Chapter 640: Chapter 31: The Debate on Passing and Shooting
In the last two games of November, the Trail Blazers secured two more victories at home.
Throughout the entire month, they produced an impressive record of 14 wins and 1 loss, solidly occupying the first place in the League.
Gan Guoyang, with an average of 29.4 points, 13.7 rebounds, 6.2 assists, and 2.8 blocks per game, won the League’s Player of the Month award for November.
He was in competition with Ewing, who averaged 28 points and 10 rebounds with 2.1 blocks in November, guiding the Knicks to a pretty record of 9 wins and 5 losses.
But compared to Ah Gan and the Trail Blazers, they paled in comparison and had to settle for second place in the selection.
This season, the Trail Blazers had both a perfect start and a perfect November.
As December rolled around, the last December of the ’80s, the Trail Blazers’ performance usually fluctuated a bit in this month.
In December, the players’ physical condition was generally good, but as Christmas approached, a gradual slackening in mental focus often occurred.
The Trail Blazers concluded their sweet November home games and embarked on their first Eastern away game trip of the season.
This away game schedule would take them to the distant South Coast, to Florida, where they would start their journey under the scorching sun of the Caribbean Sea.
The Trail Blazers’ private jet took off in the early morning of December 1st, immediately after the players had finished their game against the Rockets, and by the night of the 2nd, they were due to land in Denver on the Colorado Plateau.
Their game against the Nuggets was a warm-up before the start of their Eastern trip, and this kind of back-to-back travel game was the most exhausting and wearisome for the players.
During normal flights, everyone would find time to play cards, chat, and discuss interesting recent news and events.
But tonight, everyone just wanted to sleep, seizing the time to rest and prepare for the upcoming away games.
Petrović didn’t sleep; he wrapped himself in a blanket, half-reclining in his seat, turned on the reading light, and was engrossed in a 300-set tactical manual that Coach Belman had given him.
He and Divac had divided it in half to study; Petrović had memorized his half and now was starting on the other half.
Basketball tactics are myriad but follow the same principles: five players on the court, passing, cutting, running, screening, shooting—the basic moves remained the same.
Different tactics mainly focused on different points, implementing different strategic ideas.
The core principle of the Trail Blazers’ half-court offense remained the strategy of "two less, one more": less fast-break, fewer passes, and more three-pointers.
Less fast-break didn’t mean no fast-break; the Trail Blazers were just more cautious in launching them, favoring set plays unless there was an excellent opportunity.
Less passing wasn’t asking for solo play, but demanding that passes be quick, precise, and ruthless, able to tear through the defense and mobilize the team.
Don’t endlessly pass back and forth on the outside; better to drive directly and not waste time with unnecessary ball-handling.
More three-pointers was self-explanatory, with teams increasingly relying on and decisively opting for three-point shots.
Combining these ideas with his in-game experience, Petrović could feel his adaptation to the NBA growing stronger.
Tonight, against the Rockets, Petrović scored a career-high 14 points, 3 rebounds, and 4 assists in 19 minutes off the bench—the best he’d played since entering the NBA.
Such stats in the European leagues would have been disappointing, worthy of criticism by the local media.
But in the NBA, they marked a small milestone for Petrović on his foreign journey, leaving him too excited to sleep. He continued studying the manual and murmuring the tactics to himself.
Divac, who was sleeping groggily beside him, was awakened by Petrović’s recitation and complained, "Pete, why don’t you sleep for a while? Are you still memorizing tactics? Goodness, I bet you weren’t even this serious in grade school."
Petrović replied, "Hey, quiz me, Vlade. Give me a tactical signal and I’ll describe the movement."
Divac shook his head and said, "Oh, don’t you really need to rest? Rest is as important as studying... Shui Zhong Three."
"Shui Zhong Three, the center holds the ball at a 45-degree angle, and after consecutive fake screens, the center drives down the middle, attacking the basket directly or passing to the two cutting wings."
"You’re right. Okay, let’s not make me quiz you anymore."
"Then let me quiz you."
"..."
Divac was left speechless by Petrović but couldn’t argue with him, so he was dragged into rehearsing tactics.
As they quizzed each other, they encountered some disagreements about the core strategic issues of the team’s tactics.
Divac believed that the core of the Trail Blazers’ system was passing, "Surgical-like passing is the key that distinguishes us from other teams. During training, Coach Beelman places great emphasis on the precision and strength of our passes, not allowing any soft or defensive backpasses. That’s the biggest difference between us and other teams; the coach forces us to make the best choices, the most imaginative ones."
Petrović had a different view. He thought the core of the system was shooting, "No, no, no, Vlade, the real core of Beelman’s system is shooting. Look at the tactics we’re memorizing: there is often an option for the ball handler to initiate an attack directly with a shot. And look at our lineup, everyone has mid to long-range shooting abilities, from the center to the guards, and so does our bench. We’re the team that values shooting the most in the league, and we even have a specialist shooting coach!"
Both men made sense from their own perspectives.
Every basketball team emphasizes shooting and passing, but the Trail Blazers do indeed place a particularly strong emphasis on these two basic skills.
As for which is valued more, Petrović and Divac have different views due to their different perspectives.
Petrović, as a ball-handler and shooter, of course thought shooting was more important.
And Divac, being a passing center, inevitably thought passing was more crucial.
Divac was planning to sleep, but he stayed awake the whole way due to the argument with Petrović.
Upon disembarking the plane, the two consulted the team’s most experienced player with the longest playing time, Mychal Thompson, asking him what the core of Coach Beelman’s tactical system was.
Thompson looked at them as if they were fools and said, "The core of Coach Beelman’s system is obviously Ah Gan."
Petrović responded, "We’re not talking about the key player; we’re discussing whether shooting or passing is more important."
Thompson snorted and said, "Ah Gan is the most important."
Seeing their confusion, Thompson whispered, "You should check Coach Beelman’s career record, see how he achieved success and won championships."
"And I’ll tell you this: on the basketball court, what ultimately decides the game is always the players, not tactics. Tactics are there to organize players, to enhance them, and ultimately to lead to players’ accomplishments. You have to understand this principle in the NBA."
For European players, fully grasping this would take some time.
However, during game number two against the Nuggets, Petrović and Divac soon gained a deeper understanding of this point.
Due to back-to-back games after a long flight, the entire Trail Blazers team was in poor shape, facing the high-powered Nuggets and trailing by as many as 18 points at halftime.
However, in the third quarter, Gan Guoyang single-handedly scored 22 points, erasing the 18-point deficit, bringing both teams into the fourth quarter evenly matched.
Every time he played the Nuggets, Gan Guoyang was unstoppable, largely because the Nuggets didn’t really try to stop him, leading to frequent high-scoring performances by Gan.
In the fourth quarter, Gan Guoyang scored another 20 points, 42 points in the half, and 57 points for the whole game, helping the Trail Blazers defeat the Nuggets on the road 142:138, with a 4-point advantage, securing three consecutive wins and getting off to a good start on their road trip.
Nuggets’ head coach Doug Moe just shook his head on the sideline, helpless.
Luckily for them, Ah Gan showed some mercy and didn’t take the final three-pointer; otherwise, he would have easily scored 60 points.
Thinking back, Doug Moe became the laughingstock of his coaching career when he said, "Even if you score 60 points, can you win?" only to have rookie Ah Gan explode for 60 points in the playoffs.
Now, Petrović and Divac understood Thompson’s words much more profoundly.
Still, Petrović had to say, "You see, shooting is more important, right? How else would Ah Gan score so many points?"
Divac: "..."
