As the 2018 All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles enters its final day, some truths are slowly being revealed.

Although Yang Yiming showed off two slam dunks on the first day of his rookie game, and although the All-Star is more of a show event than a competitive one, as the weekend wore on, he became more aware that he still had a long way to go on the road to the NBA.

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For example, the All-Star Game.

Although he and Yu Xiaochun canvassed votes on social media during the fan voting session, which helped him pull nearly 3 million fan votes from Chinese fans and was successfully elected as the vote king, the number of votes is not necessarily proportional to the playing time of the All-Star Game.

Yang Yiming was selected to the James team, partnering Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and Anthony Davis as starters. However, a bit like Yao Ming, who also started in the NBA All-Star Game before, Yang Yiming only played for half a quarter before being replaced.

Played 9 minutes and scored 6 points, 2 rebounds and 1 steal. Playing only more minutes than Aldridge, who is injured, he is the second-to-last All-Star of all the players.

Obviously, this all-star who "grows with seedlings" is still too young.

In fact, just looking at the score-chasing lineup left on the court at the decisive moment of the James team, it is clear at a glance: LeBron James leads, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Kyrie Irving assists James Huang, all of them are the top masters in the league. Even another starter, Anthony Davis, can only obediently cheer for Zhan Huang on the sidelines at this time, let alone a rookie like Yang Yiming.

Although all the bigwigs were polite to Yang Yiming and gave enough face to the "ticket king", Dragic, who also played just over 10 minutes, also pulled him to chat about Chinese culture for a long time, but in the end, Yang Yiming himself knows very well that he is the "water cooler administrator" of the All-Star Game!

Yang Yiming's "water cooler administrator" is indeed competent, although Los Angeles arranged special staff to serve tea and water to the superstars of the James team and the Curry team, but Yang Yiming took the initiative to "occupy" the sweat towel, once a teammate got off the court, he handed the towel as soon as possible!

This intimate service even James Harden, the Rockets boss of the Curry team next door, couldn't help but come over to experience it:

"Yiming, what did you tell me before? Call me 'Assist.'" It seems that I can't feel it on the field today, and I can only touch the light of you, the "equipment manager", off the field, haha..."

NBA teams refer to the people who manage the jerseys and all team equipment collectively as equipment managers - it seems that Harden is upset that Curry did not select Yang Yiming into the same team in the end, and while taking the towel handed by Yang Yiming, he greeted him and the other bigwigs:

"This is my little brother, you old rivers and lakes take a lot of care."

"No problem, we'll let him defend you in a moment. I'll give you a hot pot to try..."

Yang Yiming's words floated around Emperor Zhan, squeezing Harden away from the laughter of the crowd.

"Don't worry, this time, let's observe more." Seeing Harden pretending to walk away, Durant walked up to Yang Yiming and put his arms around his shoulders and said.

"Hmmm! No problem. ”

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In fact, Yang Yiming himself also understands that although it is very glorious to be on the All-Star Game, he still needs to be sharpened to dominate this stage.

The opponent in front of him is the mysterious "masked man" who challenged him.

Donovan Mitchell.

In this All-Star Game, in addition to the "equipment management" up and down, he spent a lot of time recalling the slam dunk contest the day before.

Mitchell leaped into the three's shocking slam.

If he hadn't misjudged, the No. 45 rookie had shown the physicality to compete with any of the league's top superstars.

At that time, he volunteered to give Mitchell a ball to assist, but he actually had a plan in mind. Mitchell cared for him to simply "kiss" the side of the rebound with the basketball, but he deliberately added force, and the ball was high and flat after hitting it, just trying to test the opponent's bounce and control. According to Yang Yiming's vision, the height of the ball's flight is at the waist of the rebound, if you want to catch the ball and dunk, you not only need a super vertical jump ability, but also need a long time in the air to ensure that you can complete the dunk after receiving the ball and leap over the three "obstacles" on the ground. Yang Yiming originally thought that Mitchell would give up this dunk attempt and do it again, but when the other party jumped up without hesitation, he realized that he was wrong.

Mitchell took off with his knees almost level with his eye level. He stretched out his body, seemed to be rising after catching the ball, and when he reached the highest point, the arm that grabbed the ball had adjusted from behind to in front of him, and he completed the slam dunk effortlessly!

Fall two meters away from the "obstacle"!

This bouncing force and air time!

And Yang Yiming really sees it, this is not 100% of Mitchell's strength!

If he throws the basketball more than ten centimeters higher, I'm afraid the opponent can pour the ball in the same way.

You must know that Mitchell's height is just over 190 centimeters!

With this explosively strong physical ability, Donovan Mitchell is already above him Yang Yiming and all 17-year rookies. It's no wonder that he was able to lead the Utah Jazz, who are short of major generals, to a wave of 11 consecutive wins, and he was named the team's scoring champion as a rookie.

The Rockets and Jazz have already played each other once this season, and Yang was not particularly impressed with Mitchell's physicality at the time. In that battle at the Toyota Center, the real protagonist on the court was only James Harden, who scored 56 points in a godly manner, and the rest of the people became supporting roles...

What was it that contributed to Mitchell's sudden physical uptick?

Yang Yiming suddenly remembered something...

He needs to find Yu Xiaochun for verification. But Yang Yiming looked left and right, but he couldn't see Yu Xiaochun in the players' box. This basketball idiot has the opportunity to watch the NBA All-Star Game at zero distance, where will he run at this time?

He shook his head, giving up on the idea for a moment.

The physical improvement may need to be supported by professional data and video footage, but Donovan Mitchell's superhuman ambition beyond physical fitness really didn't need much to prove when he won the championship at the end of yesterday.

He took off the Jazz's orange-red jersey, revealing the Toronto Raptors' retro jersey that had been prepared earlier.

Number 15

Vince Carter.

Half-human and half-god, the highest peak of the slam dunk contest in the hearts of countless people.

Mitchell wants to pay homage to the highest peak!

Or...

As he said on the phone, he actually wants to "step on the highest peak"?

Yang Yiming didn't know. But when Mitchell wore a slightly smaller Raptors No. 15 jersey and completed a 180-degree turn windmill dunk, because he bounced too high and smashed the basketball into the basket, and finally "only" scored 48 points and missed the perfect score, he was almost convinced of a truth:

The challenger who makes a lot of nonsense may be right in front of you.