lakers championship

Chapter 202 All-Star Voting

After defeating the Clippers, the Lakers have only 2 games left for the year, against the Jazz and the Mavericks.

The Lakers continued to sit at home and easily defeated the Jazz who were plagued by injuries. In the double overtime battle, they successfully avenged the Mavericks and won three consecutive victories.

After the game, Walton said in an interview with reporters that Tianyang has played well in the last three games, averaging 28 points and 12 assists per game, and he deserves fans from Los Angeles and the world to vote for him to be selected into the All-Star starting lineup.

As soon as this remark came out, the social network was in an uproar.

It is very difficult for a rookie to be elected as the All-Star starter in the first year, but there are precedents in NBA history. It is more than twice as difficult for Yang to become the starter than before.

...

On the afternoon of December 12st, the Lakers training base, inside the president's office.

Jim Buss tilted his head and stared at the computer, and said: "Why should the other 50% of the voting rights be distributed to the players and the media? Isn't the All-Star Weekend a game for fans? Why should players and the media be considered? The league office Is the person's brain flooded?"

Kupchak, who was sitting across from him, shook his head slightly, "In order to take care of the feelings of many parties, and at the same time, the league is also afraid of the embarrassing situation where Zaza Pachulia is elected as the All-Star starter, so the design appears in this set of complicated rules, and try to ensure that Elected players can satisfy most people."

Jim straightened his posture, "Why is this voting mechanism very unfavorable for Tianyang to be elected as the All-Star starter?"

Kupchak blinked, "Even if the votes in China are not counted, Tianyang can be ranked among the top 2 backcourt players in the fan votes, but the players and media votes must be ranked behind. According to the calculation rules, it is definitely not selected .”

Jim subconsciously asked, "How to calculate?"

Kupchak replied: "For example, among the players in the backcourt, if Tianyang ranks first in the fans' vote, it counts as two votes, the player's vote ranks 1th, and the media's vote ranks 6th. On that day, Yang's final ranking is (4+1+1+6)/ 4, the final ranking is 4, which is definitely behind Harden and Curry, and has no chance to start."

Jim lowered his head in thought when he heard the words, and then raised his head for about 10 seconds, "The incident that blocked the Clippers locker room a few days ago, the players' votes will probably be greatly affected. Can we think of a way in the media?"

Kupchak laughed. "That's Adidas vs. Nike. We can't get in."

"Hey, business alliance, it's always less pure." Jim sighed, and then stood up again. "But we still have to work hard to fight for it. I will discuss it with the board of directors immediately and use a budget of 500 million to fight it."

Kupchak has no objection. It may not be worthwhile for other teams to spend money to help players be elected All-Star starters, but the Lakers are definitely worth the money.Even if Tianyang fails to be selected in the end, this money can help the management release many signals, and it will receive good feedback in terms of retaining Tianyang and recruiting big-name free agents in the future.

In less than 10 minutes, Jim clapped his hands and said it was done, and the board of directors passed the resolution 100%.

Kupchak immediately called the team's various departments to hold a meeting to fully promote the progress of the matter.

There are various means of canvassing for All-Stars. The team promotes on social networks, even buys newspapers, outdoor advertisements, invites local celebrities and stars to call, etc., but there is really no such thing as the Lakers who spend as much money as the Lakers.

Moreover, the money must be spent on ideas, and it cannot be spent indiscriminately or in the wrong direction, so that the public thinks it is brushing votes.

After the high-level meeting, it was decided to vigorously display the image of SkyOcean to the public, especially to the players.

Because Tianyang has been in the league for too short a time and he is Chinese, most of the players in the league have only seen his stats in the news, and they don't know him at all.

For this reason, Jim Bass sought help from Nicholson, recruited the top three TV production teams in Los Angeles, and created a tailor-made interview for SkyOcean. Finally, he gave this well-crafted interview to ESPN, Time Warner, and TNT for free. The three TV stations only want to broadcast it a few days before the results of the national star voting are announced.

During this period, Tianyang was once again elected as the best rookie in the Western Conference in December, but in the selection of the best player, he lost by only 12 votes to Westbrook, who continued to maintain an average triple-double per game.

In the game, as of January 1, the Lakers had 11 wins and 3 losses, including two losses to the Trail Blazers, only because Lillard and McCollum played at a super level in the two games, and all kinds of fairy balls could hit the nose. 3 points.

Although Tianyang played well in these two games, it still affected his All-Star votes.

On January 1, the NBA officially announced the results of the second round of fan voting for the All-Star Game.

Tianyang ranked fourth among the backcourt players in the West, and Curry won the second round of votes.

Such a result completely exceeded the official expectations of the Lakers, but fortunately, Tianyang received 901236 votes, which was only more than 1000 votes lower than the third place Westbrook, and only more than 2 votes lower than Curry.

For this reason, the Lakers officially called on fans to vote for Sky Ocean. Kobe Bryant, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and other Lakers celebrities also began to solicit votes, and Hollywood stars such as Denzel Washington also joined them.

Unfortunately, in the game against the Spurs that night, Popovich used Leonard and Green to jointly encircle Tianyang. As a result, he only scored 22 points and 6 assists in the end, and the Lakers also lost to the Spurs by a big score.

与此同时，雷霆在对阵76人的比赛中，威少拿到27分15助攻18篮板并带队取胜；哈登在火箭对阵骑士的比赛中，狂砍35分13助攻11篮板赢得胜利。

I didn't play well, and my opponent played well. It was very unfavorable for Tianyang to be selected as the starting lineup.

In view of this special situation, Lakers publicist John Black called ESPN, Time Warner, and TNT to request SkyOcean’s personal interview to be broadcast in advance. The latter two immediately agreed, but ESPN informed Black that the broadcast plan had been announced and could not be changed temporarily.

The next day, after the program was broadcast, many NBA players expressed their knowledge of a brand new Tianyang.

Cousins ​​immediately tweeted that he would vote for Tianyang.

In the next three games, the Lakers beat the Clippers Pistons and Nuggets back to back.

19:8 p.m. on the 4th, [-] hours before the close of voting.

LeBron updated Twitter: "I will vote for Tianyang in the All-Star ballot."

Wade retweeted: "Me too #shootingguardglory#"

Embiid retweeted: "Support SkyOcean#believeprocess#"

Pierce retweeted: "If y'all watched the interview, you'd root for him too!"

As soon as Pierce tweeted, many fans asked what kind of interview it was. ESPN saw the ratings and quickly released the interview. Many players who only watched ESPN also learned about Tianyang's story.

1月20日早上8点，NBA官方公布2016-2017赛季全明星投票结果。

Among the backcourts in the Western Conference, SkyOcean ranks 2nd in fan votes, 2nd in player votes, and 3rd in media votes. After final calculation, the overall ranking is 2.25.

Interestingly, Harden ranked 3rd in the ball vote, 1st in the player vote, 2nd in the media vote, and 2.25 overall.

According to the previous regulations, if two players have the same ranking, the one with the highest fan vote wins.

In the end, Tianyang became one of the starters in the Western All-Star backcourt in the 2016-2017 season.

Harden immediately congratulated Tianyang, but he didn't know whose fans were not happy. A large number of organized and planned tweets said that fans in China were too much, and the Lakers still had public relations behaviors. Tianyang should be banned from starting.

(End of this chapter)