The Golden Age of Basketball

Chapter 93 Reasons
On the second day at the training camp, everyone got up very early.

After breakfast, we went together to Indiana University's old gymnasium—a multi-purpose sports venue that resembles an airplane hangar.

Indiana University staff used tape to mark out three full courts and three half courts on the ground. The court surface was covered with green plaid material, freshly painted green, and the color seeped into shoes when you stepped on it.

Because there were so many people training, they were divided into many groups, each guided by a different coach.

Bob Knight erected a metal scaffold in the very center of the field, and he stood atop the scaffold to overlook the entire field, observing the performance of each group and each player during training.

He looks like a construction foreman.

The chairs on the sidelines were filled with reporters from major newspapers across the United States, who would provide full coverage of the entire training camp.

The training was naturally very arduous, with three training sessions a day, morning, noon, and evening, each lasting two hours.

The first training session in the morning was divided into groups based on position: center, guard, and forward. The training consisted of basic but high-intensity exercises.

After lunch, we started training in the afternoon, including drills with guards and forwards, guards and centers, and a lot of offensive and defensive tactics, pick-and-roll drills, and fast break drills.

The intensity and training volume remained high, with the coach's whistle blowing incessantly, giving no one a chance to catch their breath.

The players followed the coach's instructions, focusing on completing the movements without much opportunity for communication.

After dinner, there will be another training session. This training will be a very comprehensive one, involving three-on-three and five-on-five sparring.

The pace of the game is very fast. The coach will constantly give tactical instructions, requiring the players to strictly follow the instructions and then immediately switch between offense and defense.

This group of people are all basketball elites from universities. They are familiar with all kinds of training and tactics, so they can all devote themselves to it very well.

The training intensity was truly astonishing. Over three days, 73 people participated in nine such exercises, each of which left most of them exhausted, their clothes completely soaked, as if they had been pulled out of the water.

After the third day of training, some players couldn't take it anymore and shouted in the locker room, "Give me a knife, let me get rid of this pain!"

After the first week of training, more than 20 people were eliminated by Bob Knight, a group whose physical fitness and energy levels were not up to Knight's standards.

Among them are many excellent players, such as Danny Manning, who was selected right after graduating from high school and hadn't even gone to college yet.

He is very talented, but he is too young to withstand such high-intensity training. Besides, he is just here to experience it, and he will not be selected for the Olympic national team.

After cutting some players, the following week saw similar training sessions, but with fewer players, more individual basic skills training was added to continue the rigorous evaluation of the players.

This round eliminated more than a dozen people, leaving 37 in the end. These people are the elite of the elite.

Gan Guoyang naturally stayed. He thrived in the two weeks of intensive training and enjoyed training every day.

He is one of only two people who can still have the energy to go to the gym for strength training after a day of practice—the other being Michael Jordan.

Both of them had amazing energy and physical fitness, and they were both so competitive that neither wanted to leave the gym first.

In the end, the two of them were practically sleeping in the gym with their blankets, so the coach had to come over and kick them out, forbidding them from continuing to train.

Overall, however, Gan Guoyang has the better physical fitness because he started strength training very early, in high school and continued throughout college, and his body was already used to this intensity.

Jordan hadn't started doing a lot of strength training yet; strength training wasn't popular or very scientific back then. His competition with Gan Guoyang resulted in him training too intensely one day, making it difficult for him to even walk the next day, let alone train, causing him to miss a day of practice.

Gan Guoyang acted as if nothing had happened, toying with Ewing in one-on-one matches—Ewing couldn't beat Gan Guoyang in one-on-one duels at all, with a very low success rate, which surprised Knight and other coaches.

In the coaching staff's view, Ewing is already the best young center in the United States, but he seems to be a level below Gan Guoyang.

Firstly, Ewing injured his knee in college and was wearing a thick knee brace, which made his starting and turning movements somewhat slow and sluggish. Given that his strength was already inferior to Gan Guoyang's, without speed and explosiveness, how could he fight one-on-one?

Secondly, Ewing had some psychological trauma from facing Gan Guoyang, making him somewhat hesitant and timid, which inevitably led to a less than impressive performance.

After the selection process ended in the first two weeks, the training team gave the remaining players a three-day break. Those who needed to go back to school or handle other matters could leave, while the rest of the players rested in Bloomington.

On his day off, Bob Knight found Gan Guoyang, who was doing strength training at the gym, and wanted to talk to him about the players.

In the past two weeks, Gan Guoyang has made full use of his role. First of all, as the number one sparring partner, he is like the rabbit leading the way in a long-distance race. Since he does not need to participate in the competition and his ranking is not recorded, he just runs wildly in front and speeds up everyone.

Gan Guoyang is really a good rabbit. With him around, the intensity of the training camp has probably increased by 20%.

He never complains of being tired, he's always full of energy, and when he gets into the swing of things, he'll point fingers at you and make you grit your teeth and compete with him, which really increases the intensity.

Secondly, after each day's training session, Knight would talk to Gan Guoyang about his feelings towards the players.

Coaches observe from the sidelines, while players directly confront the opponents, giving them a deeper understanding and more detailed knowledge.

Gan Guoyang was able to analyze and explain the characteristics and problems of each player to Knight every day, and he could also point out some problems in their training.

Gan Guoyang would even say at times that the coaching team's training was outdated and old-fashioned, and not very scientific in some aspects.

Knight initially scoffed at Gan Guoyang's words, thinking, "What do you, a student, know?"
However, during the subsequent coaching staff meeting, as everyone discussed the matter, some people raised similar ideas and suggestions, and Knight gradually realized that Gan Guoyang was right.

During the two weeks of training, Knight never lost his temper with Gan Guoyang once, because Gan's performance in training was quite perfect. Gan carried out all of the coach's intentions perfectly, which perfectly suited Knight's desire for control, making him feel comfortable and unable to get angry.

But Knight soon realized that Gan Guoyang's obedience did not mean he agreed with you. On the contrary, he was just too lazy to pay attention to you and did not want to waste his breath on you. Anyway, it would not take much effort for me to do things your way.

For example, Gan Guoyang has his own ideas about shooting training. During training, he plays according to your method, and after training, he adds another method. According to Newell, this kid's shooting is quite accurate, especially his long-range shooting.

In short, Gan Guoyang gave Knight a strange feeling that was difficult to describe accurately.

At the gym, Knight asked Gan Guoyang, "Gan, who do you think will be the core leader of the team out of the remaining thirty-odd players?"

Gan Guoyang said without hesitation, "Of course it's me. Can't you tell?"

"You're just a sparring partner, you don't count!"

"That's Michael, without a doubt."

"Why? Give me a reason."

"Because only Michael dared to compete with me, that's the reason."

(End of this chapter)