Chapter 379: A Surge from Beyond the Court
“Jokić and Booker?”
Hearing Chen Yilun’s words, President Liu felt a brief flicker of disappointment.
Why not Durant or Butler? Those two were already established superstars with far more stable fanbases.
But he quickly talked himself out of it.
If not them, then so be it. Those two were clearly Chen Yilun’s prized assets—there was no way he’d be willing to put them on the table.
Jokić and Booker were more than good enough. Both were red-hot names right now.
He could treat them as high-potential stocks.
Just as President Liu was in the middle of discussing things with Chen Yilun, the secretary knocked on the door at an awkward moment and stepped in.
“President Liu, it’s time for the morning meeting.”
“Tell them to wait.”
At this moment, President Liu was brimming with confidence.
“I’m handling something important here. They can wait.”
As soon as he finished speaking, his tone flipped instantly, and he addressed the person on the other end of the line with sudden warmth.
“Chairman Chen, where were we just now?”
Watching Liu’s instant transformation, the secretary wisely withdrew. She hurried straight to Mop’s conference room.
“Director Yang, President Liu said he’ll be a bit late. He has an important call to take.”
As soon as she entered, the secretary quickly leaned toward the main seat and whispered.
“What?!”
Director Yang, seated at the head of the table, raised an eyebrow, clearly displeased.
“This Liu is getting more and more outrageous. I call a meeting and he can’t even be bothered to show up anymore?”
Director Yang was no small figure himself—one of Mop’s three founders, primarily in charge of commercial promotion and operations.
As he spoke, everyone in the conference room turned their eyes toward him.
“Who the hell is Liu talking to on the phone? He’s really lost his mind!”
Enjoying the attention, Director Yang raised his voice even more.
“I don’t know,” the secretary replied cautiously, wiping the sweat from her forehead.
“He started making calls the moment he got to the office. But just now, I overheard him mention someone called Chairman Chen.”
The moment those words left her mouth, the storm she’d been expecting never came.
Instead, an eerie silence settled over the room.
“Chairman Chen?”
After a long pause, someone finally spoke, their voice unsteady.
“You mean the Chairman Chen from the Kings? If it wasn’t him, Liu wouldn’t dare skip a meeting like this, right?”
“Ahem…”
Director Yang cleared his throat twice before speaking again, his tone suddenly slow and measured.
“Chairman Chen, huh… then yes, Liu should definitely talk things through properly. After all, Chairman Chen doesn’t usually reach out to us.”
“Well then, let’s go ahead and start the meeting. Liu will probably need a while. Staying in contact with Chairman Chen is important business. We’ll begin and wait for him.”
The righteous expression on Director Yang’s face made it hard to believe he’d just been furiously cursing Liu moments earlier.
“Right, right, right!”
The room immediately filled with agreement.
“Exactly, President Liu is late because of work.”
“And if Chairman Chen is reaching out, it must be something important.”
“Let’s just wait for President Liu.”
In an instant, the atmosphere turned harmoniously agreeable.
...
...
“Sorry I’m late.”
After quite some time, President Liu finally arrived.
Though he apologized verbally, there wasn’t a trace of regret on his face—if anything, he looked like a general returning from victory.
“Liu, were you chatting with that guy from Sacramento just now?”
Director Yang asked gently from the head of the table.
“Yeah,”
Liu replied casually as he took his seat.
“Chairman Chen wants to work out a collaboration with us.”
He then explained Chen Yilun’s proposal to everyone in the room.
“That’s good news,”
Director Yang said after listening, nodding.
“The timing’s perfect too—we don’t really have any major campaigns going on right now. Partnering up with Chairman Chen would be ideal. It’s just a shame he still hasn’t let Durant come out.”
“Durant’s on a whole different level,”
a vice president reminded him quietly.
“He’s not someone you use for deals like this.”
“Right, right, I got ahead of myself,”
Director Yang nodded repeatedly.
“But there’s no rush. As long as we firmly maintain our connection with Chen Yilun, our future resources will be several steps ahead of other domestic sports platforms.”
“Exactly.”
Director Yang’s expression softened as he looked at Liu.
“Liu, you’ll need to put in some extra effort. Make sure to stay tightly connected to Chen Yilun.”
“Don’t worry, boss,”
Liu nodded.
“I’ll start arranging everything in the next couple of days. Chen Yilun didn’t give us much time either.”
Mop quickly finalized the details of the cooperation and immediately launched the promotion.
This kind of thing wasn’t complicated to begin with, and to accommodate Chen Yilun, Mop already had a long-term team stationed in Sacramento.
Within just a few days, the Mop app’s homepage prominently featured a joint photo of Jokić and Booker at the very top.
Their voting links were pinned alongside it.
Almost overnight, Jokić’s and Booker’s vote counts began skyrocketing as if strapped to rockets.
Although the league had significantly reduced the weight of overseas votes after the Yao Ming incident, a large and highly organized fanbase overseas was still more than enough to make its presence felt across the ocean.
“Is this even fair? Is this fair?!”
Lillard stared at the newspaper in his hands, looking close to losing it.
Portland was a small market to begin with, and Lillard’s vote count among Western Conference guards was never dominant. Now that Booker had entered the mix, his position suddenly looked shaky.
“That Chen Yilun just loves pulling this kind of shady nonsense. If he keeps this up, who makes the All-Star Game will basically be up to him.”
Mitchell, sitting across from him, glanced up briefly at Lillard but didn’t respond.
To be blunt, being able to pull in that many votes was Chen Yilun’s own ability. Aside from complaining, there wasn’t much Lillard could do about it.
He couldn’t exactly expect the league to invalidate all overseas votes.
“This move of his has really shoved Chen Yilun straight into the spotlight,”
Lillard continued when he saw that Mitchell wasn’t engaging.
“Everything’s lining up perfectly for him. At this rate, Chen Yilun is really pushing himself straight into the eye of the storm.”
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