The Golden Age of Basketball

Chapter 183 Arrogance
Gan Guoyang won the Rookie of the Month award for December and the League Player of the Week award for last week due to his outstanding performance in December and his excellent play last week.

Michael Jordan was named the league's Rookie of the Month in November, while Larry Bird was named the Player of the Month in December.

This is Gan Guoyang's second Player of the Week award, and he was extremely impressive in the games against the Rockets and Lakers.

After defeating Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Moses Malone, two of the league's most popular and strongest centers, Gan Guoyang's All-Star votes continued to surge, surpassing Malone to become the most voted center.

He ranked second in the votes for all positions, only behind superstar Magic Johnson.

His "Rock the Baby" dunk in the game against the 76ers undoubtedly earned him a lot of points. Who wouldn't want to see such a spectacular performance in the All-Star Game?
The flight from Portland to Boston was quite long. After waking up, Gan Guoyang put on his headphones and listened to music while flipping through the latest magazines and newspapers provided on the plane.

Ronald Reagan was officially sworn in as president in January, and he and Vice President George W. Bush began their second term, marking the beginning of the second half of the 1980s.

Experts were very optimistic about the US economy, which had experienced a full recovery in 1984, and predicted that the GDP growth rate of more than 7% would be the highest since 1960.

Gan Guoyang has been in the United States for four years and has personally witnessed the rapid development of American society. From large-scale employment to small-scale clothing and commodities, everything is changing.

When he watched a game at Oakland Stadium in San Francisco in 1981, the stadium looked desolate and dilapidated, as if it had been through World War II.

In 1985, he played in Memorial Arena and arenas of all sizes across the United States. The NBA made significant improvements to the venue setup, with brighter lights, brand-new floors, more standardized pre-game procedures, and white towels with the NBA logo uniformly provided on the bench.

The NBA has reached agreements with new sponsors including Gatorade, Spalding, and American Airlines. Gatorade will provide energy drinks for NBA teams, Spalding will replace Wilson as the new basketball brand supplier, and American Airlines will provide VIP seats for all NBA players to ensure their rest.

What the NBA needs to do is give close-up shots of Gatorade on the bench during live television broadcasts, zoom in during players' free throws so fans can see what kind of basketball they're using, and of course, air commercials for these companies during timeouts.

Each team will open up the naming rights of their stadiums to large corporations like American Airlines, and all the previous names like "Memorial Stadium," "XX Celebrity Stadium," and "XX City Sports Center" will become history.

While the United States is a beautiful place, Gan Guoyang also read in the newspaper that East Africa is suffering from a severe famine caused by drought since 1982. The famine peaked in 1984, with tens of millions of people suffering from hunger and facing the threat of death.

In 1984, a British singer recorded a song called "Do They Know It's Christmas" to raise funds for famine relief in Africa.

In the United States, a group of pop stars, led by Michael Jackson, are also preparing to release a collaborative song to call on people to pay attention to the disaster in Africa across the Atlantic and to do their part. The song is called "We Are the World".

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, in China, an ancient land that had historically been ravaged by famine, a group of agricultural technicians spent more than 20 years developing high-yield hybrid rice. At the same time, they spent more than 30 years building water conservancy projects and developing chemical and machinery industries, enabling a quarter of the world's population to begin to have enough to eat and wear.

The world is changing faster and faster, but some things remain as solid as ancient stones, unmoved by wind and rain.

For example, Boston's terrible basketball facilities and the arrogance that permeates the entire city.

Gan Guoyang arrived in Boston with the team and was taken by bus to the Cambridge Hyatt Hotel. Like most buildings in Boston, the rooms here were cramped with small windows, making it not very comfortable.

He got up as usual the next morning and asked the hotel staff how to get to the Boston Garden, where he was going to do some warm-up exercises.

The white receptionist glanced up at Gan Guoyang, said nothing, and then lowered her head to continue doing her work.

Gan Guoyang asked twice more, but the guy simply stopped looking up. Enraged, Gan Guoyang grabbed him by the collar with one hand, pulled him out from inside, and dragged him directly outside the counter.

The hotel security guards dared not approach, and the waiter was so frightened that he said to Gan Guoyang, "The Boston Garden Arena does not allow basketball players to warm up before the game; they can only go directly to the game."

Gan Guoyang asked, "Is it that away teams aren't allowed to go, or that none of them are allowed to go?"

The waiter replied, "No one is allowed to go, not even the Celtics. It's Boston brown bear territory during the day."

Gan Guoyang then loosened his collar and said, "Thank you. In the future, when others ask you questions, you should answer them properly and be polite."

Gan Guoyang got a taste of Bostonians' arrogance, and he also gave the locals a taste of his "politeness."

This Hyatt hotel clearly hosts NBA teams year-round, and the Boston Garden has always had a rule that basketball teams are not allowed to conduct daytime warm-up training. Gan Guoyang was here for the first time and no one told him this. The waiter was bullying newcomers, but he didn't expect to run into a tough customer.

Although Gan Guoyang is a celebrity in the United States, known as a guarantee of basketball TV ratings, in Boston, no matter what basketball celebrity or world champion you are, arrogance shines like the sun.

Even the Boston Celtics, a home team, only receive enthusiastic support and respect from fans during games and when they win championships.

Off the court? During the ten years that the Celtics won eight consecutive championships, the attendance at the Garden was only about 50%, with an average attendance of only 7000 people per game out of a capacity of more than 14000.

Bill Russell, the team's absolute core player, is only a hero on the court. Off the court, he cannot eat in upscale restaurants, cannot stay in hotels that are not exclusively for black people, and his home was broken into and people defecated in his bed.

Things improved somewhat after Larry Bird arrived in the 80s, but the Celtics, like the visiting team, were unable to conduct daytime warm-up practices at Boston Garden during the regular season.

Because the arena is to be used by the NHL's Boston Bruins, the Celtics will only be able to warm up at Boston Garden, an old and run-down facility, during the playoffs in the mornings and afternoons before their games, after the Bruins are eliminated in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The NBA was initially created by a group of hockey team owners who felt it was a waste for the arenas to be empty during the offseason. They thought it would be better to organize basketball teams to play games, sell tickets, and make some money than to let the arenas sit idle and waste property and maintenance costs. That's how the NBA was born. The Celtics were one of the original teams, and their owner, Brown, was also the owner of the Bruins. Therefore, the Celtics were inherently at a disadvantage, no matter how many championships they won.

The venue that the Celtic and away teams are allowed to share is the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox College in Brookline, whose gymnasium is open in the morning and at noon, giving each team an hour to warm up.

Gan Guoyang jogged around the hotel for a while, then boarded the hotel-arranged bus with his teammates to head to the school.

According to the original plan, they should have arrived at 10:00 AM, trained for an hour until 11:00 AM, and then handed over to the Celtics for training.

They set off at 9:30, but after the driver took them in circles for over half an hour and still hadn't arrived, Ramsey yelled at the driver, "Do you think I've never been to Boston to play basketball before? Stop taking detours and take us to the stadium!"

The driver finally arrived at the training hall around 10:30, having spent nearly an hour on the road, leaving the team with only half an hour for warm-up.

Ramsey angrily said, "Boston fans love to pull these kinds of tricks, and this is still the regular season..."

Adelman said, "Fortunately, we only come here once a season."

Gan Guoyang said, "What if we come back in June?"

Ramsey said, "That'll show you what a real welcome is... Damn it, why is this door locked? Why isn't anyone opening it!"

When we arrived at the gymnasium, we found the gate locked and had to ask school staff to open it, wasting another ten minutes.

By this time, Gan Guoyang was furious. Kenny Karl patted Gan Guoyang on the shoulder, signaling him to calm down. This was standard procedure in Boston.

"When I played for the Cavaliers, every trip to Boston was a terrible experience, but you get used to it."

The stadium has standard NBA courts and a three-point line, very few stands, but a stage for stage plays.

The court has six basketball hoops, two made of tempered glass on each side and four made of wooden backboards on the sides, which reminded Gan Guoyang of the layout of some high school playgrounds in China.

The wooden backboard on the side looks a bit crooked, and Kenny Carr said it was probably bent by Robert Parish's dunk.

With only 20 minutes left for the Trail Blazers' practice, the players first stretched and warmed up, and then Ramsey held a short meeting to point out some key points for tonight's game.

Before 11 o'clock, when the clock on the wall pointed to 10:57, the stadium doors were suddenly kicked open, and the Celtics players entered the court.

Before they even went to the locker room to change, they threw the basketball at the basket while the Trail Blazers players were still on the court.

Ramsey shouted, "We're still in a meeting, can't you guys take the ball?"

Bird said, "It's almost 11 o'clock. This is our territory. How can we allow you to study how to deal with us here?"

The towering Kevin McHale changed into his jersey and walked onto the court, saying to the Trail Blazers players, "Stop studying it, it's useless, go back and rest."

At that moment, Angie took a long-range shot, but missed. The ball bounced out and almost hit Ramsey before falling in front of Gan Guoyang.

Gan Guoyang could no longer contain his anger. He stepped forward, grabbed the ball with one hand, took three steps at a time, rushed to the basket, jumped up with both feet, his body like a bow, full of power, and then slammed the ball into the basket!

The cracking sound startled everyone. Gan Guoyang smashed the tempered glass backboard to pieces, and glass shards fell to the ground like snowflakes, many of them landing on Gan Guoyang's head and in his hair.

After landing, he casually dusted himself off, shook his head, glanced at the clock, and said, "Time's up. Warm-up complete. Let's go."

The sound of shattering glass echoed through the stadium. After the crashing of the glass shards subsided, the stadium became as quiet as a morgue.

It wasn't until Bird spoke up, saying, "You broke this backboard, how are we supposed to train?"

Gan Guoyang said, "Didn't I leave you five yuan? One yuan for each starter isn't enough?"

Angie said, "You'll have to pay compensation."

Gan Guoyang took the tactical drawing pen from Ramsey, then took a basketball and signed his name on it.

He suddenly threw the ball at Angie, who almost got hit. He ducked and brushed his scalp to avoid it, breaking out in a cold sweat.

Gan Guoyang said, "The basketball signed by Forrest Gump is worth $1000. Hurry up and pick it up; that's enough to buy two basketball hoops."

After saying that, he led the Trail Blazers out of the stadium without looking back.

(End of this chapter)