Meanwhile, at Hupu headquarters.
Everyone was on edge, waiting for the game to begin. But the moment Hupu's servers crashed, it felt as if the last thread holding everyone together had snapped.
They'd known the China Derby would draw massive traffic and might take down their servers, so they'd rented extra servers two days in advance.
They had three times as many servers as usual.
After all, Wang Yi had crashed their servers more than once before, so they'd made thorough preparations this time.
Perhaps people had gotten used to Wang Yi's explosive performances over the past couple of years, so traffic on his game days wasn't as heavy as it had been a few years ago.
They'd figured triple the servers would be enough.
But they'd still vastly underestimated the traffic the China Derby would bring.
The operations director hurriedly made three calls, telling his team to contact the server rental company and get more servers as soon as possible.
Five minutes later, they'd finally rented twice as many servers again, and Hupu's website returned to normal.
Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, the game was taking place at Scotiabank Arena.
It was the NBA's only home arena outside the United States.
The players and referees from both teams were ready.
Next came the players' introductions.
But today's introductions were different from usual.
Normally, visiting players got little more than a brief mention, while the home team's introductions were as grand as could be.
The whole point was the contrast.
But when the visiting Kings came out today, the Raptors gave them an introduction just as grand as the one they gave their own players.
There was a light show, fireworks, and an energetic introduction from the DJ.
They went all out.
It was arguably the fairest treatment visiting and home