At 11 a.m. US time on January 18, 2017, less than seven hours before the results of the 2017 Los Angeles All-Star Game were announced.

In the first round of voting results, the king of votes in the East is "Thirty-year-old" LeBron James, who overtook Giannis Antetokounmpo to rank first in the East with more than 1.62 million votes, and the third place in the frontcourt combination is Joel Embiid, the great of the Philadelphia 76ers. The Eastern backcourt is led by Kyrie Irving and DeMar DeRozan.

The winner of the Western Conference is the Golden State Warriors' cute god Stephen Curry, and if the voting closes on the same day, Yang Yiming's Rockets boss James Harden will squeeze out last season's MVP contender Russell Westbrook and partner Curry in the backcourt. The frontcourt trio in the West are Kevin Durant and teammate Draymond Green, as well as the Pelicans' Anthony Davis.

A total of five of the 17 rookies made the All-Star vote, with Jayson Tatum and Ben Simmons in the East and Kyle Kuzma, Lonzo Ball and Rockets Chinese rookie Yang Yiming in the West. Among the five, Yang Yiming got the highest number of votes, ranking fifth in the western frontcourt with 571672.

In a few days, Yu Xiaochun planned for Yang Yiming to climb to the position of the all-star voting king!

With seven hours to go, will they have any hope of success?

1/

After the victory with the Suns on January 13, Yu Xiaochun first opened Sina Weibo for Yang Yiming. Two Weibo posts were posted that night, one was a photo of Yang Yiming warming up and playing in Phoenix the night before, and the other was just reposting the news of "2018 NBA All-Star Fan Voting Phase II Results", with the text saying "Los Angeles, I'm here (fist clench)", and also tagged NBA China, several official Weibo of the Houston Rockets.

In just a dozen hours, this second Weibo post received more than 100,000 retweets and nearly 1 million likes, and the number of fans exceeded 600,000 overnight.

The next day, Sina Weibo officials quickly passed Yang Yiming's Weibo real-name certification, and his number of fans reached a new level, climbing to the million mark.

In the last minute of the game with the Clippers, the conflict between the Rockets and the Clippers escalated, with D'Anthony, Paul, Ariza, Gordon and the opponent's Blake Griffin getting entangled respectively.

It was too noisy at the Stamp Arena, and Yang Yiming chose to silence on Weibo for the next two days, but he didn't expect the number of fans to rise instead of falling, and crossed the three million mark in one fell swoop. Many people left messages on Weibo from his previous All-Star Game in Los Angeles, encouraging him to return to Stamp and make a name for himself in the All-Star Game.

Of course, there is encouragement and praise, and naturally there is criticism and abuse, which is almost the norm on social media. Some people accuse him of "being embarrassed and throwing out of the country", some people teach him that "before the basketball is played, the star will grow his temper first", and of course, there are Clippers fans who sneered, saying that if you can't play on the court, you can only get angry off the court, and that's just how you can play.

In the early morning of January 17, Beijing time, Yang Yiming, who had been silent for more than a day after the pushing incident, finally posted a long Weibo, with sincere words, concise content, and no prevarication to the core of the problem, and its central idea can be roughly summarized into three points: First, it is indeed unwise to have a conflict on the court, which damages the image, and apologizes; Second, at that time, there was a desire to protect the coach and teammates, but it should not be a reason to fight, and he will calm down in the future and apologize again; Third, thank the fans for their various opinions, whether they are support or criticism, and accept them together, and strive to live up to expectations. This long Weibo is also written in Chinese and English, and the English after the Chinese part is ghostwritten by Koharu, the Rockets' team assistant Meritis polished, and tagged NBA China, Houston Rockets, and Los Angeles Clippers' official Weibo.

As soon as this public relations Weibo came out, it received more than 1 million likes within a few hours, and more than 100,000 retweets and comments, and public opinion overwhelmingly supported Yang Yiming's earnest attitude and modest posture, and even official voices such as the "Central Committee of the Communist Youth League" also praised it, commenting: This young man is responsible! Within a day, the number of Yang Yiming's fans continued to skyrocket, approaching the 10 million mark!

2/

At the sprint juncture on the last day, Yu Xiaochun made a surprise move for Yang Yiming, first posting a Weibo announcement that the latter would leave the country on the largest live broadcast platform "Kuaishou" at 11 o'clock Central Time and midnight Beijing time, and also left a live broadcast address. Although the live broadcast time is late at night in China, as soon as the live broadcast starts, nearly 1 million people poured into the room, and the appeal is amazing!

The live broadcast lasted about 30 minutes, and the content itself was not specially arranged, but because Xiaochun was holding his mobile phone, he filmed a single video of Yang Yiming and the Rocket team members in the gym. Yang Yiming wore a tight-fitting gear during training, sweating like rain in order to cope with the training volume of professional players, even if the live broadcast was only Yu Xiaochun's whispered commentary, but it was really full of hormones, and his figure was so good that it attracted people to lick the screen!

In the second half of the live broadcast, Yang Yiming went into battle by himself, he filmed the process of eating a nutritious meal with the team after physical training, and said while eating, but there are many Kuaishou anchors: It's just eating. It's just that Yang Yiming's plate is not a monster, vegetable salad, juice, boiled chicken breast, beans and pasta are enough. But there are more than 2 million people who see it this way!

At the end of the live broadcast, Yang Yiming pulled up his good friend Eric Gordon of the Rockets and taught the other party to say a word in Chinese in front of the camera: "Give, Yang Yiming, vote." Gordon's Chinese is not very good, in addition to being able to pronounce the names of his teammates accurately, the rest of the part has become "Yang Yiming Cast Fat", but this intention, all those who see the live broadcast can still understand!

It's just undisguised and naked canvassing!

We can't vote yet!

At the end of the live broadcast, Yang Yiming and Yu Xiaochun struck while the iron was hot, and posted another Weibo, while thanking all the "old iron" in the live broadcast room for their support in the middle of the night, the debut broadcast was very successful, and at the end of Weibo, they left a channel link for NBA All-Star fans to vote!

It's that straightforward!

So everything is ready, nothing is in the person, whether you can become the king of votes or not, it depends on the will of God!

3/

At 6 p.m. on January 18, U.S. time, and at 7 a.m. Beijing time on the 19th, the NBA's official website released the voting results of the 2018 Los Angeles All-Star Game in all languages around the world. The Western Conference ticket king was won by Stephen Curry.

So Yang Yiming's final sprint canvassing was a complete failure?

No, Yang Yiming became the biggest dark horse in this vote, relying on the super popularity of Chinese fans in a short period of time, his fans won the vote at the last moment to beat Emperor James, ranking first in the league with 2894301 votes! According to the rules of this All-Star voting, fan votes account for 50% of the weight, and media votes and player votes account for 25% each, so although Yang Yiming's media votes squeezed into the top 10 and the player votes were mediocre, he finally relied on super high fan votes to squeeze out the Pelicans' Cousins to start the Western frontcourt!

The media network exploded!

This is the huge power of the fan economy in the new era.

This is another non-American ticket king after Yao Ming!

Perhaps prepared for the result, Yang Yiming reposted the news on Weibo as soon as possible, and said:

"Thank you to all the fans who voted for me, I was flattered by a rookie. In fact, I originally thought that if I really became the king of votes, I would give up the right to choose team members to the seniors in the west, after all, I am just a newcomer. At this time, I just want to say to the two captains, Curry and James: choose me and Deng Ge together, let me go to the All-Star game and then go to assist him! See you in Los Angeles! ”

First of all, I paid tribute to the fans of my parents, then I contacted the two captains of the East and West, and finally I didn't forget to take care of the boss of the Rockets. Even though the number one fan vote ranking failed to help him win the vote king, the next new star of social media is about to rise like this?!