In 2015, just after the New Year began, Link unleashed two major blows on the league in quick succession.
On the morning of January 2, the NBA officially announced the results of the second round of All-Star voting.
This time, Link had widened the gap between himself and everyone else even further.
James and Curry both received 770,000 votes, ranking second and third. The only other player to surpass 700,000 votes was Carmelo Anthony.
Other than those three, none of the remaining candidates had even reached 700,000 votes.
While everyone else was still struggling to break one million votes, Link's total had already skyrocketed to 2.1 million!
His second-round tally alone was already higher than the combined total from all three rounds of All-Star starter voting in previous years—and by quite a lot!
Compared to Yao Ming's record-setting 2.51 million votes back then, he was only 400,000 votes short.
But this was only Link's second-round total. After the third round, surpassing Yao Ming should not be a problem.
And it would not just be Yao Ming. Link seemed likely to become only the second player in NBA history, after Howard, to surpass three million All-Star votes.
Breaking three million votes was a miracle that was almost impossible to replicate.
After all, Howard had received so many votes back then not only because of his immense popularity, but also because he benefited from the rules.
For the 2009 All-Star Game, voting was still separated by all five positions.
So in the East that year, there had essentially been no other option at center besides Howard!
In the West, Yao Ming and O'Neal could at least split some of the votes.
But in the East, no other center besides Howard had been qualified to make the All-Star roster.
The 2009 Eastern Conference