The Golden Age of Basketball

The Chicago Bulls, like the Trail Blazers, are exhausted.

Starting from the 1989 season, for four consecutive seasons, the Bulls played over 100 games each season.

In terms of the total number of games, only the Trail Blazers, who made it to the West Finals once and the NBA Finals three times, surpassed them.

Is Jordan tired? Very much so.

When any player reaches their eighth or ninth year, approaching the ten-year mark, they enter a period of fatigue.

It's like a marathon, where a strong physiological reaction occurs midway, causing immense discomfort.

This is what is known as hitting the wall.

Those with lower skills and abilities will experience it after just a few steps.

Unable to continue, they quit and give up.

Those who are highly skilled and capable will encounter it later.

If they can't endure it, they might give up as well and stop running.

If they push through it, their bodies become more comfortable, and the running gets easier.

An NBA basketball career is a long run.

Those with low talent and poor skills get eliminated after just a year.

And even more don't last a year in the league.

The superstars are like runners with good stamina, able to keep running and deliver spectacular performances.

They can delay their psychological and physiological limits, maintaining their passion for the game.

But no matter how much they delay, as they approach 30, they will face a critical point of accumulated fatigue.

Jordan is at this critical point.

The failures in the 91 and 92 Finals made Jordan's desire for the championship more intense.

But as the saying goes, "The first effort brings success, the second brings decline, and the third leads to exhaustion."

1992 was supposed to be the Bulls' best opportunity.

From all aspects, it was the best time to defeat the Trail Blazers.

They also performed their best in the Finals, putting on a spectacular show.

But no one expected Ah Gan to play dirty like a Transformer.

Using a new style to lower the level and strike, he reversed the losing trend.

And there's that dunk that Jordan will never forget.

Jordan had nightmares for two months because of it.

Luck wasn't on the side of the Bulls.

The only consolation for Jordan was defeating Ah Gan to win the championship in Barcelona.

But this championship was expected; failing to win it would be unforgivable.

That Ah Gan could lead the China Team to the finals was already a huge victory.

After the Olympics, Jordan repeatedly questioned himself:

"If I were to lead a team like China, could I make it to the finals?"

No matter how he simulated the scenario, the answer was negative.

Jordan only had confidence in leading China out of the group stage.

The gap between the two had eventually grown into a chasm.

Jordan could no longer see Ah Gan's silhouette in front of him.

People began comparing him to the new era's Wilt Chamberlain.

Exceptional in scoring but couldn't beat Russell.

Chamberlain finally defeated Russell in 1967, winning the championship fair and square.

When would Michael Jordan's 1967 come?

Anyway, it didn't seem like 1993.

In the 1992-1993 season, both dropped in the MVP rankings.

After the All-Star Game, both the Trail Blazers and the Bulls were lukewarm in their performances.

More importantly, they started losing crucial games against strong rivals.

The Heat, Supersonics, Suns, Jazz—they no longer seemed invincible.

Yet Ah Gan received more attention than Jordan in the media.

In terms of fame, advertising, and news interviews, Gan Guoyang surpassed Jordan.

A late-night talk show joked:

"If Ah Gan were black, he'd already be a god."

"What if Ah Gan were white?"

"I'd be willing to pick cotton just to watch him play."

"And what about Michael?"

"Michael? Michael would be picking beside me."

The impact of two consecutive three-peats is unparalleled.

Even if Ah Gan became the Evil Dragon this season, he was still the most popular, biggest, and brightest one.

In fact, people didn't want to kill him; they just wanted to defeat him.

That way, the Evil Dragon could turn human again, and people could embrace him once more.

Jordan couldn't evoke such complex emotions from the public.

He was just cool, powerful, and attractive.

After losing the 1992 Finals, he was destined to always be behind Ah Gan.

For Jordan personally, the physical and mental fatigue, the disadvantage in public opinion, the frustration from failure, mixed with the intense longing for victory and the championship, tormented him repeatedly during the 1992-1993 season.

At times, he was brimming with confidence, displaying formidable power on the court and delivering astounding performances.

For instance, when facing the newly crowned rookie sensation rocking the league, O'Neal, Jordan used a 64-point super performance to show O'Neal what a super scorer really is.

For another instance, when Dean Smith came to Chicago to watch him play, Jordan would give his all defensively throughout the game to prove to his mentor that "I haven't slacked."

This was a notion ingrained in Jordan since North Carolina, because Smith demanded he always maintain defensive focus.

In such games, Jordan would perform as usual, just as excellent as in the previous seasons, if not more so.

However, in some games, Jordan played as if he'd lost his soul.

For example, in a match against the Heat in December '92,

Under the Heat's strong defense, Jordan only scored 15 points the entire game.

The Bulls suffered a heavy defeat to the Heat, losing by 35 points.

Such a defeat was a humiliation, and no one expected them to lose by such a margin.

Moreover, in a January game against the Philadelphia 76ers, he shot poorly and only scored 20 points.

The team lost to the bottom-ranked team in the league.

If it were just a usual underperformance, no one would say much.

But quickly, reporters claimed that in the early hours before the game, Jordan was spotted at the Atlantic City casino.

He spent the whole night gambling there and only went back to rest when his eyes were bloodshot.