Karl Malone was a mama’s boy, something Gan Guoyang had learned at the Indiana Olympic training camp. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Although they didn’t share a room, Malone was said to call his mother every day after training, and chat endlessly on the phone.

After arriving in Salt Lake City, this habit not only didn’t diminish, but intensified because he knew he wouldn’t be able to go home for a while, and could only stay on the Utah plateau and endure endless plane travel.

Furthermore, in Utah, you could walk the streets and not encounter a single black person. Malone remembered the first black person he met was a contractor, with whom he immediately struck up a long conversation.

To alleviate his homesickness, Malone’s mother would send him food from home every week—Louisiana’s collard greens, watermelons, and fried catfish fillets.

These were hard to come by in Salt Lake City, especially watermelons, which always reminded Malone of his mischievous youth: shooting out windows with a BB gun, destroying neighbors’ watermelon patches, then zooming through their yards on his motorcycle.

Boys are often mischievous not only because they are naughty, but also in part to show off their masculinity, and Karl Malone was the latter.

He was a crybaby as a child, always bullied by his older siblings, so as he grew up, he was particularly keen on doing adventurous and manly things to make himself seem less sissy.

Upon graduating from high school and entering college, he could only go to the local Louisiana Tech due to his insufficient grades, a school that was not known for its men’s basketball but women’s basketball—they were a top team in women’s NCAA in the ’80s, winning two national championships.

At that time, people would ridicule the men’s basketball team at Louisiana Tech, saying they couldn’t even beat the women’s team, and that Karl Malone couldn’t compare to the women’s team forward Deborah Rodman, the best female rebounder in the school’s history.

Deborah Rodman had a brother named Dennis Rodman.

Perhaps to prove he was stronger than Deborah Rodman, Malone wanted to go to her hometown of Dallas during the draft, but in the end, the Mavericks didn’t take him.

In the 1985 NCAA national tournament, Malone led his team to the Sweet Sixteen, which was the best result in the school’s men’s basketball history, and to some extent, Malone proved himself.

However, when facing Ah Gan, his past accomplishments turned to nothing, as Ah Gan was a man who had led Gonzaga to the national championship, standing in a higher place looking down on all the league’s big men—especially the power forwards.

With Bill Walton’s return to the Trail Blazers, Gan Guoyang appeared more at the power forward position, providing a challenge to all power forwards in the league.

Just like when Michael Jordan appeared at the shooting guard position, those long-armed, long-legged defenders suddenly became in demand.

Malone was not scheduled to start tonight; he sat on the bench nervously alongside Stockton, looking on as a spectator.

The major change in the Jazz’s starting lineup compared to last season was that Griffiths was out with a stress fracture in his foot, putting Bob Henson in the starting position.

An accurate outside shooter like Griffiths, Henson was the sort of player who would attempt three-point shots.

Starting with Pete Maravich, the Jazz team has always favored these sharpshooting white shooting guards, a tradition that has continued since the ’70s.

The Trail Blazers also loathed these sharpshooting white guards, their presence a major annoyance in their zone press defense during set plays.

Mark-Eaton easily tipped the ball during the jump ball; the guy didn’t even need to jump, just reached out to touch the ball, so Gan Guoyang didn’t bother to compete and immediately got into a defensive stance.

The Jazz worked the ball around the perimeter, and Henson hit a mid-range shot after a pass for the Jazz’s first points.

The crowd erupted in a huge cheer; to the uninformed, it might have seemed like Henson had scored the game-winner.

Tonight, the Salt Palace had a huge number of fans. Salt Lake City, Utah, like Portland, Oregon, only had one major league team, a solitary bud.

Utah once had a team called the Utah Stars, which disbanded after the ABA-NBA merger; then in 1979, the New Orleans Jazz moved to Salt Lake City, keeping the Jazz name that didn’t fit well with the high plains of Utah.

Since this was an impoverished and remote part of America, the Jazz’s situation was always precarious, with not much commercial value to be made, and the team was always planning to relocate.

Salt Lake City had its share of loyal fans; after all, there wasn’t much else to do, and if the only basketball team left, there would be even less to occupy the evenings.

During the summer, the Jazz’s management planned to move the team from Salt Lake City to Miami, Florida, believing it would bring more popularity to the team.

Local car dealership tycoon Larry Miller (who had given Stockton his used Toyota Corolla), through a series of maneuvers and negotiations, kept the Jazz in Salt Lake City and became the new owner of the team.

Miller was a conservative Christian who set requirements for the players’ conduct and dress after becoming the owner, such as tying shoelaces neatly, socks needing to meet length requirements, always tucking shirts into pants, and jerseys tucked into shorts (players who liked to pull their jersey tails out would get scolded in Jazz).