Chapter 811: Chapter 27 Emperor_2
Within the Trail Blazers, the players privately call Gan Guoyang "The Emperor" because Ah Gan is more serious, restrained, and subtly controls the entire team.
Ah Gan’s control over the Trail Blazers is much stronger than Jordan’s control over the Bulls.
However, to most people, Jordan seems more hot-tempered and more of a control freak than Ah Gan.
Most of the Trail Blazers players, like Porter, Kossie, Cliff Robinson, and Sabonis, who have been with the team and Ah Gan since entering the League, are used to it and lack comparison.
Reggie Lewis is different; he spent his formative years with the Celtics, playing as a substitute for Bird, stepped up when Bird was injured, and had to struggle at an unfamiliar shooting guard position when Bird returned.
For tactical positioning and salary, he fought a lot, with the team leader, with management, and between the fans, understanding how the Celtics and Bird controlled and managed the team, and also how to break free from control and fight for his own rights.
After joining the Trail Blazers, within half a season, he felt a strong contrast.
Here, you have no room to struggle; Ah Gan controls everything. He is a god here.
From fans to players, from media to management, everyone top to bottom are his fervent followers.
Ah Gan does not like others praising him, neither overtly nor covertly; he prefers you to play diligently and do your job well.
He regulates the atmosphere of the entire team in his own way to maintain a state that is neither overly fanatical nor too lax.
"Victory is the best offering."
Ah Gan sometimes says this, especially after winning some tough games.
After defeating his former team, Boston Celtics, Reggie Lewis’s performance kept getting better.
From the court to life, everything became smoother for him.
After being traded to the Trail Blazers in the summer, he quickly signed a big contract.
This allowed him not to rent an apartment anymore, but to spend money to buy a comfortable, high-end house in Portland.
He and his girlfriend Donna ended their many years of cohabitation and had a brief wedding in Las Vegas before the new season in October, officially becoming husband and wife.
One disadvantage of moving to the West Coast is the distance from his relatives and circle of friends; he was born in Baltimore and studied at Boston Northeast University, with all his social contacts on the East Coast.
However, a benefit is also the distance; as a wealthy black player, he would have numerous problems, particularly with poor relatives and friends, as many players financially support more than just themselves but a whole group of people.
After arriving in Portland and securing a big contract, such kinds of troubles became less for Reggie Lewis, although the "entanglements" from his parents were ultimately unavoidable.
During the wedding, Reggie Lewis did not invite his own mother Peggy; the couple just called her after the wedding to inform her that they were married.
Not receiving an invitation to her son’s wedding made Peggy very unhappy. Reggie Lewis was the third child she had given birth to, and traditionally, these children do not have a stable father.
Peggy’s health is not very good; she has congenital heart disease and cannot undertake strenuous work. In 1968, when she gave birth to her fourth child, John, he had a small hole in his heart, which was later repaired through surgery.
Later, Peggy became addicted to cocaine, which worsened her heart problem. Before Christmas in December 1990, she had a heart attack.
In late January, when Lewis’s team traveled to the East Coast for an away game, he and his wife visited Peggy and found that her condition was poor, she had lost weight, her mood was unstable, and she had accrued a lot of debt.
Reggie helped his mother pay off her debts and then persuaded her to go to rehab and start a new life; it would be best for her to leave Baltimore and live with him in Portland.
But Peggy did not want to leave the East Coast, so Lewis and his wife Donna arranged a rehab center for her in New York, with Lewis bearing the costs.
That evening, the Trail Blazers faced the New York Knicks away, and Ah Gan had a major battle with Patrick Ewing at Madison Square Garden Arena.
The game was quite tough for the Trail Blazers, partly because their outside shooters were having an off night and they had to rely on Gan Guoyang and Sabonis inside to keep them in the game.
Another important factor was that the former Trail Blazers player, Cheche Vandeweghe had an explosive performance; facing defensive stalwarts Kossie and Lewis, Vandeweghe hit multiple shots from the outside, striking at his former team.
Vandeweghe was traded to New York in the 1990 season, a season plagued by injuries for him, only playing in 22 games and averaging 11 points.
This season, Vandeweghe recovered from his injuries, and so far, his attendance has been quite high, and his offense and shooting have returned to a high level, making him the leading outside scoring threat for the Knicks.
The confidence boost from winning three championships is immeasurable; in this game, Vandeweghe went wild against his old team, knowing he wouldn’t challenge Ah Gan, and kept taking one-on-one shots from the outside.
While Kossie, as a power forward, had struggles with wraparound defense, Bobby Beelman decided to have Reggie Lewis defend Vandeweghe, which on paper should have been effective.
But tonight, Lewis was distracted by his mother’s situation, his focus wasn’t concentrated, resulting in ineffective defense and some inexplicable mistakes.
