The NBA league's Player of the Month for November was LeBron of the Miami Heat. James, with the Western Houston Rockets' Wang Chao.

Both teams have had impressive records over the past month, with the Heat going 12-3 and the Rockets going an exaggerated 16-0.

While the team's record is outstanding, Wang Chao and James' personal data are also extremely luxurious.

James averaged 27 points, 8.9 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game while shooting 53.3 percent from the field and 43.5 percent from three-point range.

And Wang Chao's data is even more exaggerated, averaging 30.8 points, 10.6 rebounds and 10.1 assists per game, while averaging a triple-double in 16 games, there are also 2.4 steals and 1.1 blocks of data, although the data is slightly inferior to last season's average of 40 + 8 + 8 explosive performance per game, but the offensive and defensive ends are perfectly impeccable, at least last season there were people who will nitpick and discuss Wang Chao's defensive problems, so far this season, some people can hardly find Wang Chao in the game with a magnifying glass.

"That's what it takes to be a three-time regular season MVP, a four-time champion, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist! Wang Chao is already the undisputed strongest first person in the league. ”

"The Rockets are invincible, with 16 consecutive wins pointing to the championship!"

"Who else in the league can stop Wang Chao and his Rockets? The Heat, Lakers, and Thunder have all fallen under the iron hooves of the Rockets, and they are no longer invincible in the league! ”

Whether it is the latest power list or the championship odds list, the Rockets have come from behind with an excellent record, and have surpassed the Lakers and the Heat to complete the top, although the regular season has only been a month away, but it seems that the championship has been decided.

Fast forward to December, and the Rockets' winning streak continues.

On December 4, the Rockets and Lakers won a rematch and won easily again.

The Lakers' season has also been stormy, and in the first month of the regular season, Nash and Paul have been injured one after another, which has further aggravated the already poor record, with a 9-9 record after losing to the Rockets, although it barely reaches a 50% win rate, but this is obviously far from the championship team that everyone expects.

In particular, the highly anticipated No. 1 center in the league, Dwight Dwight. Howard's performance with the Lakers was disappointing.

In the 18 games played so far, Howard has averaged 18.5 points and 11 rebounds per game, which is not at all what people think of as a pillar on the inside.

It's actually natural, Howard's own style is a blue-collar player, but his physical strength is too strong, making him seem to be omnipotent at his peak, and once his mobility and explosiveness fade due to injury, Howard's deterrent power will also decline rapidly.

The decline in the level of the offensive end is still secondary, and the sharp decline in Howard's dominance on the defensive end under the basket is the most fatal.

Howard during the Lakers period completely lost the state of being at ease with the whole team guarding the basket during the Magic period, the defensive radius was repeatedly reduced, and the ability to protect the frame continued to decline, and more importantly, Howard, who advocated happy basketball, came to the metropolis of Los Angeles and the City of Angels to completely let himself go, and he couldn't play every day, and he could often see his giggling expression on the sidelines of the court.

Such a competitive attitude naturally caused the dissatisfaction of Kobe, the leader of the Lakers team.

How could Kobe, who had reached the point of paranoia with a desire to win, endure Howard still being there to be funny when the team was in a backward and disadvantageous situation?

Because of this matter, Kobe Bryant has criticized him many times in interviews without naming names.

But although no names were named, everyone knew who Kobe Bryant was targeting, and Howard certainly knew it, but so what?

You've got four championships, I've got three, so I'm so much worse than you? I became my subordinate twice in the finals, why do you point fingers at me?

Even Howard, who didn't have a championship before, didn't eat Kobe's set, let alone Howard, who now has three championships and a skyrocketing historical status?

Kobe Bryant was angry with him in front of the media, and Howard did not save face at all, and directly fought back in an interview with the media.

"I've always played like this, I don't think there's anything wrong with this style, just because I have a bad attitude, I just go all out to win on the court, happy basketball makes me play more passionately and perform better, and that's why I won three consecutive championships when I was with the Magic."

As the saying goes, hitting people does not slap their faces, and scolding people does not expose their shortcomings.

Howard said that his personality is not directly related to playing, and he has to pull the three consecutive championships of the Magic team, two of the three championships of the Magic team are won by stepping on the Lakers, although one year ago, the Lakers also defeated the Magic in the finals to win the championship, but overall, the Magic team is definitely the biggest winner in the past few years.

Kobe Bryant didn't take the initiative to talk to Howard for a few days because of Howard's interview, and the relationship between the two cores began to become tense.

In fact, Kobe's mood is completely understandable, his time is running out, unlike the five championships in his original history, the current Kobe Bryant only has four championships, and at the end of the last peak of his career, he naturally wants to win as many championships as possible.

The Lakers are arguably his last chance to assemble an F4 lineup.

In the past 18 games, after the team fell into a passive situation, Kobe Bryant really worked hard to win, scoring 40+ points in 2 games, 30+ points in 6 games, and currently averaging 28.4 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists per game, ranking third on the scoring list, second only to Wang Chao and Durant, and slightly ahead of Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks.

But no matter how hard he tries, it won't help, the problems that the Lakers are facing at this stage are not problems that he alone or he and Howard can solve, if this is the OK combination in its prime, it may still have a chance to turn the tide, but a Kobe Bryant at the end of his career, plus an injury Howard, is really powerless to change the status quo.

——

The Rockets' winning streak was finally fixed at 19 consecutive wins, failing to break the Rockets' best winning streak in history, that is, the 22-game winning streak set during the Yao Mai combination.

But even so, the 19-1 record is enough to satisfy Rockets fans.

After the streak ended, the Lakers also maintained a very high winning rate, losing only one game against the Spurs on the road, and won again against the Oklahoma City Thunder at 109-94 at the end of the month.

By the end of December, the Rockets had a 29-2 record!

At this pace, the Rockets may break the league's best regular-season record of 72 wins in the regular season for the Bulls, after all, even when the Magic won 70 in the regular season, the Rockets did not have such dominance in terms of record performance.

This is also a matter of course, during the Magic's three-game winning streak, although the defense was also the top level of the league at that time, in fact, the entire defensive system relied heavily on Howard, although there were also high-quality defenders such as Afraro and Ariza on the outside, but it was obviously completely incomparable with the current Rockets' defensive combination of Wang Chao + Leonard + Butler.

On the offensive end, the outside line of the Magic team is basically dominated by a large number of shooters, and only Wang Chao can really host the ball and attack on his own.

The Rockets are different, the inside Da Yao is the ball-handling offensive core that kills Howard in seconds, and the lethality is comparable to that of the big shark O'Neal when he is physically active, although Garnett is not a player who is good at offense throughout his career, he is also an interior player who can contribute an average of 24 points per game in his peak period, and has averaged 20+ points per game for nine consecutive seasons.

On the outside, Wang Chao aside, although Leonard and Butler are now mainly playing without the ball, they are also players who can attack with the ball, even if their technical level is still a little immature in the NBA's high-level confrontation, but they are constantly growing and improving every day.

Whether it is on the offensive end or on the defensive end, compared with the Magic team during the three-game championship period, this Rockets team has more options, more changes, and a higher error tolerance rate and ceiling!

In January 2013, while the regular season continued, the All-Star voting was also in full swing.

As early as mid-December, the coalition announced the results of the first round of voting.

Wang Chao became the vote king in the first round of voting without any suspense, and was quite a few votes ahead of the second-place James.

By January 4, the results of the third round of voting for the All-Stars have also been decided.

Wang Chao continued to lead the position of the king of votes with an absolute advantage, while Kobe Bryant relied on his recent strong personal performance and super popularity to achieve a reversal of James to rank second, and James could only settle for third.

After the three rounds of voting, in fact, the results of the NBA voting will basically be closed, and the results of the final round of voting will be difficult to shake the top few players.

Sure enough, after all four rounds of voting, the starters for the All-Star Game were officially determined.

Wang Chao was elected the All-Star vote king with an absolute margin of 1.7 million votes, and the players with the highest votes in the West were Kobe, Durant, Da Yao, Paul, Howard, Griffin, Garnett, Duncan and others.

According to the position distribution, the starting center in the West is Da Yao, the starting forwards are Wang Chao and Durant, and the guards are Kobe and Paul.

This distribution is actually a little controversial, first of all, Wang Chao's position this season is actually point guard, but the All-Star league still put him in the forward position, after all, only Durant is the most popular forward in the West, and then Griffin, Duncan, Garnett and other big forwards.

And there is Paul in the guard position, and it would be a bit ugly to squeeze Paul to the bench.

Secondly, Howard, who is known as the league's No. 1 center, was squeezed out of the starting line by Da Yao and reduced to a substitute, which is also reasonable.

Although this season due to the increase in scoring points, Da Yao's average points per game has declined slightly compared to last season, and the current average of 28 minutes per game is 16.2 points and 7.7 rebounds.

This data is inferior to Howard's average of 18+11 per game, but the Rockets' record is really exaggerated, and with the blessing of Da Yao's super popularity in China, it is natural to squeeze Howard out of the starter.

However, although he lost his All-Star starting spot by running from the East to the West, with Howard's strength, there was no problem in being selected as an All-Star bench.

The five All-Star starters in the East are Rondo, Wade, James, Anthony and Bosh.

Howard and Garnett switched to the West, which instantly lowered the quality of star players in the East, and they couldn't even find a decent center, and it was also thanks to the league's restructuring of the All-Star this season, canceling the center position, voting for two positions: forward and guard, so Bosh, as a power forward, became the starting center in the East.

As a result, the Heat team has three players elected as All-Star starters, which is quite a rare situation in the history of the league, which shows that the Heat Big Three is definitely the top Big Three combination configuration.

(End of chapter)