The Golden Age of Basketball

()(This chapter has a heroine. I can only ask for a collection, at least don't drop it!) <At the turn of summer, summer is about to come to North America.

In Los Angeles, which has a Mediterranean climate, summer will be the driest and hottest time of the year here.However, the sea breeze blowing from the Pacific Ocean delayed the invasion of the heat wave, and the temperature in the City of Angels was pleasant at this time.

The most attractive thing about this beautiful city is Hollywood, which is located in the northwest suburb of Los Angeles, the center of the world's film industry and the capital of entertainment.

However, in Los Angeles on May 5st, the most attractive thing is not Hollywood in the northwest, but the Los Angeles Great Western Forum Arena in the Inglewood area in the southwest corner.

At this time, it was still after 8 o'clock in the morning, and the weekend sunshine had awakened the citizens of Los Angeles. At the ticket office next to the team-store in the Great Western Forum, a long line had already formed since the early morning of yesterday.

Because the nba finals will be moved to Los Angeles tomorrow, at that time, fans in Los Angeles will watch the game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers at the Great Western Forum Arena.

In the previous 1981 playoffs, as the defending champions, they were eliminated by the Houston Rockets in the first round. Now is their chance to prove themselves again.

Standing in front of them is another 80-year-old rival, the Philadelphia 76ers.

Therefore, the fans in Los Angeles are also enthusiastic, hoping to witness the team win the championship for the second time in three years at home.

"I need tickets for three chapters, East Stand, um, the middle seats are fine...Huh? No more? It doesn't matter if it's a little further back...Okay, that's all."

Among the long queue, an extremely tall figure attracted everyone's attention.

"Wow, this guy should be 6'10, the same height as Moses Malone."

"Forget about Moses Malone, you know I hate that guy the most, like I hate the Celtics."

"The Celtics have been eliminated by the 76ers, and we are leading 2:0. I don't think the 76ers will have any chance."

"Yeah, I have a friend who is from Philadelphia, and we're about to break up now..."

The tall man strode out of the queue after buying the ticket.

"Wow, that guy turned out to be a yellow man? It's rare to see such a tall yellow skin."

The tall man who bought the ticket was Gan Guoyang.

Yesterday, he came to Los Angeles together with Gan Guohui and Chen Xing, preparing to watch this year's finals live.

Apart from watching the competition, Gan Guohui and Chen Xing also had to go to the universities they applied to submit materials.

With the help of his mother, Gan Guohui applied to the University of Southern California, while Chen Xing applied to California State University Los Angeles, a public school with cheaper tuition.

Therefore, Gan Guoyang was entrusted with the task of queuing up to buy tickets at the Great Western Forum Arena.

Because he is equivalent to China's special sports enrollment, the admission procedures are different from ordinary college students, so he is the only one who is free and queues up early in the morning.

However, Gan Guoyang still underestimated the enthusiasm of the Los Angeles people for the finals. When he arrived at the arena at six o'clock, there was already a long queue at the ticket office.

After queuing for nearly two hours, Gan Guoyang finally bought three seats which were not bad, at least he didn't have to sit behind the basket.

During the queue, he became the center of attention, his height and complexion were too eye-catching.

People around him kept chatting up with him, asking him where he came from, where he was going, and whether he liked basketball, which made Gan Guoyang fully appreciate the friendliness of the people of Los Angeles.

After buying the ticket, Gan Guoyang didn't go back to the hotel directly. In this pleasant weather, he wanted to take a walk around the area. Anyway, the other two guys were busy with other things.

To the north of the Great Western Forum is Faith Cemetery Park in Los Angeles, and to the west is Main Street in Inglewood.

"Inglewood? Inglewood? Why do I remember that someone lives here?" Gan Guoyang thought of the name of Inglewood, and felt a little vague memory, as if someone he knew was live here.

In fact, the person Gan Guoyang knew who lived in Inglewood was Paul Pierce.

After the last encounter at the Binhai Stadium, Pierce moved his family to Inglewood, and Gan Guoyang also lost the opportunity to practice with this future star.

Now he racked his brains to figure out who lived in Inglewood, but couldn't remember.

At this time, the TV screen in a store next to the street caught Gan Guoyang's attention, and it stopped him from thinking hard about who lived in Inglewood.

Gan Guoyang remembers that in the TV movies of later generations, if the story was about the United States in the 80s, there would often be large glass floor-to-ceiling windows on the side of the street, inside which were either furs, coats, jewelry, or a stack of TV sets. There the news or sports are played.

Now, in a store that Gan Guoyang passed by, there was a stack of TV sets, and news about the finals was being broadcast on the TV sets.

In the previous two games, the away game Lakers stole a victory in Philadelphia for the first time, and returned to Los Angeles with a total score of 1:1, gaining home court advantage.

Gan Guoyang looked at the 18-inch color TV in the window. The picture played was somewhat rough, but he was also attracted by the wonderful game highlights.

What surprised Gan Guoyang even more was that the channels broadcasted by these TVs turned out to be from Taiwan, because he had already seen that the advertisements played after the episode ended were Taiwan advertisements.

Gan Guoyang hasn't seen a Chinese face on TV for a long time—except for the occasional passerby who appears in the news.

"Is this electrical appliance store run by a Chinese?" Gan Guoyang was a little curious. He looked up, and sure enough, the signboard was in both English and Chinese, and it said Zhengmin Electric.

Gan Guoyang looked down at the TV again, and found that there was a sports advertisement on the TV, which was from Adidas.

The heroine of the ad is a fourteen or fifteen-year-old basketball player with shattered hair around her ears, bright eyes and bright teeth, and her snow-white skin cannot be concealed by an old-fashioned TV set with rough picture quality. < and vitality.

Gan Guoyang looked at the heroine of this ad, no matter how he looked at it, he felt familiar.

"What happened today? Why do you always feel familiar?" Gan Guoyang's mind was full of question marks. He felt that something was wrong today. When he saw and thought of something, he always felt impressed, but he couldn't remember it.

At the end of the commercial, a frontal close-up of the heroine was given. The astonishing temperament rushed towards the face of the screen, and the sense of familiarity once again hit Gan Guoyang's mind.

"Ah! I see, this is..." Gan Guoyang finally remembered who it was.

"Hey! What are you doing standing in front of my shop? You don't come in to buy anything!" At this moment, a clear, loud and somewhat angry voice rang in Gan Guoyang's ears.

"Wang Zuxian!" Gan Guoyang finally remembered who the face on the TV was, and he also heard the voice from the side, and turned his head to look over.

"Who is Wang Zuxian? What do you want to do standing in front of my shop, you tall man? Haven't you watched enough TV?"

The one who spoke was a tall girl in a light yellow T-shirt, denim shorts, and a peaked cap.

She dragged a pair of flip-flops on her feet, and stood in front of the glass window with her hips crossed, her eyes wide open, her mouth pouted, and she asked Gan Guoyang.

"Uh... this..." Gan Guoyang suddenly felt a little baffled. He could look wherever he wanted on the street without affecting the business of the store.

Besides, aren't the big glass windows in electrical stores just for people to visit?

He took another look at the brutal girl who suddenly appeared, only to realize that the girl seemed to be of mixed race.

Although she couldn't see her specific appearance clearly because of the peaked cap and the backlight, she could roughly see her curvaceous face and slender and graceful neck, which were dazzling white in the sun.

And her nose and mouth are small and delicate, not the same as those of western white people, but not as flat as some yellow people.

The light yellow T-shirt on the upper body is obviously several sizes too big, like a cover, but there are still two faint marks on the chest.

The shorts on the lower body seem a bit out of date in the current season, but there is no doubt that those two long white legs are enough to make the summer sun wish to come earlier.

"Hey, what are you looking at!" The girl seemed to have noticed something, and a blush appeared on her cheeks and ears.

"Aren't you cold dressed like this?" Gan Guoyang asked abruptly.

The girl's face became even redder, and her hands on her hips clenched into fists, as if she was about to rush forward and hit someone.

"Fuxi, what are you doing?" At this moment, another person came out of the electrical appliance store, a middle-aged man wearing a blue plaid shirt, and he was yellow-skinned.

"He's always standing here at the window, refusing to leave to watch TV!" The girl turned around and said angrily.

Looking at the girl's tall and beautiful back, Gan Guoyang was taken aback for another moment, and didn't know what to say for a while.

"Don't mess around, you have to worry about people standing in front of the window watching TV, and why did you run out wearing these shorts? Go back!" the middle-aged man said sternly, he should be the elder of this girl, It seems that I can't understand girls wearing such short pants.

"Hmph~" The girl snorted and went in without looking back.

Gan Guoyang saw that her neck seemed to be even more red.

"I'm sorry sir, it's my daughter who troubled you." The middle-aged man apologized politely to Gan Guoyang.

"...Oh...it's okay...Uh, are you Chinese?" Gan Guoyang asked in Chinese at this time, he thought the middle-aged man should be Chinese.

"Yes, I'm Chinese, but I'm from Taiwan." The middle-aged man immediately smiled and replied in Chinese, although he spoke with a strong Hokkien accent.

Gan Guoyang, who has lived in Chinatown for a long time, has long been familiar with this Hong Kong-Taiwan Hokkien dialect that has become popular in mainland China.

"Hi, I'm from Jiangsu, a mainlander."

"Really? Is your ancestral home in Jiangsu?" The middle-aged man suddenly became a little excited when he heard that Gan Guoyang was from Jiangsu.

"Yes, but the family has moved several times, and my father said that my hometown is in the Huai'an area." Gan Guoyang said.

In foreign countries, the first thing Chinese people talk about when they meet each other is where their hometown is. In this distant America, apart from skin color, the hometown on the other side can make people feel more cordial.

"So you are from Huai'an! Huai'an is good, Huai'an is good~" After hearing Gan Guoyang's words, the middle-aged man's eyes wandered and blurred, as if thinking of something old.

Gan Guoyang stood there blankly, but didn't know what to say. At this moment, he glanced and found a pair of eyes looking at him in the window. When he turned his head, the figure disappeared immediately.

"It seems to be that girl..." Gan Guoyang thought as he looked at the light yellow back.

"Oh, I'm so sorry for wasting your time. If you need it in the future, you can come to my store. There are discounts for Chinese here." The middle-aged man seemed to be freed from his contemplation, and asked Gan Guoyang again sorry.

Gan Guoyang also bid farewell to the middle-aged man, and left feeling his head. Regarding this inexplicable "turmoil", he was the second monk who couldn't figure it out.

But that pungent but beautiful girl left a deep impression in his heart.

"Fuxi? What a strange name... I don't know what his last name is... He seems to be quite tall, about 6 feet..."

Gan Guoyang turned and walked north while thinking.

Walking on the bustling streets of Los Angeles, Gan Guoyang thought of many, many things, the girl just now, his hometown, the story of "Gan Guoyang", the story of "future", and April 4 April Fool's Day, the Cal Secondary High School Finals in Los Angeles and the heartbreaking last minute.

Before he knew it, Gan Guoyang went back to the vicinity of the Great Western Forum Arena and walked to the Faith Cemetery Park to the north of the arena.

Compared with the hustle and bustle of the streets outside, this place is much quieter, and many people have rested in this park.

Gan Guoyang walked on the winding path in the park, feeling the quietness of this resting place, his thoughts became clearer, and all kinds of things in his mind bubbled out like boiling water.

The memory of the two lives made him sometimes have to suppress his emotions and thoughts, and he was afraid that such entanglement and mixing would one day make him crazy.

Slowly, he has walked through the cemetery park and arrived at a bus platform on the north side of the park, where he is going to take the bus back to the hotel.

He sat on the bench waiting for the bus, and beside him sat a middle-aged man in a beige shirt and brown suit pants.

"Hi, hello." Gan Guoyang suddenly greeted the people next to him.

The suit pants next to him looked at him, but did not agree, because Gan Guoyang, who was already 6 feet 10 tall, looked a little scary.

"Do you want to hear my story?" Gan Guoyang said again.

The suit trousers glanced at him, but still did not respond, but moved to the side, as if a little scared.

"I come from China, an ancient country on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. When I was young, my heart was not very good. I heard people say that a person with a bad heart must have been a good person in his previous life, because he dedicated his heart to others." Gan Guoyang didn't care about the young man's performance, and started talking on his own.

Today's Gan Guoyang is very abnormal. He is not a talkative person who likes to chat and fart. Most of his saliva is sprayed on the basketball court.

But now, he has a strong desire to communicate with others, it seems that he wants to relieve the pressure caused by the messy memories in his mind, or vent the pain that the finals brought him.

He began to babble about his own story, but whether it was Gan Guoyang's story or the later Dang Lei's story, he couldn't figure it out, or he had completely mixed the two.

And the suit pants sitting next to him were slowly attracted by Gan Guoyang's story. For this reason, he missed the first bus, then the second bus, and the third bus...

"And then we lost that game and a lot of people rushed out into the arena and I felt like I was walking out in the middle of nowhere, and that feeling... it sucked."

"And then?" The suit pants had already entered Gan Guoyang's story, and began to ask about the following plot.

"Then, I graduated, I went to the graduation party, and then I went to Los Angeles again, and I'm here to tell you a story. This is the end of my story, thank you, I really troubled you, cost you so much A lot of time."

"Oh no, I think hearing your story will be one of the best memories in my life, you told it... really good, great."

"The bus I'm waiting for is here. I've missed several buses. I'm leaving." Gan Guoyang looked at the bus at the stop and said hastily that he had to go back now. It was already noon.

The suit pants looked at this strange tall man, wearing a pair of Nike running shoes, and hurriedly bent over and lowered his head to get on the bus.

"Hey, what's your name?" Suit Pants suddenly remembered that he didn't know the guy's name yet.

"My name is A-Gump!" Gan Guoyang stretched out the car window and said loudly, and then the car started.

In 1994, when the movie "Forrest Gump" won several Oscars, his director said: "My inspiration comes from a long story meeting, just like the one in the movie, which is the life of my life." One of the deepest memories, I heard the most honest story of a man. Oh, and his shoes."

The suit pants were Robert Zemeckis, the director of "Forrest Gump", who was only a small screenwriter in Hollywood at that time, and the pair of Nike running shoes worn by Gan Guoyang were also called "Forrest Gump Shoes" in the future.

It's just that Gan Guoyang's troubles are not less because of this.

(ps: Paul Pierce actually moved to Inglewood when he was in junior high school, and it has been tampered with here.)