The Golden Age of Basketball

For the Blazers, the Lakers are a mountain they have to face in the west, just as for Gan Guoyang, the Skyhook is the object he must surpass.

But the sky hook is getting old. Even though his hook is still unstoppable, Gan Guoyang can still gain a partial advantage by virtue of his youth and strength in the face of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is getting slower and slower and less good at confrontation.

The Lakers team is not old at all, especially their core players Magic Johnson and the younger James Worthy. The reasonable age structure of the Zijin Army allows them to smoothly pass through the old and new. His reign looks set to last another five years.

The Blazers had 2 wins and 3 losses against the Lakers in the regular season last season. Once they relied on Gan Guoyang's magical lore, and once they beat the Lakers in an insignificant game at the end of the season.

In the Western Conference Finals, the Trail Blazers' 1:4 score was enough to show that they were beaten without temper. The Lakers had an advantage over the Trail Blazers in almost every position, at least not falling behind.

After supplementing Maurice Lucas in this offseason, the Lakers still maintained a very strong competitiveness. Their only goal this season is to defend the title. Since the end of the Celtics dynasty in 1969, there has been no ball The team has successfully defended the NBA title.

Before the game between the two sides on November 11, both the Lakers and the Trail Blazers had only lost one game, with the same record and tied for No.14 in the Pacific.

Therefore, this game will be the battle for the top spot in the Pacific region, and both sides naturally attach great importance to it.

It goes without saying that Pat Riley of the Lakers prepared meticulously. For the Blazers, Ramsey did not spend too much energy on pre-game preparations. Everything about the Blazers was the same as usual, and there was nothing special because the opponent was the Lakers. plan.

After arriving in Los Angeles, Gan Guoyang wanted to exchange his views on the game with Ramsey several times, but in the end he decided to wait until the game was over.

The Blazers are currently in a state of distraction. Everyone will participate in the daily training and practice hard; everyone will do their best in the game every night to fight for victory.

But once the training and competition are over, everyone will do their own things as if they are off work, and come back to clock in early tomorrow morning to go to work, and the cycle will start again.

The team has no firm goals, no unified beliefs, and even each has its own little calculations. Everything is just covered up under the halo of winning.

Gan Guoyang instinctively felt that this situation was very dangerous. He could feel that the team was likely to fall into a predicament from which they could not extricate themselves due to a small twist. This can be clearly seen from Ramsey.

Without the careful preparation before the game, the command in the game became more and more templated. Even his roar on the sidelines was much less, and the Blazers' bench suddenly became much quieter.

The Pioneer, an aircraft in automatic cruising state, will definitely have an accident once it encounters a special situation.

But when the Blazers players once again stood on the floor of the Great Western Forum, all the trivialities off the court were still left behind by them, and defeating the powerful Lakers in front of them was their current top priority.

Before the start of the game, Gan Guoyang took the initiative to go to the sidelines of the audience to say hello to Jack Nicholson, the chief Lakers fan. The two had a lot of quarrels during the game last season.

In the first quarter of the game, the Lakers quickly took advantage of the field. They did not start from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar like other teams, but from Worthy, attacking the weakest point of the Blazers' defense.

Gan Guoyang's main task on the defensive end is to take care of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Facing the Lakers, he is no longer likely to make a large-scale defensive delay. Defending the sky hook consumes a lot of his energy.

The Magician's exquisite transfer of the ball makes the Blazers' new defensive system quite passive. It is difficult for the players to judge whether to pinch Worthy or Cooper in advance. Any mistakes in their defensive steps will be caught by the Magician. And then transformed into a goal for the Lakers.

This made Bellman's defensive strategy lose its effect. Without Gan Guoyang's large-scale delay, the players lost a clear pinch target, which made the "fake zone defense" Blazers more loopholes.

Soon, the Blazers switched back to the normal one-on-one defense after the timeout, and at the same time required the outside line to pinch Worthy. He had already scored eight points in 5 minutes, thus curbing the momentum of losing consecutive points.

In the first quarter, the Lakers took a 10-point lead.

In the second quarter, the Blazers, who regained their sense of offense, began to fight against the Lakers. The Blazers reduced their defensive intensity and began to speed up their offensive rhythm.

But the Lakers did not fight against the Blazers. They were good at rhythm control and knew that the Blazers were eager to chase points, so they lowered the tempo and started to play success rate, letting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar drive inside to put pressure on the Blazers.

Gan Guoyang completed the task very well. He did not let Kareem Abdul-Jabbar get what he wanted, effectively reducing the hit rate of the old sky hook, and at the same time gave a strong counterattack on the offensive end.

In this game, Gan Guoyang grabbed more offensive rebounds than other teammates combined. His second offense made the Lakers' defenses in vain several times.

At the end of the half, the Blazers narrowed the score gap to 5 points, leaving suspense for the second half.

In the third quarter, the two sides were still inseparable. The shooting percentages of both sides began to decline, and the role of the inside line became more and more prominent. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Gan Guoyang both started to score consecutive goals, and both sides also began to challenge these two centers who are proficient in hooks. To pinch.

The effect of the Lakers' flanking attack is quite good. Gan Guoyang's fear of flanking attack is still not resolved, and Cooper's flanking attack is really fierce.

The Trail Blazers' flanking effect is also very good. Because of Bellman's training, the Blazers' flanking always comes in time against the illegal defense. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's movements were originally a little slow, so he couldn't directly attack the basket.

The two teams tied in the third quarter and entered the fourth quarter with a 5-point gap.

In the middle of the fourth quarter, Magic Johnson began to score consecutive goals. Drexler defended the Magic for most of the court, and finally his physical strength couldn't keep up. You must know that he is still the main breakthrough player on the outside. .

The magician began to use his big butt to squeeze in against Drexler, made two foul free throws, and made a turnaround small throw, and the gap between the two sides widened to 9 points.

Then Gan Guoyang made another effort, with a block, an offensive rebound and a second attack, and a successful three-pointer, the gap between the two sides became 4 points again.

With 2 minutes left before the end of the game, the Lakers called a timeout.

"Shrink, don't give the Lakers two points easily, let them shoot long shots, we must fight back and recover the points as quickly as possible." Ramsey said during the timeout, he asked the players to shrink the defense, bet The Lakers missed an outside shot and counterattacked.

This strategy is still very risky, but once successful, it is true that the score can be recovered as soon as possible.

Gan Guoyang didn't agree with Ramsey's strategy. He felt that it was not impossible to defend one down solidly, and such a gambling defense was not Ramsey's characteristic. I don't know what he thought.

The timeout ended soon, and the two sides played again. With the fierce battle between the two sides, the Great Western Forum had reached a boiling point. Gan Guoyang could feel that the huge arena seemed to be completely filled by something.

"Kiki, pay a little attention to the outside line. Give me the inside line. I'm afraid the Lakers will shoot long shots." Gan Guoyang said to Vandeweghe.

"But Coach Ramsey asked to shrink." Vandeweghe looked at Gan Guoyang and said, Vandeweghe's defense is still very bad tonight, he has been scored 30 points by Worthy.

"Trust me, I can cover the inside line!"

Vandeweghe didn't speak, but he shook his head slightly, Gan Guoyang felt a little helpless.

The Lakers sent a sideline ball, Johnson received the ball in the middle, Maurice Lucas came out and made a pick-and-roll for the Magic, and the Magic got rid of Drexler's defense and cut directly into the three-second zone from the right.

Sampson decisively switched defenses and stuck close to the Magician, while Gan Guoyang was also paying attention to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, while preparing to go inside to help defend and block the Magician's route.

All the attention is on the magician, but the reason why the magician is a magician is that you never know when he will pass the ball and who he will pass the ball to.

The defender habitually stared at the magician's head, but the magician didn't need to use his eyes to pass the ball. He didn't even move his head. With a wave of his left arm, the ball passed to the wing at a 45-degree angle. Michael Cooper is ambushing outside the line!

At this time, Vandeweghe was still shrinking near the three-second zone on the left, he was too far away from Cooper!

Cooper made a three-pointer with no defense.

"Shua!" A three-pointer hit, the first three-pointer from both sides of the game, detonated the Great Western Forum.

This goal was quite fatal, and the point difference between the two sides suddenly became 7 points, and there was only more than a minute before the end of the game.

"Why don't you make up the defense! I'm on the inside, you should keep an eye on Cooper!" Seeing that the ball was about to break the Blazers' hope of winning, Gan Guoyang couldn't help himself and shouted at Vandeweghe.

"Take care of yourself." Vandeweghe, who usually has a good relationship with Gan Guoyang, turned cold and said to Gan Guoyang coldly.

After being hit in the heart by a three-pointer, Ramsey also called a timeout, but it didn't help. Although Valentine scored a goal in the subsequent attack, Magic Johnson also scored a three-pointer from the outside. The point difference became 8 points!

This is the case of the contest between strong teams. When confronted for most of the time, one attack and one defense at the critical moment can determine the success or failure of the game, and this critical moment is the time to test the abilities of coaches and players.

114:106, the Blazers lost the battle for the top spot in the Pacific region on the road and fell to No.2.