The Golden Age of Basketball

Chapter 290 People from Different Camps
Mark Pree patted Manute Ball on the shoulder and said, “No need to apologize. It’s nothing to be ashamed of being beaten by this guy. Also, I told you, you should say ‘my fault,’ not ‘my bad.’”

Boll sat on the bench, his eyes fixed on the field, watching Gan Guoyang continue to jump around on the field.

Boll's physical condition and offensive and defensive abilities can only support him for about 20 minutes; he can't keep up for longer.

After all, he started playing basketball quite late and mastered the basic basketball skills in a very short time.

Even more rusty than his basketball skills was his English. Although Pre had corrected his grammar before, Bol would still say "my bad" when he didn't play well.

Because "bad" is much easier to pronounce than "fault" or "mistake".

Surprisingly, at first everyone laughed at his grammatical error or tried to correct him.

But as he persisted in saying it, the phrase "my bad" gradually gained acceptance and quickly became popular.

Many years later, the expression "my bad" became a valid grammatical expression and was included in the dictionary.

Of course, Bol was certainly not the first person to say "my bad," and it is said that he heard it from other players as well.

However, other players did not have the same influence and attention as Bol. When "my bad" spread through him, people gradually began to accept this street slang.

Replacing Manute Bol with Bulls center Tom McMillan, while the Trail Blazers brought in Bill Walton.

In the late 60s, Tom McMillan was a slender and handsome young man, and he and Bill Walton were considered equals in the national high school basketball scene.

Back then, McMillan averaged 47.7 points per game with a 76% field goal percentage. Upon graduating from high school, he became a hot commodity among universities across the United States, with dozens of prestigious schools such as North Carolina and UCLA extending offers to him.

In 1970, he beat Bill Walton to the top of Sports Illustrated’s cover with the headline “Best High School Player in America.”

McMillan's father hoped that he would become an excellent dentist, so all schools with poor medical programs were eliminated, and he finally chose the University of Maryland, which has a strong medical program.

UCLA recruited Bill Walton, who proved to be even more outstanding and successful in college basketball, becoming one of the most dominant centers in American college basketball.

McMillan was equally outstanding in college, but his performance in the NBA was mediocre. His only advantage over Walton was his physical health and high attendance rate.

Time flies, and more than a decade has passed. Both of them have entered the twilight of their careers. McMillan has gone from a handsome young man to a white-haired man, and Walton has become a red-haired old monster.

Neither of them are stars on the field anymore, but rather supporting characters on the bench, though their rivalry has not stopped.

Walton grabbed the rebound under the basket and scored on the putback, and McMillan then hit an elegant left-handed hook shot from 12 feet on the left side.

In terms of the authenticity of the hook shot, McMillan is more standard than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Abdul-Jabbar's move of raising the ball high and hooking it out with his wrist is an anomaly among hook shots.

The earliest and most standard hook shot is the one that goes out in a big arc from the waist, like McMillan's.

After scoring, Walton taunted McMillan, "Your movements are still so sissy!"

McMillan shook his head and said, "Bill, you're back in Portland now, how can you still be so naive? Are you still going on about your anti-war stance? How can the people of Portland tolerate you?"

The two players were battling for position under the basket. Gan Guoyang, positioned at power forward, faced Barkley and took a mid-range shot, but missed.

Walton failed to grab the offensive rebound this time, and McMillan secured the ball, allowing the Bullets to launch a counterattack.

Charles Barkley took the lead, driving the length of the court to the basket and drawing a foul from Gan Guoyang.

After McMillan entered the game, the Bullets increased their offensive and defensive speed and finally regained some advantage.

Although Barkley was at a disadvantage when facing Gan Guoyang, he was not incapable of fighting back thanks to his brute strength and explosive power.

While Barkley was shooting free throws, Walton and McMillan were still arguing. Walton said, "I'm not being childish, it's because I truly love this country and its people. Unlike you, who wants to be a parasite on this country."

McMillan scoffed, "I think you're suffering from Stockholm syndrome, or maybe the whole of Portland is Stockholm syndrome, that they can tolerate you like this."

"Didn't you go back to Maryland too?"

"I did it for my ideals."

“Me too.” Both McMillan and Walton are active political activists, but they are from completely different camps.

McMillan was a staunch supporter of Reagan. As early as 1983, after being traded from the Hawks to the Bullets, McMillan had already planned to enter politics and run for Congress.

However, he felt the time was not right, so he decided to continue spending time on the court and wait for the election in 1986, which is this year. If the chances are good, he plans to retire and enter politics.

He has already set up his own campaign office, and last season, when Luland was largely absent, he stepped in and won Player of the Week once. He joked that "it disrupted my campaign plans."

McMillan had also invested in many companies early on, including wireless communications companies and BP paging services, as well as a dedicated investment firm. He had already joined the ranks of capitalists and was moving toward becoming a capitalist with political power.

Wharton was different. He was not only an anti-war activist, but also opposed American hegemony and capitalist exploitation, white supremacy, and even the US government.

During his college years, he was arrested by the authorities for opposing the Vietnam War and Nixon, which is considered the least controversial and least serious charge in his career.

In 1974, Patty Herbert, the daughter of American newspaper tycoon Herbert Group, was kidnapped by the radical organization SAL. Two months later, after announcing her break with the Herbert family, the heiress officially joined the SAL organization and participated in a series of criminal activities, including bank robberies, with other members of the organization.

This was later identified as a typical case of "Stockholm Syndrome," and at the time it became a major topic of great interest to people all over the United States.

Later, the SAL organization was wiped out by the Los Angeles Police Department, all its members were killed, and Patty Herbert was rescued.

Because she severed ties with her family and was involved in a crime, Patty was prosecuted. At this point, a social activist named Jack Scott stepped forward to help her.

The Scotts and his wife were good friends with Bill Walton, and when Walton played in Portland, the couple lived in the big house that Portlanders built for him.

Because Scott helped Herbert, many people suspected that remnants of SAL were hiding in Walton's house, which forced Larry Weinberg and the Trail Blazers management to come forward and clarify, causing quite a bit of trouble.

Walton often attended press conferences with the Scotts, expressing their views on current affairs and the authorities, some of which were extremely sharp and intense.

For example, he believes that those behind the US government assassinated President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and that they overthrew and established regimes, waged wars, and supported interest groups in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Central America. This is an act of evil and chaos.

He criticized American moral standards, saying that the poor and the rich have different standards. Poor people who steal because they are bankrupt go to jail in Attica, while people like Nixon who stole the country can live a life of luxury on the white sands of San Clemente.

Together with Jack Scott, he targeted the American sports world, believing it to be the most conservative and narrow-minded part of society, a quasi-militaristic world. He supported athletes fighting for their own interests, arguing that many athletes gave up the fight due to suppression by leagues, owners, and the media.

Wharton wrote an open letter to the nation expressing these views. At the end of the letter, he reminded the public with Marxist theory: As workers, we must never forget our position. It is our skills that create goods and services, and no one can stop us from doing what we love and what we are good at.

However, almost 10 years have passed since then, and apart from their memories and some old magazines and videos, it seems that not much trace has been left. American society has changed a lot, and Reagan and his supporters are almost unshakable.

Two people from different camps from the previous era continue to argue about certain viewpoints while playing basketball on the court.

However, no matter how much the two argued, it was all just verbal sparring; their physical actions remained clean, and they didn't get angry.

Charles Barkley asked Gan Guoyang, "Gan, what are they arguing about? I can't understand them."

Gan Guoyang said, "Of course you don't understand, all you know is eating hamburgers... the rebounds are mine!"

Gan Guoyang grabbed another rebound, and the Trail Blazers launched a counterattack, their last offensive possession of the first half.

Gan Guoyang dribbled the ball across half-court and executed a one-two pass with Bill Walton.

Walton precisely slapped the ball into Gan Guoyang's hands, and Gan Guoyang caught the ball and scored with a left-handed layup!

With 29 points in the first half, Gan Guoyang's performance tonight was astonishing, leading the Trail Blazers to a 68-58 lead over the Bullets by 10 points.

However, the referee's whistle suddenly blew sharply, and some chaos broke out on the sidelines.

Gan Guoyang looked over and saw that Coach Ramsey and Gene Shu were about to start fighting!
He rushed to the sidelines and, together with Adelman, pulled the old man away.

The old man's face was now completely red as he began to curse at Gene-Shu.

Gene Shu was also swearing, and the two were clearly arguing heatedly on the sidelines.

Gan Guoyang shouted, "Stop hitting the coach! The money in the bucket is mine now, it's no use you hitting him now, calm down, calm down!"

(End of this chapter)