[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-golden-age-of-basketball":3,"chapter-the-golden-age-of-basketball-the-golden-age-of-basketball-chapter-730":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","The Golden Age of Basketball",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1444297,1896,"Chapter 730 - 82 Hungry Tiger_6","the-golden-age-of-basketball-chapter-730",730,"\u003Cp>Indeed, win or lose, this will be the final game of the season held at The Palace of Auburn Hills, and the Pistons didn’t want to go down like this.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Daley still insisted on having Dennis Rodman defend Gan Guoyang, but Rodman had a mental breakdown, covering his face with his hands and sitting on the bench without moving an inch.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Bill Lambier stepped forward and slapped Rodman’s face forcefully, saying, \"Snap out of it! Even if we’re going to die, we’ll die standing! Get up!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Rodman ultimately returned to the court with a glum face, as Lambier suggested that he would take on Ah Gan in the fourth quarter; Rodman was done for, Melvin Turpin needed to attack.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Daley had no choice but to agree, Lambier’s willpower was indeed without question; he was the only one on the Pistons’ court who dared to directly challenge Ah Gan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But having Lambier defend Ah Gan was undoubtedly a disaster; Gan Guoyang was not afraid of the big white center at all, especially since Lambier couldn’t resort to dirty tricks anymore.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the fourth quarter began, when Gan Guoyang saw Lambier come to guard him, without Rodman’s entanglements, he kept catching the ball in the corner, going one-on-one against Lambier.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Mid-range jump shot, hit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Mid-range jump shot, hit again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fake move, baseline breakthrough, slam dunk!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Double-teamed, passed the ball to the basket, Sabonis dunked!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not only did the Pistons fail to catch up, the score difference was getting even larger.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Without the brutal, rough defensive moves, without the threat of ending the opponent’s career, the Pistons’ defensive deterrence dropped a notch.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Daley called a desperate timeout, Rodman had a rude awakening, saying, \"Let me guard Ah Gan!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Daley shook his head, Lambier slapped Rodman on the back, saying, \"Too late kid! Save it for the next game! You cowards can’t win the game!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lambier’s curse was not just directed at Rodman but also at Rick Mahorn—they had both been made afraid by Ah Gan, didn’t dare to make a move, and had no idea how to defend anymore.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Pistons’ morale plummeted further, and some of the home fans began to leave the venue in dribs and drabs. It was at this moment that some began to realize that the savage era of Detroit was coming to an end.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the final moments of the game, Dennis Rodman sat on the bench, covering his face and crying.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>By then, Ah Gan had already scored 50 points, and this hungry tiger was finally satiated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>[The Texas State Fair was held in Dallas, about 5 miles away from the Oak Cliff slums where I grew up.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>None of the kids I got along with had enough money to enter the fair, but we still managed to get in every year.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A sewer line could take you to the fairgrounds, and we started our journey by crawling into it at the entrance in the slums.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This pipe was legendary, like an urban myth among the children of Oak Cliff, and every kid who grew up there had been through this passage to the fair.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I started taking this route with my friends when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most parts of the sewer were quite spacious but extremely stinky. There was about a foot deep of sludge, so we had to navigate around it, and the darkness inside was downright scary.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>We’d bring flashlights so we could avoid the sewage and properly identify the trail markers set up by people years before.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thinking back on these old times, I just shake my head.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Walking 5 miles through the sewers to the fair? Must’ve been insane.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Other kids rode in their parents’ cars; they also had enough money for rides or to buy cotton candy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>We had to pinch our noses, dodge the foul dog waste, and navigate by the light of our flashlights.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Dallas was in the throes of summer, hotter than hell, and some parts of the sewer were so narrow that we had to crawl through, sewage up to our nostrils.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The darkness within the pipes was like the black of night, if not for flashlights, we couldn’t see our own heads or faces.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>We made our way through the sewer to the center of the fairgrounds, where a manhole cover blocked the exit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I’m truly amazed how the first guy who went down the sewer discovered this exit; he’s really something.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Imagine the look on people’s faces as we climbed up the ladder, pushing up the manhole cover.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>We popped our heads out like groundhogs, squinting in the sunlight. No one bothered us; perhaps they thought if someone could make it from that place, they deserved a bit of fun.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This is what we had to do for the sake of fun.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Whenever I think about it, I’m doubly appreciative of the ease and comfort of my current life.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I like to describe my life as a black hole with a sliver of light, and I’m striving towards that light, much like how we relied on that faint light to reach the fair back then.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That sliver of light kept moving forward, presenting us with new challenges.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Everyone has to find their own sewer to navigate through, and mine was particularly tough.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before I reached the right destination, I went through many sewers and faced many setbacks.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The most terrifying one was the 1990 Finals, when I lost a tooth and Ah Gan scored 50 points on me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At that moment, I felt as though I had come out of the sewer manhole not to a fair, but to a slaughterhouse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ah Gan stood in front of me with a bloody cleaver and that damned smile on his face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Damn.]\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>————1999, Excerpt from Dennis Rodman’s autobiography \"Bad As I Wanna Be\".\u003C\u002Fp>",972,"2026-06-06T01:41:37.192Z",1,"novelbin.me","3c45dd9c671a5f9490776055d1d18f50aef9cfd4e036a8c25b35333549cdefda","the-golden-age-of-basketball-chapter-731","the-golden-age-of-basketball-chapter-729",2033,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-golden-age-of-basketball-cover.jpg"]