By Charlie Thaddeus | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2024-11-06 01:50:07
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。
马刺的表现好坏参半
让我带你稍微窥探一下“我们学到了什么”专栏的幕后过程。也许你并没有要求这个，但你也没要求马刺在上半场领先26分的情况下输掉比赛，所以事情并不总是如你所愿，对吧？无论如何，当轮到我写这些东西的时候，我会坐在我的办公桌前，登录我们的博客平台。我会写标题，写副标题，然后从 Getty Images 上选一张小图。接着，我盯着页面，面对着一片巨大的空白，等待着我用酷炫、睿智且重要的想法来填满它，这些想法都是关于前一天晚上比赛中发生的事情。多么令人兴奋！
我尽力做到信手拈来。在这个网站上，我们做了很多深思熟虑、合情合理的分析，如果你想从任何基本层面上更好地理解马刺或篮球比赛，你绝对应该去读一读。PTR 有一大批优秀的作者，他们会为你分析这项运动的来龙去脉，我每天都阅读他们的文章，这样我就可以假装自己很聪明，知道自己在说什么。“我们学到了什么”专栏嘛，我试图找到一条不同的路。讽刺的是，如果你想学到什么，这里反而是最不应该来的地方。在这个空间里，更多的是关于我们的感受——一个时间点的快照，记录下来是为了以后不会忘记。
我为什么要提这个呢？是因为我不想认真地回顾一场让我熬夜到凌晨，而我最喜欢的球队却在球场上慢慢地、有条不紊地失血的篮球比赛吗？当然是这样！但也有其他原因！我想谈谈这是什么，以及它不是什么。我想为你腾出一些空间，让你真正理解我的意图，并理解我为什么可能会以我的方式说出这些话。
假设我在昨晚那场表现之后，今天早上登录。我看着这片巨大而愚蠢的空白，试图弄清楚我想从哪个角度入手。我要像火与硫磺般愤怒吗？我应该狠狠地批评他们吗？ 这支球队糟透了。把所有人都炒掉。文班亚马(Victor Wembanyama)需要接受现实，别再试图成为一名得分后卫了。保罗(Paul Gasol)已经不行了。索汉(Jeremy Sochan)最多也就是个轮换球员。这些人还有什么意义？
你看，我不知道。我觉得我今年已经做过这样的事了，而且感觉没什么效果。那悲伤怎么样？像查理·布朗那样伤感。 他们现在不行，以后也永远不会行。库珀·弗拉格(Cooper Flagg)昨晚有一个非常漂亮的扣篮；也许我们应该就此放弃，明年再试？得休息几周。我只能关心他们所关心的程度，而他们显然并不关心。
这看起来不像我的风格。有时候伤感一下感觉很好，但这并不是我们在这里的真正风格，而且这可能与事实相去甚远。乐观？面对一场令人失望的失利，这可能是一个有趣的角度。 这只是一场比赛。赛季还很漫长——几乎和我们的球员一样年轻！下半场失去索汉是一个很大的损失；他现在很出色！他们会从中学到东西的。一切都还在预期之内。变得更好的唯一途径就是经历磨难。继续努力！
这可能是我们对目前情况最接近的看法了，至少在篮球意义上是这样。但这感觉真诚吗？并不真的。至少对我来说不是。事实是，在像这样的失利之后，我并没有感到乐观。我迫切地想要用宏观的视角来理解一个篮球赛季，但这真的很难，因为你所参与的活动充满了所有这些微小的终点，你必须坐下来思考几天，才能获得更多的数据输入。一场失利很糟糕。失利的原因对我来说不如结果重要，而结果令人沮丧。擅长数学的人，请帮帮我。
我不知道。上面所有这些冗长的叙述只是我在争取时间，因为最终，我将不得不弄清楚我对这场比赛的感受，并把它写在这里供你阅读。这场比赛并不是那么重要，至少在宇宙意义上是这样，但在那一刻它感觉很重要，今天早上它对我来说感觉非常真实。我仍在努力降低我对赛季初的期望值，诚然，这些期望值一开始很高，而快船……伙计，这看起来应该是马刺会赢的那种比赛。我看着他们在第一节火力全开，心想：“是的。就是这样。他们做到了！”结果却眼睁睁地看着它在接下来的三节比赛中瓦解。我希望成为那种一笑置之的人，但如果我是那种人，PTR 可能就不会让我负责“氛围检查”了。
马刺就是马刺。他们既不像昨晚很长一段时间里看起来那么糟糕，也不像我希望他们在任何特定时刻那么好。他们正在努力。我知道他们是的，嘿，听着，我也在努力改进自己。我应该对整个过程抱有更健康的态度。我们还有大约75场比赛要打，我不确定如果我必须像杜威·考克斯那样在写“我们学到了什么”之前思考我的一生，我是否能活下来。
要点：
- 嘿，显然，我们对波波维奇教练只有美好的祝愿。这显然是首要也是最重要的事情。我们显然不知道具体发生了什么，但无论如何，我都祝他一切顺利，希望他早日回到场边。
- 我想，文班亚马在客观上表现糟糕的情况下仍然能打出这样的数据，这是一个好兆头？我是唯一一个这样想的人吗？他显然有他的高光时刻，也做了很多好事，但这一切都没有感觉很连贯。他的投篮仍然……我的意思是，我想他必须继续投，因为这将是对手在他整个职业生涯中都会给他的机会。但看着他一次又一次地撞上那堵墙，而进攻在他周围停滞不前，这有点让人痛苦。学习的过程。一切都是学习的过程。他在学习。我在学习。我们在一起学习。学习。学会了。我已学成。
- 我本来想留一个要点，在赢球之后好好赞扬一下朱利安·尚帕尼(Julian Champagnie)，但照这个速度来看，我好像只会在马刺打算搞砸比赛的时候才会写文章，所以我现在就来夸夸他。他在本赛季初一直是一个亮点，我为他感到高兴。有人能自信地、持续地投进三分球，真是太好了！我差点忘了那是什么感觉了！还记得保罗漫不经心地用背后传球传给他，而他连眼睛都没眨一下就接住球并投进三分吗？那一刻，我确信我们重新掌控了比赛，并且会赢得比赛，结果，我错了。无论如何，我爱尚帕尼，并期待着在未来给予他更多赞扬。
是时候结束了。
第三节结束 | 马刺 86，快船 82 pic.twitter.com/7Dr2dNooks— 圣安东尼奥马刺 (@ spurs) 2024年11月5日
- 哈哈，那条嵌入推文的文字是“是时候结束了”。是啊！确实是！然后发生了什么？
赛后新闻发布会
- 选择用赛后新闻发布会的模式来写整篇文章，真是个有趣的做法。
- 是的，当然。听着，我知道我不能总是这样做。过度使用这种手法就像变魔术一样，人们一开始觉得很新奇，直到他们意识到这背后通常没有什么实质内容。这就像咬了一口蛋糕，却发现整个蛋糕都是用糖霜做的。
- 是什么让你觉得现在是使用这种手法的合适时机？
- 我只是不想在没有解释的情况下就对马刺感到恼火，并发表另一篇过于情绪化的咆哮，你知道，我知道这一切都很愚蠢，对吧？就像……我知道在赛季第五场比赛输球后就说“这支球队糟透了”是一个非常冲动、反应过度的看法。但我也想强调，这也不是演戏！我不是斯蒂芬·A·史密斯(Stephen A. Smith)那样无缘无故地乱开炮。这实际上就是我的感受。
- 也许你应该申请将专栏改名为“我们对马刺输给快船的感受”。
- 是啊，就像我上面说的，千万别试图从这里学到什么。如果你从这篇专栏中得到的除了“这个人早上6点情绪太激动了”之外还有什么其他信息，那你就是想太多了。
点击查看原文：What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Clippers
What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Clippers
The Spurs look great and terrible in equal measure
Let me take you on a little peek behind the curtain of the “What We Learned” process today. Maybe you didn’t ask for this, but you also didn’t ask for the Spurs to blow a 26-point first-half lead, so maybe it isn’t always about what you asked for, is it? Anyway, when it’s my turn to write one of these things, I sit down at my desk and log into our blogging platform. I write the headline, I write the sub-headline, and I pick out a little picture from Getty Images. Then I gaze down the page and confront a giant white space just waiting to be filled with my cool, smart, and important thoughts about what went down during the game the night before. Exciting stuff!
I try my best to just sort of let it rip. We do lots of well-thought-out and well-reasoned analysis on this site that you absolutely should go read if you want to understand the Spurs or the game of basketball better on any fundamental level. PTR has a whole host of amazing writers who are here to break down the ins and outs of the sport for you, and I read them every day so that I can even pretend for a little bit that I might be smart and know what I’m talking about. For “What We Learned,” well, I try to find a different lane. Ironically, this is the last place you should head if you want to learn anything. In this space, it’s more about what we feel—a snapshot of a place in time that happened so we don’t forget it later.
Why am I bringing this up? Is it because I don’t want to really engage with a basketball game that forced me to stay up into the wee hours of the night while my favorite team slowly and methodically bled out on the table? Of course it is! But also other reasons as well! I want to talk about what this is and what it isn’t. I want to clear out some space for you to really understand my intentions and get at the heart of why I might say the things that I say in the way that I say them.
So let’s say I log in this morning after that performance last night. I’m looking at this big, stupid blank space and trying to figure out what tact I want to approach it from. Do I go fire and brimstone? Should I just really tear them a new one? The team stinks. Fire everyone. Wemby needs to take a hint and stop trying to be a shooting guard. CP is washed. Sochan is a rotation player at best. What is even the point of any of these guys?
See, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve done that move already this year, and it didn’t feel productive. How about sad? Get real Charlie Brown with it. They aren’t good now, and they never will be. Cooper Flagg had a pretty sweet dunk last night; maybe we should just pack it in already and try again next year? Gotta turn it off for a few weeks. I can only care as much as they do, and they clearly don’t.
That doesn’t seem like the vibe. Sometimes it feels good to go emo, but it’s not how we really get down around here, and it’s probably the furthest from the truth of the matter. Optimistic? That can be an interesting take in the face of a disappointing loss. It’s just one game. The season is still so young—almost as young as our players! Losing Sochan in the second half was a big deal; he’s good now! They’re going to learn from this. It’s all still in line with expectations. The only way to get better is through hardship. Keep pounding the rock!
That’s probably the closest take we have to what’s actually going on, at least in a basketball sense. Does it feel genuine, though? Not really. Not to me, at least. The truth is that I don’t feel optimistic in the moments or even days after a loss like this. I desperately want to take a macro approach to understanding a basketball season, but that’s really hard when the activity you’re engaging with is full of all these little micro endpoints that you have to sit and stew with for a few days before you get more data to input. A loss stinks. The reasons for the loss are less important to me than the result, and the result is a bummer. Someone who is good at math, please help.
I don’t know. All of this filibustering up there has just been me trying to buy time because eventually, I’m going to have to figure out how I felt about this game and write it down here for you to read. The game wasn’t all that important, at least in a cosmic sense, but it felt important in the moment, and it feels very real to me this morning. I’m still in the process of toning my expectations down from their, admittedly, lofty place at the beginning of the season, and the Clippers… man, it just seems like this should be one of those games that the Spurs win. I watched them lighting the world on fire in the first quarter and was just like, “Yes. This is it. They’re doing it!” Only to watch it disintegrate over the next three quarters. I’d love to be the kind of guy who shrugs it off, but if I was that kind of guy, then PTR probably wouldn’t have me on Vibe Check duty.
The Spurs are what they are. They are neither as bad as they seemed for long stretches of last night nor as good as I would like them to be at any given moment. They’re working on it. I know they are, and hey, look, I’m working on myself too. I should have a healthier attitude about this entire operation. There’s like 75 more of these things we have to get through and I’m not sure I’m going survive if I have to do a Dewey Cox and think about my whole life before I write about What We Learned.
Takeaways:
- Hey, obviously nothing but good thoughts are being sent towards Coach Pop. That’s kind of first and foremost the most important thing. We obviously don’t know anything in any detail about what’s going on, but regardless, I’m wishing him well and hope he gets back on the sideline sooner rather than later.
- I guess it’s a good sign that Wembanyama can still put up a stat line like this while objectively having kind of a stinker? Am I the only one who feels that way? He obviously had his highlight moments and did plenty of good things, but none of it felt very put together. His shooting is still… I mean, I guess he’s got to keep putting ‘em up because that’s what opposing defenses are going to give him for the rest of his career. But it’s kind of painful to watch him bang his head against that particular wall over and over as the offense kind of stalls out around him. Learning process. It’s all a learning process. He’s learning. I’m learning. We’re learning. Together. Learning. Learned. I am become learnt.
- I was trying to save a bullet point where I lavish praise on Julian Champagnie for after a win, but at this rate, it looks like I’m only signed up for games where the Spurs intend on beefing it, so I’m going to go ahead and do it now. He’s been such a bright spot early in this season, and I’m so happy for him. What a treat to have someone confidently taking and making threes at a consistent rate! I almost forgot what that was like! Remember that time when CP hit him with the casual behind-the-back pass and he didn’t even blink while catching and draining it from deep? I was so sure we were back in control and winning the game at that point, and boy, was I wrong. Anyway, loving my guy Champagnie and excited to lavish more praise in the future.
Time to finish.
END 3 | SAS 86, LAC 82 pic.twitter.com/7Dr2dNooks— San Antonio Spurs (@ spurs) November 5, 2024
- Lol that the the text of that embedded tweet is “Time to finish.” Yea! It sure was! Then what happened?
WWL Post Game Press Conference
- Interesting choice to go Post Game Press Conference Mode for the entire body of the column up there.
- Yea, for sure. Look, I know that’s not a lever I can pull all the time or anything like that. Getting overly meta is sort of like a magic trick that people think is novel until they realize there usually isn’t too much substance behind it. It’s like biting into a cake and realizing the entire thing is made of frosting.
- What made it seem like this was the right time for it?
- I just didn’t feel like belching out another overly emotional rant about how annoyed I am at the Spurs without giving some context about the fact that like, you know, I know that this is all pretty silly, right? Like…I understand that it’s a pretty hot, reactionary take to be like “THIS TEAM STINKS” when they lose the 5th game of the season. But I also want to emphasize that it isn’t theater either! I’m not Stephen A. Smith firing off takes for no reason. This is actually just how I’m feeling.
- Maybe you should petition to rename the column “What We Felt about the Spurs loss to the Clippers”.”
- Yea, like I said up there, don’t you dare try to learn anything from this. If you take anything away from this column other than “this man is far too emotional at 6am” then you’re reading too much into it.
By Charlie Thaddeus, via Pounding The Rock