By Mike Finger, Columnist | San Antonio Express-News, 2024-05-14 16:34:52
由生成式人工智能翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准
圣安东尼奥马刺总经理布莱恩·赖特在 2023 年 6 月 24 日星期六举行的 AT&T 中心新闻发布会上将首轮选秀权文班亚马的马刺球衣交给了他。
现在马刺有了选择，我们将会学到一些关于他们的东西。
比如他们认为自己距离赢得比赛有多近。
比如他们愿意在多大程度上改变自己。
以及当下一步路并不明显时，他们的长期计划将如何演变。
他们从未像今年夏季这样直接进入过，这就是未来几个月如此难以预测的原因。他们不仅需要弄清楚如何使用一对前 10 名选秀权。他们还需要决定是否甚至想要使用它们。
回溯五年。回溯 30 年。对于马刺来说，始终有一个明确的目标和一条清晰的前进道路。现在呢？他们可能可以采取三、四种途径，而且没有哪一种一定是错误的。
在二十年的大部分时间里，蒂姆·邓肯让休赛期变得很简单。即使他退役后，也很容易猜到马刺每个夏天会做什么。例如，在 2018 年，每个人都知道他们必须交易掉科怀·伦纳德。在 2021 年，每个人都知道他们必须处理掉德玛尔·德罗赞。在 2022 年，明显的举动是为文班亚马的抽签落到后面。而 2023 年，在赢得奖品后，他们所要做的就是为他定做一套制服。
现在，在周日从另一对幸运的彩票球中受益后，他们几乎可以做任何事情。在一场没有明确超级巨星，也没有一两位明显优于其他人的选秀中，在彩票中投掷两支飞镖实际上可能比仅仅选择第一个更好。
最像马刺的举动就是不为所动，在第 4 顺位选一个控球后卫，在第 8 顺位选一个射手，并利用工资帽空间签下一两位老将角色球员。这没什么令人兴奋的，但很容易看到这种方法让球队赢得 35 场胜利，并争夺明年的附加赛，而不会牺牲任何未来的选秀资产或财务灵活性。
使用文班亚马的目标不是下个赛季进入季后赛，而是未来十年赢得一系列总冠军。这位 20 岁的法国人明白这一点并同意这一点。
但与自至少 20 世纪 90 年代以来几乎马刺的每一个休赛期不同，最像马刺的举动存在一些严重的竞争。为了说明这一点，让我们只看一个位置 — 控球后卫以及马刺在未来六周内可能解决它的各种可行方式。
选项 1：选秀一位像尼古拉·托皮奇或罗伯·迪林汉姆这样的控球后卫，留住特雷·琼斯指导他，并使用其他选秀和自由球员签约来获得投篮帮助和一些老练的诀窍。（这里的安慰奖是球探预测 2025 年选秀会比今年好得多，所以留在彩票中不一定是最糟糕的事情。）
选项 2：使用今年的选秀权 — 加上更多未来的首轮选秀权和一两名年轻球员 — 来获得一名不满意的超级巨星控球后卫，例如亚特兰大的特雷·杨。（由于多种原因，这是最不可能的情况，但并非绝对不可能。）
选项 3：交易一小组较不昂贵的选秀权，来换取一名有坚实搭档潜力的老练控球后卫，例如克利夫兰的达柳斯·加兰德或亚特兰大的德章泰·穆雷。（这可以让马刺立即变得更好，同时保留圣安东尼奥在几年后再次大放异彩的能力。）
选项 4：在第 4 顺位和第 8 顺位都选择最佳球员，同时瞄准一位老将替补控球后卫，例如金州勇士队的克里斯·保罗或波特兰开拓者的马尔科姆·布罗格登。（这里的问题是，即使像保罗这样的球员看到了与文班亚马合作一到两年的优势，他是否愿意与一名更成熟的冠军竞争者追求一枚总冠军戒指呢？）
还是没有错误的答案，尽管有人可能认为，如果马刺过早地挥霍在错误的超级巨星上，选项 2 最不利。但这正是为什么观看总经理布莱恩·赖特、首席执行官 R.C. 布福德、教练格雷格·波波维奇和——我们开玩笑的——那个组织最有影响力的人物，身高 7 英尺 3.5 英寸的小伙子做出的选择是如此有意义。
如果他们采取历史性的马刺式方法呢？这意味着他们知道自己还没有接近目标，并且可以承受等待。
如果他们改变了它呢？这可能意味着他们相信围绕文班亚马的核心已经准备好取得飞跃。或者，如果他们大胆行事并交易掉该核心的一部分，则可能意味着相反。
而且，因为我们不能肯定地说他们今夏将做什么？
这表明马刺已经发生了变化。
原文如下：
With options aplenty, San Antonio Spurs more unpredictable than ever
[Image] San Antonio Spurs general manager Brian Wright hands first round pick Victor Wembanyama his Spurs jersey at a Spurs press conference at the AT&T Center on Saturday, June 24, 2023.
Now that the Spurs have options, we’re going to learn a few things about them.
About how close to winning they really think they are.
About how much they’re willing to change who they’ve been.
And about how their long-term plan evolves when the next step isn’t obvious.
They’ve never entered a summer like this one before, which is what makes the next couple of months so unpredictable. It’s not just that they need to figure out who to take with a pair of top-10 draft picks. They also need to decide if they even want to use them.
Go back five years. Go back 30. For the Spurs, there’s always been one overriding strategic objective with one clear path forward. Now? There might be three or four routes they can take, and none necessarily are wrong.
For the better part of two decades, Tim Duncan made the offseasons simple. Even after he retired, it was easy to guess what the Spurs would do every summer. In 2018, for instance, everybody knew they had to trade Kawhi Leonard. In 2021, everybody knew they had to deal DeMar DeRozan. In 2022, the obvious move was to bottom out for the Victor Wembanyama lottery. And in 2023, after they won their prize, all they had to do was size him for a uniform.
Now, having benefited from another couple of fortuitous lottery-ball bounces Sunday, they can do just about anything. In a draft featuring no clear superstar and no one or two players clearly superior to the pack, getting two darts to throw at the board in the lottery might actually be preferable to picking just first.
The most Spurs-like move would be to sit pat, take a point guard at No. 4, a shooter at No. 8 and use cap space to sign a veteran role player or two. That’s unexciting, but it’s easy to see that approach leading to 35 victories and contention for next year’s play-in, without sacrificing any future draft assets or financial flexibility.
The goal with Wembanyama is not to make the playoffs next year, but to win a bunch of championships over the next decade. The 20-year-old Frenchman understands this and is on board with it.
But unlike in almost every previous Spurs offseason dating back to at least the 1990s, the most Spurs-like move has some serious competition. To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at just one position — point guard — and the various plausible ways the Spurs might address it over the next six weeks.
Option 1: Draft a point guard like Nikola Topic or Rob Dillingham, keep Tre Jones around to mentor him and use the other pick and free agency to get shooting help and some veteran know-how. (The consolation prize here is that the 2025 draft is projected by scouts to be much better than this year’s, so staying in the lottery would not necessarily be the worst thing in the world.)
Option 2: Use this year’s picks — plus more future first-rounders and a young player or two — to acquire a disgruntled superstar point guard, such as Atlanta’s Trae Young. (This is the unlikeliest scenario for a number of reasons, but it’s not absolutely unthinkable.)
Option 3: Trade a smaller package of picks for a less-expensive, established point guard with solid sidekick potential, such as Cleveland’s Darius Garland or Atlanta’s Dejounte Murray. (This makes the Spurs immediately better while preserving San Antonio’s ability to make a bigger splash a few years from now.)
Option 4: Simply take the best players available at both No. 4 and No. 8 while targeting a veteran placeholder point guard, such as Golden State’s Chris Paul or Portland’s Malcolm Brogdon. (The catch here is that even if a player like Paul sees the upside of teaming with Wembanyama for a year or two, would he prefer to chase a ring with a more ready-made championship contender?)
Again, there is no wrong answer here, although one might argue that Option 2 has the most downside if the Spurs splurge on the wrong superstar too soon. But this is why it will be so telling to watch the choices about to be made by general manager Brian Wright, CEO R.C. Buford, coach Gregg Popovich and — who are we kidding? — the 7-foot-3½ kid who happens to be the most influential voice in the organization.
If they take the historical Spurs-like approach? That means they know they’re not close yet, and can afford to wait.
If they switch it up? It could mean they believe the core around Wembanyama is ready to make a leap. Or, if they go big and bold and trade a chunk of that core, it could mean the opposite.
And because we can’t say with any degree of certainty what they’re going to do this summer?
That shows the Spurs have changed already.
By Mike Finger, Columnist, via San Antonio Express-News