Chapter 840: Chapter 37 Li Gui
As the Gulf War came to an end, the clock of 1991 ticked into March.
At the beginning of March, on the I-210 freeway in Los Angeles, California, a trivial incident occurred.
A black man named Rodney King was stopped by the police for drunk driving and was about to be penalized.
Drunk driving, in a country like America that runs on wheels, happens every day, and this is not the Prohibition era.
Generally speaking, the police would arrest the driver, take him to the station for a few days, administer punishment and education, confiscate the driver’s license, and that would be the end of it — standard procedure.
But in the Los Angeles area, where racial discrimination was resurging, white police officers beat the black man Rodney King, leaving him with a battered face.
In fact, this wasn’t a big deal either. Although America had gone through nearly 30 years of the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, and racial environment seemed to have become equal and much milder on the surface, the discrimination in secret continued to exist, and with the economic development, the wealth gap widened, with a surge in the ’90s.
Let alone white police officers beating a black drunk driver, the number of black drivers shot to death by white police officers each year was countless.
Even NBA stars like Charles Barkley had conflicts with the police, and they carry guns in their cars just in case.
So, Rodney King being beaten by the police wasn’t a big deal and it might not even make the news.
However, the problem arose when an ordinary citizen named George Holliday happened to witness this group beating from his home balcony and recorded the process with a home video camera.
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Afterward, this ordinary citizen handed the videotape over to a local television station. With the TV station’s report and subsequent media coverage, the issue began to ferment.
However, at the beginning of March 1991, when the incident just happened and came to light, people didn’t realize that it would have such a huge impact and cause such a great disturbance in the future.
Gan Guoyang saw the news in his room at the Marriott Peak Ski Resort in Salt Lake City and didn’t take it to heart because he was talking on the phone with John Stockton while watching TV.
Trail Blazers recently started a series of away games, one of which was against the Utah Jazz.
The two had agreed to have dinner together tonight, but the Blazers’ charter plane had to circle above Salt Lake City for two extra hours due to weather, causing them to miss their opportunity to meet.
The season was heading towards the end. For the Trail Blazers, the schedule became more challenging towards the end: more away games and stronger opponents.
Therefore, it was slightly more difficult for the Trail Blazers to keep the top spot in the Western Conference or even the League this year than last year.
The team recently faced some injury issues as well, with Reggie Lewis’s back pain worsening, and the team doctor suspecting it might be related to the heart.
Therefore, Lewis didn’t make the roster tonight. Playing in a Highland City like Salt Lake City would add extra strain to his heart.
Compared to Lewis, John Stockton has a healthy, active big heart. This is Stockton’s seventh season, just like Ah Gan.
So far, Stockton has missed only four games, all during the 1989-1990 season because of some minor injuries.
In seven seasons, he had five full-attendance seasons, and so far this season, without any absences. If nothing unexpected happens, it will be another full-attendance season.
In this respect, Stockton, just like Guoyang, seems to be someone hard to injure.
The two were talking about Gonzaga University on the phone, where the situation wasn’t very good this year.
Since Bobby Beelman’s "betrayal," Dan Fitzgerald had returned to his coaching position, and this year they had a regular-season record of only 14 wins and 14 losses.
The root cause was still the inability to recruit good, fitting players; Gonzaga didn’t have much attraction for All-America talented players.
"I think it’s necessary to donate another large basketball fund to the school so they have enough money to recruit outstanding students," said Guoyang on the phone with Stockton. He had been donating to the school every year, and the school used the money to support the team, providing basketball scholarships to players.
But looking at it now, the effect doesn’t seem to be very good; Guoyang thought it was time to increase the funding, as NCAA basketball talents’ asking prices were getting higher and higher.
"It’s not about money, Sonny, it’s about the school’s enrollment policy; we’re too strict about academic performance, faith, character, and... skin color," Stockton said.
Stockton grew up in Spo, so he understood Gonzaga University better and knew where the school’s problems lay.
As a Catholic-background school, Gonzaga naturally wasn’t friendly to many street basketball players, where most players were white.
And the current situation in America’s basketball circles was the dominance of black players; white talents like Larry Bird with dominating power had disappeared from NCAA and NBA.
Nowadays, the talented white players all came from Eastern Europe. The star players produced by the native white Americans were becoming fewer and fewer.
As for an Asian talent like Gan Guoyang, they were one in a million, with no second one to be found.
Under such circumstances, not only does Gonzaga University restrict based on skin color, but it also restricts academic performance, unwilling to accept those with poor grades — how many of those black basketball players have good grades?
