The All-Star Game provided everyone a chance to rest and adjust.
Star players gathered and performed in Golden State, while regular players and coaches could relax a bit.
The busiest were the management teams, the team managers, making adjustments based on the first half of the season before the trade deadline.
The forces rising in the Western Conference formed quite a complex situation. The Los Angeles Lakers were at the top of the standings, but the Trail Blazers, Jazz, King, Supersonics, and other teams were close behind.
The overall strength of the Western Conference teams was in an explosive period; everyone wanted to seize the Western Conference championship crown in the post-Gan Guoyang era, a throne long occupied by the Trail Blazers.
In contrast, the Eastern Conference was typically a dominant force with many strong teams, with the Boston Celtics standing out alone, and currently, there was no one threatening the Celtics’ position.
The Knicks, Pacers, and Heat were very strong, but overall, compared with the Celtics and many strong Western Conference teams, they could not yet match them.
The regular season matchup records showed that the leading teams in the Western Conference had a clear advantage over Eastern Conference teams, and the pattern of the Western Conference getting stronger while the Eastern Conference grew weaker was gradually taking shape.
There were many reasons behind this. For a long time, the league’s pattern was Eastern strong, Western weak, with only the Lakers and Trail Blazers as top-tier teams in the West.
While in the East, there were countless championship-caliber teams like the Celtics, 76ers, Bucks, Pistons, Bulls, etc. From the start of the NBA, Eastern Conference teams had always been superior to the Western teams.
This was certainly closely related to economic levels. Early NBA Eastern Conference teams were based in East Coast core cities like New York, Boston, Washington, and later, cities like Chicago and Detroit were also central industrial and trade cities in the Middle East. Economic prosperity is the foundation of flourishing sports culture.
Thorough economic development brought higher quality and many basketball talents, with some Eastern teams being founding teams of the NBA. The history of the NBA was synonymous with the development history of America.
First were the thirteen Eastern states, then the westward movement, expanding from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Some early teams initially belonged to the Western Conference, and later, as the NBA continued to expand westward, they were reassigned to the Eastern Conference.
So today, the Western Conference teams are collectively younger than those in the Eastern Conference; the accumulated experience and foundation are naturally not as deep as the Eastern teams, so it’s normal that overall strength is weaker than the East.
But as time progressed, by the year 2000, youth became an advantage, accumulation became a burden, and the foundation became a load, the Western Conference teams’ complete overtake of Eastern teams reached a critical point.
The younger Western Conference teams were more open and modern in team building, more flexible and diverse in important draft work—the Western teams were far superior to Eastern teams in nurturing and utilizing international players.
Of course, a more important reason was still the economic factor. The Eastern cities’ economies were slowly declining, while the new economy forces represented by the Internet began rising from the mid-80s, most of which were concentrated in Western cities.
San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, Portland, and Phoenix were vibrant new growth cities filled with economic dynamism.
In contrast, old industrial cities like Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, which were once prosperous, were gradually becoming the Rust Belt.
Numerous jobs disappeared, middle-class people moved out of the cities toward the Western regions where there were more job opportunities, and the hollowing-out was gradually eroding the Middle East, which also weakened teams’ ability to attract talent.
This process started in the ’70s and ’80s, and after decades of change, by the eve of the 21st century, the trend had formed, and decline was inevitable.
"Old aristocratic" cities like New York and Boston were still fine, but the central region around Lake Michigan, which had been the heart of American industry, was really not having a good time.
Gan Guoyang and his teammates got off the plane, and the first feeling when they arrived at the baggage claim at Cleveland Airport was "how the hell is this place so old," not much different from when Gan Guoyang came to Cleveland for an away game in 1984, just even more worn.
Cleveland, this city, when the Middle Eastern region was economically prosperous, did not enjoy any sports or cultural bonus, instead became a joke in All-America.
When the central region began to decline, the losses were not spared, like being unable to attract any big-name free agents during the offseason, or failing to gain favor in the league, not securing any high draft picks.
Since Lenny Wilkens left the Knight, the team fell into a slump, with no apparent hope of revival.
Danny Ferry proved to be nowhere near the next Larry Bird, and everything the Knight invested in him became ultimately meaningless.
The entire team didn’t have a single impressive player, and the team’s attendance dropped to rock bottom, with sparse spectators in the stands, not many coming to watch the games.
Gan Guoyang still remembers playing in Cleveland in the 80s, at the submarine-like Field Arena. Inside, it was as empty as a church and as desolate outside as farmland.
Back then, George Karl was the head coach of the Knight, and the Knight was a lousy team, the Trail Blazers came to Cleveland just like going to the countryside for a vacation.
Before the evening game, there wasn’t much serious preparation needed; victory was easily achieved, and afterwards, the veterans could go out for a good time drinking and having fun.
More than ten years later, Field Arena was replaced by the more modern Gund Arena, the venue was at least in the downtown area and hosted the 50th anniversary All-Star celebration in 1997.