Shaquille O'Neal, the host of this year's awards ceremony, was the first to take the stage.
This year, TNT no longer needed to deliberately show off the superstars attending the ceremony. A casual glance at the audience revealed nothing but superstars!
After all, even the host this year was one of the greatest behemoths in league history.
The star-studded lineup spoke for itself!
Of course, TNT still occasionally cut to Link for close-ups.
Today, Link had brought Rachel and their two-year-old daughter with him.
As the protagonist of the day, Link was a ratings guarantee. No number of close-up shots of him would have been excessive.
O'Neal kicked things off with a singing, dancing, and rap performance that instantly set the venue ablaze.
In the audience, Luka Dončić, another rising superstar and a leading contender for Rookie of the Year, had no attention to spare for O'Neal.
Sitting beside Link, he had been chatting with him the entire time.
Dončić sitting beside Link was as exciting as Kobe sitting beside Jordan back in the day.
"Link, let's take a picture together!"
Link nodded, agreeing to Dončić's request, and handed his phone to the European prodigy.
A few minutes later, O'Neal's performance ended, and Dončić returned the phone to Link.
When Link opened his photo album, he found that Dončić had taken over a hundred selfies in just a few minutes!
And among those hundred-plus photos, there were hardly any proper pictures of the two of them. Most were just Dončić's own selfies.
Link really couldn't understand how young players' minds worked.
Then again, he had somehow become the idol of a super prodigy and a guiding figure for countless young players.
Just thinking about it filled him with a sense of accomplishment.
"Daddy, that uncle is so weird." As Link