After the hustle and bustle of the Christmas War, teams across the league are starting to enter the mid-season sprint, and the period from Christmas War to All-Star Weekend will basically determine the final playoff standings.

Kobe Bryant was the undisputed Player of the Month after all the games in December, and throughout the month of December, the Lakers had an 11-3 record, while Bryant averaged 37.5 points, 4.9 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game while shooting 49 percent from the field.

On January 6, 2001, after the home game against the Pistons, the NBA league's official website announced the voting results of the first round of this season's NBA All-Star Draft. This year's All-Star is a very special year, in the post-Jordan era, the league launched a crazy star-making campaign, in the summer of 2000, the league launched the "Big Four", and as the season progresses, the results of the "Big Four Scoring Guards" are becoming more and more obvious, Duncan, Webb, Garnett, Nowitzki, Kobe, Maddy, Carter, Iverson, these people are undoubtedly the most popular representatives of the new generation of players in the league, so the final vote king will definitely be produced from these eight players.

But when the league announced the results of the first round of voting, it was a big surprise, because after the results of the first round of voting, San Antonio's small forward Meng Xu ranked first in the league with 690,000 votes, leading the second-ranked Vince Carter by nearly 200,000 votes. With Meng Xu's outstanding performance this season and Nike's continuous momentum behind the scenes, his popularity has skyrocketed in the United States, and more importantly, behind Meng Xu, almost all of the tens of millions of fans on the other side of the ocean support Meng Xu. So when David Stern announced the start of the All-Star voting, countless emails from across the ocean almost paralyzed the server of the NBA's official website, and Meng Xu's 690,000 votes were still David Stern instructed the backstage staff to artificially classify many votes as invalid results, otherwise Meng Xu's votes would be even more amazing.

In this year's All-Star voting, the West is undoubtedly the most competitive, especially in the forward position, the "Big Four" are all crowded in the West, in addition to Karl Malone, Rashid Wallace and Rahim, and the small forward position, Pippen and Hardaway, Meng Xu and Antoine Jamison, and Meng Xu's teammate Sean Elliott was also unexpectedly ranked 7th in the forward position after the first round of voting. After the first round of voting, Meng Xu ranked first in the Western Conference Forward list with 690,000 votes, followed by Tim Duncan with 350,000 votes, Chris Webber with 330,000 votes, and Kevin Garnett with 310,000 votes. Judging from the current situation, the Spurs are likely to take the two starting forward positions, in addition to David Robinson is also likely to be selected as a backup center this year's All-Star, if this is the case, then the Spurs will have three players in the All-Star at the same time.

Different from the fierce competition for the forward position, the guard position is a little easier, Kobe Bryant and Kidd are far ahead of other guards with 390,000 votes and 360,000 votes respectively, because the "four big scoring guards" of the five candidates, 4 are in the East, so Kobe's selection can be said to be no suspense, after all, Kobe Bryant in the second season of his career, with the super popularity accumulated in high school, was selected as the All-Star starter that season, And in the All-Star team, he was the former boss of the Lakers, Eddie Jones, who played as a substitute for Eddie Jones for two seasons when he was with the Lakers. As for the position of the center, it is basically O'Neal's first gear, and the others are in the first gear, and all the centers in the West can't pose the slightest threat to O'Neal, even from David Robinson, who is ranked second, plus Divac and Ewing, who are 3rd and 4th, the total number of votes of the three people is not O'Nealdo.

Slightly different from the West, the results of the All-Star voting in the East were already very obvious after the first round, with Iverson and Maddy getting more than double the number of votes in the guard position than Tim Hardaway, Ray Allen and Reggie Miller behind them. Carter's registration position for this All-Star vote is small forward, and Carter has also received 500,000 votes second only to Meng Xu. The most surprising thing is undoubtedly Grant Hill, although he has been reimbursed for the season due to injury, Hill still has 390,000 votes, second only to Meng Xu and Carter, ranking third in the total vote list. In the center forward position, it has been confirmed that Mourning will miss the entire season. Still received the most 210,000 votes of any Eastern center.

Just when the entire league was crazy about the All-Star vote, the Spurs team set off for the East again, this time on the road trip, the Spurs had to play against the Heat, 76ers, Bucks and Raptors in 6 days, 4 games in 6 days, two back-to-back games in a row, which also made the Spurs now have begun to complain about the league's schedule, and in this back-to-back game, the Spurs once again took turns to rest David Robinson, Mario Elli and Sean Elliott, these players, Of course, the reason for this rotation is not food poisoning, but groin strain, ankle sprain or something, for this almost perverted schedule, and several of the strongest teams in the East, Popovich directly chose to give up strategically.

After a very comfortable schedule in December, the Spurs played 16 games in January, including eight back-to-back games, and due to the fact that the Alamo Stadium is holding a livestock exhibition this month, the Spurs only have two home games in the whole of January, and the remaining 14 games are all away.

On January 9, the Spurs played away against the Heat, Pat Riley and Popovich may be the two best defensive coaches in the league, although they lost Mourning, but the Heat still showed their excellent defensive ability in this game, facing Duncan and Reeve Lafrenz composed of the inside twin towers, Pat Riley sent a pure small lineup in this game, and the tallest on the court was 2.05 meters Brian Grant. And this game is accompanied by constant fouls and timeouts, the rhythm on the court is also fragmented, the four quarters of the game did not reach 20 points in the two teams, and finally relied on Meng Xu's 3-point shot in the first minute of the final game, the Spurs defeated the Miami Heat 72-70, in this game Meng Xu's deepest image is the Heat's No. 12 Bruce Bowen, although he only got 2 points and 4 rebounds in 30 minutes, but under the defense of Bruce Bowen, Derrick Anderson shot 3 of 15 in the game, Only 7 points were scored.

After leaving Miami, due to the impact of the dense schedule, the Spurs team struggled very much in the next few games, so the Spurs also ushered in the first three consecutive defeats of the season, and this series of road trips made almost all the Spurs players physically and mentally exhausted. But Meng Xu now has another feeling, because in the game with the Lakers, he won 3 milestone rewards in a row, so after the game, Meng Xu directly increased his physical strength to 100 points, so although in these games, Meng Xu's playing time has exceeded 35 minutes, but Meng Xu still feels that he still has his strength left.

After the game against the Raptors, the Spurs are back in the West, and the following week, the Spurs will play the Kings and Jazz again, as well as playing two back-to-back games against the Clippers on their home court. On January 15, 2001, the day the Spurs arrived in Sacramento, the league announced the results of the second round of voting for the All-Star Game.

After the results of the new round of voting came out, those stars who were weak began to fall behind gradually, although there are still about 10 days to vote, but now the results of the All-Star voting are also very obvious.

In the East, Vince Carter's votes have risen to 1.35 million votes, as last season's vote king, Vince Carter's final votes are likely to be close to or more than 2 million votes, and after Vince Carter, Allen Iverson is in second place with 1.1 million votes, and Grant Hill is ranked 750,000 votes, Maddie 680,000 votes, and Mourning 670,000 votes.

After fierce competition in the West, the final result is becoming more and more obvious, Meng Xu continues to lead the league with 1.49 million votes, and Meng Xu is likely to become the second All-Star to get more than 2 million votes after Jordan, after Meng Xu are O'Neal 1.1 million votes, Duncan 1.05 million votes, Kobe Bryant 980,000 votes, Kidd 960,000 votes, Webb 950,000 votes, Garnett 900,000 votes, now the only suspense in the Western All-Star vote is whether Webb and Garnett can reverse Duncan at the last moment, became an All-Star starter, and in addition, the players behind were basically no threat to those at the top of the rankings due to the large difference in votes. It's fair to say that the league's hype for the "Big Big Four" this season has been very successful, and if nothing else, Kobe, Carter, Maddy, and Iverson will all be in the All-Star starting lineup this season.

"I'm glad that I'm the top voter at this stage, and I think the final result will be announced in a few days." On the morning of the game against the King, the entire Spurs team that had just finished training was blocked at the door of the training hall, and Meng Xu was undoubtedly the focus of this All-Star voting turmoil.