Like Gan Guoyang, Jordan had long awaited this game, and even much earlier than Gan had imagined.
In 1982, when Michael Jordan was a freshman at the University of North Carolina, he saw a sports newspaper article about Gan Guoyang.
At that time, Guoyang was playing in the CIF Northern Section playoffs, where he displayed overwhelming strength and statistics, rising to prominence virtually overnight.
Jordan took a great interest in him, followed the ensuing CIF California finals, and watched the live broadcast on CBS the night it garnered miraculous ratings—Jordan was one of the witnesses.
Later, in North Carolina training sessions when Coach Smith would say to him, "You must always remember, somewhere in the world, there is someone working as hard as you are, or even harder," Jordan's mind always wandered to Ah Gan.
He often pondered how much effort a Chinese person had to exert to achieve basketball success in a foreign land, and how great his talent must be.
