"The most intimidating thing about Ah Gan was that the higher the intensity of the game, the more challenging the situation, and the stronger the opponent, the more excited he became, and the better he performed. This was the intrinsic factor that drove him to constantly reach new heights; he reveled in those intense competitions, as he was born for the basketball battlefield."
————Published in 2004, "Dr. Jack's Leadership Lessons Learned From A Lifetime In Basketball," by Jack Ramsay, excerpt.
Gan Guoyang's three-pointer on the counter-attack extended the Trail Blazers' lead.
Gan Guoyang knew that against the Lakers, dragging them into a positional warfare quagmire was extremely difficult.
Unlike the Celtics, the Lakers had two stable low-post scoring options in Jabbar and Worthy during positional plays.
At the same time, Magic Johnson was at his peak; there was simply no way to hold back the Lakers. The only hope of winning the series was to engage the Lakers in a shootout.