The Golden Age of Basketball

Chapter 373 Most Eastern Conference Finals

In February 1985, I packed all my belongings into eight cardboard boxes, preparing to return to Taiwan to develop my career.

The night before my luggage was to be shipped to the port, my graduation film, "The Boundary," won Best Picture and Best Director at the New York University Film Festival. That very night, William Morris, an agent from one of the three major talent agencies in the United States, offered to sign me on the spot, saying that I had great potential in the United States and that I should stay and give it a try.

At the time, his wife, Huijia, was pursuing her doctorate at the University of Illinois, with their child, Ah Mao (Li Han), who was less than a year old. She was six months away from receiving her degree.

I thought: the children are still young, and my wife hasn't gotten her degree yet, so it's good that we stay in the US for a while longer to spend time with them and try our luck.

My agent was very supportive of me at the time: "You'll have no problem in the US. If anyone thinks there's a problem because you're Chinese, that's their problem."

I was so captivated by their flattery that I felt it was real, and of course it came true later, but who knew it would happen at the time?

Huijia graduated in January 1986, and the three of us settled in New York.

Holding my youngest son, Ah Mao, I, a new father, am still engrossed in writing scripts and finding a way out.

In January 1986, after graduating, Huijia found a job and moved from Illinois to live in the suburbs of New York. For the first six months, she was really miserable and didn't want to live anymore. But later she seemed to have come to terms with it, realizing that as long as things were going well at home, that was enough.

That same year, I co-wrote a screenplay with Joel Ross called "Not Superstition" and started trying my luck in Hollywood, visiting more than thirty companies in two weeks.

They all read my book, "The Dividing Line," and then kept praising it, which made me feel full of hope.

Someone suggested that a certain part of the script needed to be revised, so we went back two months later, and it needed to be revised again. This went on and on, without any payment.

If someone likes the first draft of these scripts, they'll ask you to rewrite them, going through revisions again and again. This process can drag on for a year or two, either ending without a trace or continuing to develop. The budget ranges from six hundred thousand to seven million US dollars. This is what the US calls the "planning hell."

It is said that on average, a script takes five years to go from the first draft to the start of filming, and that is only for the one in ten million scripts that are successfully filmed.

During that period, every now and then someone would say, "I think my graduation project is great, let's talk about how to collaborate!"
Because the agent will make a lot of copies of the graduation thesis and send them to various companies to promote it.

And so, one plan fails, another comes along, and there are always several underway. So the old man never gives up, and he's like someone suspended in mid-air, but in the end, none of them can land on solid ground.

The film made no progress. Instead, in December 1986, I saw a job posting in a magazine for a co-director for NBA star Forrest Gump's shoe commercial.

Forrest Gump was a source of pride for Chinese Americans in the 80s. He won the NBA championship in 1986, as well as previous college and high school championships, and was a source of pride for the Chinese people.

When I was in New York, I would save a month's worth of food money to buy a ticket to Madison Square Garden just to see him play a game. He is an undisputed superstar who has had a great influence on many people.

I don't know much about shooting commercials, but I figured if someone can make movies, they can definitely make commercials too. I read an interview with Forrest Gump in a magazine, so I sent him a resume and a script.

I didn't have high hopes, but to my surprise, after Christmas, Weden Kennedy Company sent me an email saying they had hired me and asked me to go to Portland to discuss cooperation.

I felt it was amazing at the time. It was an unexpected success. After I went there, I learned that Spike Lee from New York had also been selected. He was already quite well-known in the directing circle at that time.

I was very nervous, wondering if I was not qualified and if the plan would fall through, but everything went very smoothly, from signing the contract and reviewing the script to starting filming and completing the project.

The episode I was responsible for was about Forrest Gump and his father. I had read in a magazine that Forrest Gump and his father had a very good relationship, so the script focused on the father-son relationship, telling the story of the father-son relationship issues between traditional Chinese people, the contradiction of two generations having a gap yet loving each other.

Forrest Gump is a very charismatic person. He is very young, and when I met him, I felt conquered, as if I were being bathed in the sun.

You can't resist his brilliance and popularity, you're completely powerless against him, and at that moment I knew exactly what the advertisement was about to film.

The focus isn't on the sneakers, but on Forrest Gump himself. Just like movies and novels, advertising aims to create the life, world, and characters that people aspire to.

Later, the advertisement was filmed to depict a story from Forrest Gump's high school days, where his father didn't understand his basketball playing but still gave him a new pair of basketball shoes, which were Avia.

Wearing these shoes, he was able to compete against Jordan on the court, which is an emotional connotation that Chinese people can particularly understand—of course, the first half of the story is another story, about Jordan wearing Air Jordans to compete against Forrest Gump.

Later, I shot some commercials to support myself for several years after graduation when I had no work or projects, until 1990 when I got the opportunity to shoot "Pushing Hands" and officially began my film directing career.

I am very grateful for the experience of shooting this advertisement, which gave me the confidence to continue and a lot of motivation.

Whedon-Kennedy's creative director, Rieswald, later told me that you were able to become a co-director so smoothly because Forrest Gump gave you the green light all the way. He said, "This director is very good, so he's the one."

I am very grateful to him.

—Excerpt from Ang Lee's biography "A Decade of Film Dreams," edited by Zhang Liangbei and published in 2013.

Because he beat Jordan at bowling, Gan Guoyang played cards with him that night. He lost $5,000 to Jordan to appease the guy's fragile competitive spirit. However, Gan Guoyang discovered that Jordan had a serious gambling addiction, betting extravagantly at the card table and seemingly willing to gamble on anything.

Although Jordan is not short of money, with his playing salary, shoe contracts, and countless commercial endorsements, Gan Guoyang still reminded Jordan: "Being addicted to gambling will bring you trouble. Be careful that the gap between you and me on the court keeps widening."

Jordan replied, "You don't know anything, Forrest Gump. You don't know anything."

Gan Guoyang truly didn't understand, and Jordan knew it all too well. As Gan Guoyang won the championship, his anxiety and unease grew stronger.

He needs to release these emotions at the casino in order to live, train, and compete normally, and continue to move forward with Gan Guoyang as his goal.

In fact, he had another path he could take: to hate Gan Guoyang, just as he hated Isaiah Thomas, to treat Gan Guoyang as a despicable enemy, to defeat him, and to kill him.

But Jordan couldn't do it. His simple values ​​about friendship made it impossible for him to easily abandon their friendship. Even though Nike kept urging him from behind, he was unwilling to change his mind.

On December 25th, the Christmas Day match will take place at 12 PM.

American Airlines arranged a special flight for the Chicago Bulls so they could board the plane back to Chicago at 7 p.m. and reunite with their families.

Because Jordan was sidelined with an injury the previous season, there was no anticipated "Jan vs. Jordan" matchup throughout the 1985-1986 season.

Therefore, tonight's game is attracting extraordinary attention and has been broadcast live across the United States, which is equivalent to the American Christmas party.

Before the game began, the Portland Symphony Orchestra played the American national anthem as a prelude to this Christmas Day game.

As the players from both sides took to the field, Gan Guoyang and Jordan shook hands. From that moment on, they were no longer friends, but their greatest enemies.

Compared to the Portland Trail Blazers, whose roster remains stable, the Chicago Bulls have undergone significant changes.

The head coach position was changed from Stan Albek to Doug Collins, who is the third head coach Jerry Krause has used in his two years in office.

Collins was a professional NBA player who spent eight years of his career with the Philadelphia 76ers. In 1977, he and his team reached the NBA Finals but lost to the Portland Trail Blazers.

Before becoming head coach, Collins worked as a guest commentator on CBS, chatting with the hosts and broadcasting NBA games live.

Born in 1951, he was four years younger than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. While Abdul-Jabbar was still playing on the court, he was already in a suit and tie, directing games from the coaching bench.

Therefore, Collins has been questioned by many people, and the Bulls' management is considered to be in a state of chaos, having changed coaches 9 times in 10 seasons.

In the season opener against the New York Knicks, Collins, making his first appearance as head coach, was so nervous that he was shaking on the sidelines.

However, Michael Jordan comforted him, saying, "Don't worry, coach, we'll win. I'll score 50 points."

Then Jordan scored 50 points in that game, defeating the Knicks, and Collins won his first career victory.

From here on, Collins demonstrated many of the qualities of an excellent coach: he was charismatic, inspiring, and, as a former player, he could understand the players' emotions.

Regarding the player roster, star forward Ulrich, who previously partnered with Jordan, was signed by the New Jersey Nets. According to the rules at the time, the Nets had to compensate the Bulls.

The Nets gave the Bulls three draft picks in 1988 and 1989.

Jerry Krause also traded away Oldham and Sidney Green, acquiring several draft picks and role players like Earl Clayton who averaged single-digit points per game.

Before the start of the new season, the Chicago Bulls had only one player besides Jordan who averaged more than 10 points per game last season—Gene Banks, who averaged 10.6 points per game in the 1985-1986 season.

This terrible lineup both infuriated Jordan and greatly fueled his desire to win.

Instead of arguing with Jerry Krause and having him trade his accumulated first-round draft picks for star players, he used his insane scoring performances to help the team win in the new season.

From this perspective, Jordan's situation is much more difficult than Gan Guoyang's; this year, he only has two truly trustworthy players around him:
One of them is a second-year rookie, the young Charles Oakley.

The other is Jim Paxson's younger brother, 26-year-old guard John Paxson, who averaged 5 points and 3 assists per game last season.

With such a terrible roster, even Gan Guoyang lamented, "Michael, if I were to lead this team, I could only get to the Eastern Conference Finals at best."

(End of this chapter)