After successfully dissuading two teammates from their intention to participate in the dunk contest and the three-point contest, Gan Guoyang flew to Dallas with Wang Fuxi and Drexler on February 7 to prepare to participate in the All-Star Contest.

This is the first time in Dallas' history that hosted an NBA All-Star Game. For a city that just had its own NBA team in 1980, being able to host an All-Star Game is undoubtedly an effective means to further stimulate the market.

Last year's All-Star Game was held at the Dome Super Large Stadium in Indiana, which should be said to be a great success. This time in Dallas, the league did not choose the Super Large Stadium, but played at the Dallas Mavericks' home court Unity Stadium.

After all, although the Indiana All-Stars give people an extraordinary experience, the capital and energy spent on holding basketball games in football venues is not comparable to conventional basketball venues.

Moreover, Stern is confident that this All-Star Game will be better than last year. After proposing the concept of "All-Star Weekend" last year, the three-point competition, which echoes the slam dunk competition, has also made a debut, becoming one of the most interesting events on the All-Star Weekend.

In the All-Star voting, Magic Johnson was elected the All-Star voting champion with 1,060,892 votes. He was injured before the All-Star Game and quickly recovered from his injury, and the regret of not allowing the All-Star Game to miss the All-Star Game.

The Magician's votes were also the first time in All-Star history that there were more than one million players. The highest votes were Moses Malone in 1984, the 1983 championship, MVP, and FMVP slam, which allowed the somewhat slow center to win a vote of 920,000.

Gan Guoyang almost reached the record set by Moses Malone, winning 900,000 votes, second only to Magic Johnson, ranking second in the total vote list, which is also the best feedback from fans for his outstanding performance this season.

In the 53 games before the All-Star Game, Gan Guoyang averaged 25.7 points, 15.9 rebounds, and 2.9 blocks per game, and his score increased significantly compared to last season. He scored 40 plus points in four consecutive games, which was even more shocking.

His average of 15.9 rebounds per game allowed him to continue to be at the top of the rebounding list, with nearly three more rebounds than second-place Bill Lanbill. His talent and accomplishments in rebounding will not be able to match him until next season.

At the same time, his strong backcourt rebounding ability also gave the Trail Blazers enough fast attack opportunities, and Gan Guoyang has thus become the most critical link in the Trail Blazers' offensive system.

However, the blocking of the shots has declined compared to last season, but in fact, Gan Guoyang's defensive level has not declined but increased. As the last barrier for the Trail Blazers' inside line, he began to learn to restrain his desire to jump, greatly reducing the probability of swaying. Although the number of blocks is small, the quality of the defense has improved.

All of this proves Gan Guoyang's growth and has also won the recognition of fans. He successfully surpassed Jabbar and became the Western All-Star starting center. This is the first time since 1979 that the Western All-Star starting center has not been "Tian Gou".

The last player who snatched the Western Conference All-Star starting center from Tiangou was Bill Walton during the Trail Blazers era.

Compared with Gan Guoyang, another person is unable to play, but his popularity is not reduced at all. That is the Bulls defender who was reimbursed due to injury at the beginning of the season, Michael Jordan.

With the inevitable failure to participate in the All-Star Game, Jordan actually won more than 719,000 votes, more than 10,000 more votes than Larry Bird, the strongest competitor of the MVP this season.

From this we can see how huge Jordan has in the fans, especially among young fans, that in the next ten years, no one except Gan Guoyang will threaten Jordan's position in popularity.

Of course, Gan Guoyang doesn't care much about this. All-Stars are also an entertainment after all. Basketball itself is an entertainment, and the All-Stars game is even more of an entertainment.

Wang Fuxi also took a day off to accompany Gan Guoyang to Dallas to enjoy a wonderful holiday.

After arriving in Dallas, Gan Guoyang and Wang Fuxi ate several famous Mexican restaurants in Dallas, went to visit the Kennedy Monument, and experienced the Texas style.

Since Drexler grew up in Houston and is familiar with the terroir of Texas, he also took two people to a farm in the suburbs of Dallas to experience the feeling of a cowboy. The three of them had a lot of fun together.

Gan Guoyang's tense nerves during the season finally got a certain degree of relaxation. At this time, he could cool down the fire of competitive spirit in his heart, and not think about those annoying and stressful things, and be able to stay with the people around him.

On February 8, the All-Star Weekend officially started. In addition to the fixed star and fan interactive activities, the most eye-catching ones are naturally the evening dunk contest and the brand new three-point contest.

Before the game began, giants from all teams in the east and west gathered together to open a private handicap, betting who would win the dunk contest and three-point contest tonight.

Since the three-point competition is the first time the league has held, there are only a handful of excellent shooting players in the league who can shoot three-pointers, with a total of eight participating players, and the biggest name is naturally Larry Bird. Everyone in the league knows that Bird's three-pointers are the strongest.

So Bird's old opponents, including Moses Malone and Dr. J, bet Bird's win, and only Magic Johnson and Jabbar think Cooper will win because Michael Cooper is their teammate.

Bird looked calm and looked like he didn't take anyone seriously.

When we warm up before the game, all the contestants had to change clothes in the locker room. The first sentence after Bird entered was, "I-hope-all-your-guys-in-here-thinging-about-the-second-place-cause-I-will-win-this." (I hope you guys carefully consider who will be the second place, because the champion is mine.)

The arrogant Bird did not break his promise. Although Hogans scored a shocking 25 points in the preliminary round (the record of the NBA three-point competition has not yet been broken), in the finals, Larry Bird still used his stable performance and won the first three-point competition championship in NBA history with a high score of 22 points.

As for this result, except for the magician being slapped by Bird in the face again, almost everyone else guessed the result. After Bird won the championship, he looked calm and seemed to be his own, but he was just posting for a while.

But in the subsequent dunk contest, the giants began to diverge their opinions and each had their own ideas.

Like the three-point competition, eight players participated in this dunk contest, namely Terry Taylor, Roy Henson, Jerome Kessler, Gerard Wilkins, Dominic Wilkins, Terence Stansberry, and Spaty Webber.

This lineup is obviously much worse than the lineup of the previous two dunk contests. Dr. J is old and no longer interested in the entertainment of the dunk contest. Larry Nance, who has won the championship, is unwilling to participate again. Jordan wants to participate, but he can't even play in the main competition due to his season reimbursement. Under the dissuasion of Gan Guoyang, defending champion Drexler also gave up the idea of ​​continuing to participate.

Therefore, the biggest favorite in the dunk contest is only the "element of human movies" Donimik Wilkins. After last year's championship was destroyed by Gan Guoyang, the disruptor, Wilkins wanted to continue to show his presence in the dunk contest. Not only did he have to show his presence, but his younger brother Gerald Wilkins was also pulled in by his brother.

Compared with Wilkins, there is another person who is more eye-catching, that is, Wilkins' teammate in the Hawks, "Potato" who is only 170 tall, and rookie Spaty Weber.

170 is relatively short among ordinary people, not to mention in the basketball world where giants are everywhere, but Weber has shocking bounces, and dunks are really a piece of cake for him.

More stars still think that Dominic Wilkins will win the championship in this slam dunk contest, and some people think that other players will win the championship, but no one thinks that Weber can win the championship. It is not easy for a guy with 170 to dunk it. It is good to give him a "disabled and strong-minded" award. It's better to forget the championship in the slam dunk contest.

Only Gan Guoyang insisted that Weber would win the championship in this dunk contest and placed a "heavy bet" - he had the opportunity to cook Chinese food for everyone to eat.

James Worthy and Gan Guoyang were in a row, insisting that Wilkins would definitely win the championship, and he also made a "heavy bet" - the sports eyes on his head, if he lost, he would give it to Gan Guoyang Dai.

Gan Guoyang naturally doesn't like Woxi's pair of ragged glasses. He is not myopic and does not need to add anything to it. Gan Guoyang insists that Weber will win the championship because his future experience tells him that Weber will win the championship in this slam dunk contest, leaving a strong mark in the history of the NBA slam dunk contest, becoming the shortest dunk king.

However, Gan Guoyang was still a little nervous. After all, the dunk king last year changed hands under his influence. Maybe something happened this year. For example, if Webber nervously dunks the basket on the basket, he will basically be done.

Fortunately, as a rookie, Webber did not show any timidity in the game, and performed very stably, reaching the finals, challenging the team's big brother Wilkins in the finals.

Wilkins' dunk was as violent, domineering, full of hostility, and aura, with a momentum of destruction of the basket, but the audience and the judges were indeed familiar with his routine, and there were not many surprises.

However, Little Webb was a small figure and like a small spring. The ball looked particularly large in his hand. Although his dunk was not fancy, it was not low in difficulty, and it was full of beauty and aura.

In the end, Weber defeated Wilkins in an upset with his stable performance and freshness brought by his height, winning the 1986 All-Star Game dunk championship.
Chapter completed!