At the Portland Trail Blazers, Gan Guoyang places great importance on the future of young players, striving for the championship without compromising the development of the team's young tier. Across the League, only he can achieve this.
At the 2000 draft, acting as a draft consultant for the Trail Blazers, Gan Guoyang left a small legacy for the team: he defied the crowd and refrained from selecting a big man as his so-called successor and instead chose backcourt player Michael Redd with the second-to-last pick in the first round.
Redd was not favored in the draft. Still, just as he had insisted on selecting Fenli initially and then advocated for trading Fenli to select Kobe, Gan Guoyang remained resolute.
And Larry Bird believed in Gan Guoyang's intuition and did not hesitate to pick Redd in the draft, to cultivate him as an excellent future wing backcourt player for the team.
After securing Redd, Gan Guoyang resigned from the Trail Blazers draft consultant position and also stepped down as chairman of the Players Union, devoting all his efforts to the training and development of the Chinese Men's Basketball Team.
The training was scheduled for morning, afternoon, and evening, fully packed, with tactical training in the morning, strength and confrontation training in the afternoon, and watching videos to learn tactics and study culture in the evening.
For the young players on the national team, the physical torment was bearable. After all, they started as athletes at a very young age, enduring years of physical hardening, so a bit of physical fatigue was nothing.
However, the evening tactical lessons and video learning were genuinely taxing as they required actual mental work, with a massive amount of FIBA-style tactical training forced upon them.
Gan Guoyang joined everyone in learning, as he, after years in the NBA, also needed to adapt to and understand FIBA rules.
One of the world's most challenging things is making sports students learn culture, even if that culture is basketball-related.
The person delivering the lectures was none other than Bobby Berman, the head coach of the Celtics—Berman is a dual-talented expert in both FIBA and NBA tactics.
Gan Guoyang offered Berman the condition that after the Olympics, he would go to Boston to guide Duncan in training, enhancing his overall capability.
Since Berman didn't need to coach this time's American men's basketball, he didn't mind returning to Portland to lend Gan Guoyang a hand.
Even though they had just opposed each other in the finals, once the series was over, they remained the best of mentor and student.
Berman's teaching was extremely rigorous. Even back in university, he forced Gan Guoyang, Stockton, and others to memorize tactics as part of their basic training.
The tactical systems and content memorized were numerous, starting at several hundred sets, embedding all basketball-related routines into their minds until they achieved deep comprehension.
"Basketball tactics are a kind of universal language in the basketball world. Only by mastering this language can everyone communicate smoothly and ignite brilliant sparks of thought. If you can't grasp this basic language and only understand the technical aspects, it's akin to being a primary schooler who can only speak a few words or someone who can speak but not write. Thus, your future progress will undoubtedly be minimal."
Off the court, Berman was a gambler; on the court, Berman was a strict academic. He described tactics as language, demanding that every national team member learn from the basics.
This gave everyone a headache. Even the coaches, including Jiang Xingquan, had to learn alongside them. Berman spoke English, and despite there being a translator, the learning process was still quite painful.
The training camp lasted a month. For the players, the tactical lessons on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights were the most excruciating moments.
Berman knew many tactics and plenty of swear words too, with the translator often unsure how to translate due to the richness of idiomatic expressions and vocabulary.
One evening after class, Berman stormed out of the classroom to find a place to smoke; it was evident he wasn't too satisfied with the teaching results.
"Sonny, I can't believe how you led them into the Olympic finals back then, losing only by such a small margin! Honestly, I have indeed far underestimated you."
Gan Guoyang smiled and replied, "Because we were united. You know, in basketball, especially in pivotal single-game situations, tactics are not the most important."
"That's only true if you have players like you! Without superstars, tactics are decisive, especially within FIBA's structure where the time is short and pace fast, amplifying the impact of those details infinitely. To tell you the truth, the foundational skills of Chinese players are great, and strength is no longer a shortcoming. But... I didn't expect their tactical literacy would be so... so mismatched. I initially thought Hu's deficiencies in some aspects were a matter of ability, but it turns out it wasn't. It was because he didn't receive the most regular and quality basketball training in the early stages, particularly regarding tactical habits."
In front of Gan Guoyang, Berman was still tactful, refraining from being too harsh.
He mentioned Hu Weidong since Berman had coached Hu Weidong for years, from the Lakers to the Celtics.
In the regular season, Berman had indeed given Hu Weidong quite a few opportunities, some of which Hu grasped.
But some opportunities eluded Hu Weidong; he could not push further.
However, at the training center, attending classes alongside Hu Weidong's teammates and coaches, Berman realized that Hu Weidong was already the best there.
In tactic memorization, application, and understanding, apart from Gan Guoyang, Hu Weidong was the best, followed by Wang Zhizhi.