan on the West Coast who could get a ticket had come to the event, and Gan Guoyang had become a spiritual totem for the Chinese people across America.

However, after looking carefully for a while, Gan Guoyang did not see the familiar pink hat. Was her seat too off to the side? Or was it too crowded to see clearly?

Last game, Wang Fuxi was there; she had been cheering for Gan Guoyang from the sidelines, and after the victory, she was so excited that she jumped and screamed, completely abandoning her usual gentle and quiet demeanor.

"Maybe she’s still on her way," he thought.

With a trace of worry in his heart, Gan Guoyang finished his warm-up and went to the sidelines for the entrance ceremony.

Tonight, Gonzaga University was dressed in white uniforms, while the University of Houston wore red.

Gan Guoyang and Olajuwon took turns entering the arena, standing on opposite sides of the court: two great centers ready for a showdown.

[April 2, 1984, finally, I had the chance to compete against Ah Gan for the championship in a game. I had waited a whole year, wanting to retrieve what I had lost.]

———— From Hakeem Olajuwon’s autobiography "Living The Dream," published in 1996.