The American Basketball Academy is situated in the mountains, surrounded by forests and lakes, with fresh air and beautiful environment, making it an ideal place for enclosed training.
To better prepare for the Olympics, the center provides excellent accommodation and dining conditions for the national team, with everyone staying in wooden cottages.
Each cottage has two floors, and is equipped with a living room, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen with all necessary utensils.
Players who are not accustomed to the center's meals can purchase their own ingredients and cook in the kitchen of the cottage, making their own food.
Each cottage can house three people; Gan Guoyang stays with his good friends, Charles Barkley and Sabonis. During the enclosed training period, Gan Guoyang cooks for Barkley, Sabonis, and also Curry, Porter, and Mu Lin next door every day.
This was one of the conditions agreed upon by the veteran players who volunteered to help the Chinese National Team as sparring partners, with Ah Gan having to cook personally.
Thus, during this period of enclosed training, Gan Guoyang had to cook meals for his old teammates every night.
Just like Klemenza, acting as the boss while also cooking for the young brothers, otherwise, who would do things for you?
Barkley, every day the first thing he does upon waking up is not to go for a warm-up run, but to think about what to eat at night and make a menu for Gan Guoyang.
For the retired veterans of the Trail Blazers, it was half sparring, half vacation, living quite a pleasant life.
But for the players of the Chinese National Team, the picturesque and well-equipped training center quickly became a torturous hell.
At first, the players referred to it as "Western Karon Lake," comparing it with the Karon Lake training base in Jilin.
However, in just three days, the national team players, especially the young ones, privately complained that this Western Karon Lake was far more terrifying than the Chinese Karon Lake.
In China, the training schedule and intensity were all arranged by Coach Jiang Xingquan. As an old-school coach, he strictly executed the "three obediences and one big," ensuring the players had excellent physical fitness and basic skills.
Upon arriving in America, the training program was jointly discussed and formulated by the Chinese coaching staff and their American counterparts, with Gan Guoyang's opinion playing a decisive role.
Gan Guoyang did not deliberately increase the training volume and intensity. Based on his years of experience, he knew that unnecessarily ramping up intensity before a major competition was not good for maintaining the players' condition.
Instead, moderate-to-low intensity training was more positively beneficial for enhancing competitive state.
However, Gan Guoyang demanded that the training include a large amount of tactical confrontation training and cultural learning.
On the first day of the scrimmage, Gan Guoyang realized that the current Chinese players' basic skills and physical fitness were no longer weaknesses, and their shooting was even outstanding, ranking among the best in the world.
This resulted from the standard set by Gan Guoyang in 1992, laying a benchmark for basketball development in China. Now, domestic basketball training places great emphasis on strength and confrontation, and basic skills are very solid.
On the Asian stage, the Chinese Men's Basketball Team defeated other teams with ease, securing an Olympic berth without any suspense.
However, the Chinese Women's Basketball Team regressed, losing to Korea and missing the only spot in Asia to advance to the Sydney Olympics.
After solving the issues of physical fitness, strength, and basic skills, the Chinese Men's Basketball Team wants to go further and must achieve greater improvement in the "software."
In the first day of opposing training, Gan Guoyang discovered a major problem with the China Team: excessive reliance on the inside line.
Due to the presence of Gan Guoyang, along with the rise of Wang Zhizhi, Bartel, Yao Ming, and other members of the "Great Wall of China," building a team around the inside line was a very normal choice.
On the Asian stage, China Team's formidable inside height was a dimensional reduction strike against other countries, with players like Yao Ming, Wang Zhizhi playing a war inside. It's like leading 15-0 even before the game starts.
However, Gan Guoyang, as the greatest center in history, was the best not only because he was a center.
Gan Guoyang clearly understood that the trend of basketball is the ambiguity of positions and the versatility of players.
This will not change due to the sudden emergence of a particular player; it may at most be delayed, because basketball is ultimately a team sport.
Gan Guoyang achieved such remarkable success in the NBA not only due to his strength, but also because he always followed the trends and development patterns of the sport.
For China Team to stack all tactical focus on the inside line, relying on a burst of talent from a few players, along with the size advantage against other countries, can indeed quickly achieve good results in the short term.
However, Gan Guoyang will retire, Yao Ming, Wang Zhizhi will retire too; in the future, the advantages of big interior players will diminish, and the trend towards larger outside players and more versatile inside players will become more apparent.
The Chinese team hasn't fully grasped this trend. If another excellent result is achieved in this Olympics, the thought of "heavily relying on the inside line" will become even more ingrained.
Gan Guoyang not only considers the performance in this competition to create history but also aims to have long-term foresight, contributing and guiding future basketball development.
This is Gan Guoyang's way of conducting himself, and he will never deplete current and future resources for short-term glory, without considering the development of those who come after.