By Devon Birdsong | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2024-12-05 03:34:02
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。
胜利、失败和韦恩·格雷茨基
1981年初秋，韦恩·格雷茨基(Wayne Gretzky)订了一张去佛罗里达的机票，把自己关在一套公寓里五天。原因是什么？一场在他自己看来是他职业生涯初期最糟糕（或许也是最尴尬）的失利之一。
格雷茨基和他的加拿大队友在第二届加拿大杯决赛中以1-8的比分惨败。尽管他们的对手是苏联冰球队，这支球队甚至在不到一年前还被认为是不可战胜的，但格雷茨基对自己在比赛中的表现极其不满——以至于他觉得闭门反思是提高自己的最佳选择。
表面上看，格雷茨基这样做很奇怪。毕竟，他刚刚在整个比赛中领跑得分榜。而且，他在一个NHL赛季之后就做到了这一点，在这个赛季中，他打破了单赛季得分和助攻纪录，并赢得了得分王和联盟MVP。格雷茨基打得不好的想法似乎很荒谬。对几乎所有人来说都很荒谬，除了韦恩·格雷茨基（和媒体上一些外围的批评者）。
尽管如此，格雷茨基仍然无法摆脱他错过了关键东西的感觉。因此，他选择把自己关起来寻找解决方案。
更容易理解为什么格雷茨基觉得有必要屏蔽外部世界。他当时还不到21岁，过去十年里，他已经生活在聚光灯下，10岁时就以天才少年的身份闯入人们的视野，被伟大的戈迪·豪(Gordie Howe)钦点为冰球界的下一位巨星。
承载着一个国家和一项全国性运动的希望，压力是巨大的，所以韦恩觉得他让每个人都失望了。尽管他受了伤，尽管他还是一个正在发展的球员，格雷茨基对自己的要求更高。于是，他反复研究比赛录像，强迫自己去看自己的错误和不足，寻找一个对大多数人来说似乎无关紧要的问题的答案。
经过几天的不受干扰的沉浸式研究，他在与苏联队的比赛录像中找到了答案：精明而经验丰富的俄罗斯球员决定不再像他准备投篮那样防守他，而是选择准备应对他的传球。渐渐地，随着比赛的进行，即使是出色的格雷茨基也越来越难传球，而进球的机会变得大得可笑，似乎不可能放弃。
“我90%的时间都在传球，”他后来宣称。“我太容易预测了。每次我沿着边线下来，他们都会预判我会传球，而不是投篮。传球变得太难了，而投篮又太容易了，以至于我无法放弃。现在我决定更多地投篮。”
就在那时，格雷茨基决定改变他的比赛风格，甚至更多地寻求投篮（对于一个单赛季刚刚得到55个进球的球员来说，这是一个疯狂的结果），正如他们所说，剩下的就是历史了。
看着马刺在NBA杯对阵太阳的比赛上半场，我忍不住产生了一种不可动摇的感觉，那就是维克托·文班亚马(Victor Wembanyama)可能也需要改变 他的 心态。
面对NBA最弱的前场之一，文班在很明显他的远距离投篮失灵之后，仍然继续优先选择远投。
这并不是说我认为文班亚马应该停止投三分，或者他应该把所有时间都花在内线对抗上，而是说他需要更加意识到内线机会何时变得唾手可得，并在每一个机会中去利用它们。
格雷茨基在加拿大杯的启示之后并没有减少他作为一个卓越传球手的角色（事实上，他的总助攻数仍然比其他任何NHL球员的总进球数和助攻数加起来还要多！），但是他的策略改变（以及对对手如何防守他的认识）极大地提高了他本就惊人的效率。
下半场初段，文班亚马得到了他当晚的大部分分数，其中很多都来自于靠近篮筐的得分。令人震惊的是，在第四节，随着太阳队拉开比分，他似乎放弃了这种方法。
是的，马刺整晚的投篮都非常糟糕。是的，维克托不是唯一一个状态不佳的球员。是的，太阳队比新兴的银黑军团拥有更多的总冠军经验。但这并不是本赛季第一次出现这个问题，而伟大的球员会适应。
20岁的韦恩·格雷茨基在1981年加拿大杯的七场比赛中总共得到12分。多年后，他声称自己打得太糟糕了，应该被送到西伯利亚。
尽管他在得分榜上表现出色，但他后来半开玩笑地承认：“我在1981年加拿大杯上的表现太糟糕了，他们应该把我送到西伯利亚。”
这并不是他职业生涯中的第一次重大失利，当然也不是最后一次。
但伟大的球员会不辜负伟大的期望——无论是他们自己创造的，还是别人创造的。这就是他们伟大的原因。要求更多似乎不公平，但不知何故，伟大总是向那些站在门槛上的人提出这样的要求。
接下来会发生什么才是最重要的。
要点
- 尽管最终替补出场，但杰里米·索汉(Jeremy Sochan)清楚地表明，要让他长期远离首发阵容将很难，他从伤病中恢复过来，取得了两双，并且展现出不可低估的防守存在感。说索汉似乎无处不在，在这么多场比赛中，他都毫不留情地展现了自己的存在感之后，这句话几乎失去了光彩。尽管如此，他的重新融入还需要一些时间，并且可能会打乱球队在他缺席期间形成的一些固定节奏。但这不应该以任何方式影响他的地位，因为即使在失败迫在眉睫的情况下，他也是付出最大努力的球员之一。如果索汉能够开发出哪怕只是布鲁斯·鲍文(Bruce Bowen)式的底角三分，他很可能会成为阵容和对位上的万金油，对于那些已经厌倦了他的活力和全面难缠的球队来说，这是一个可怕的想法。
- 随着索汉的加入，常驻教练米奇·约翰逊(Mitch Johnson)将轮换阵容缩减到只有9名球员，如果不是扎克·科林斯(Zach Collins)的彻底崩溃，这 mungkin还可以接受。科林斯长期以来一直是一个容易被批评的对象，但在这场比赛中，他完全应得，你会想知道，马刺是否会在交易截止日期前寻找其他选择，而不是仅仅等待选秀。替补中锋的解决方案已经成为一个真正的难题，因为查尔斯·巴斯(Charles Bassey)、科林斯和桑德罗·马穆克拉什维利(Sandro Mamukelashvili)都存在明显的缺点，而马刺可能想要一个能够与文班打双中锋，并且为第二阵容提供护筐的球员。如果他们决定做出改变，他们肯定有筹码。
- 还应该指出的是，对于克里斯·保罗(Chris Paul)来说，这是一场进攻端非常艰难的比赛，他在球场的那一端选择了一个糟糕的时间表现不佳。太阳队唯一拥有的就是有能力的后卫，他们利用了保罗防守上的每一个机会，因为新秀斯蒂芬·卡斯尔(Stephon Castle)显然已经在那方面赢得了足够的声誉，以至于他们在可能的情况下避开了他。保罗的进攻贡献（尽管有限）对于弥补他的缺点和日益衰退的运动能力至关重要，而圣安东尼奥的进攻在没有他的情况下就是不一样。
今晚的主题曲：
Move on Up 柯蒂斯·梅菲尔德(Curtis Mayfield)
点击查看原文：What we learned from the Spurs loss to the Suns
What we learned from the Spurs loss to the Suns
Winning, losing, and Wayne Gretzky
In the early fall of 1981 Wayne Gretzky booked a flight to Florida and locked himself in a condo for five days. The cause? A defeat that was, by his own estimation, one of the worst (and perhaps the most embarrassing) of his fledgling career.
Gretzky and his Canadian teammates had just been very publicly pummeled 8-1 in the finals of the second ever Canada Cup. And while their defeat had come at the hands of a Soviet Union hockey team that not even a full a year before had been thought unbeatable, Gretzky was immensely dissatisfied with his own play in the tournament — so much so, that he felt that seclusion and reflection was his best option for improvement.
This was, on it’s face, an odd thing for Gretzky to do. He had, after all, just led the entire competition in scoring. And he had done so after an NHL season in which he had broken both the single-season points and assists records, and won both the scoring title and league MVP. The idea that Gretzky had played badly seemed ludicrous. Ludicrous, to almost everyone but Wayne Gretzky (and some outlying antagonists in the media).
Still, Gretzky couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d missed something critical. So, he opted to lock himself away in search of his solution.
It was easier to understand why Gretzky felt a need to shut out the larger world. Not yet 21, he’d already spend the past decade of his life in the spotlight, bursting onto the scene as 10 year old phenom, anointed as hockey’s next great player by the titanic Gordie Howe.
Embodying both the hopes of a nation and a national sport, the pressure was immense, and so Wayne felt that he had somehow let everyone down. Never mind that he had been injured, and never mind that he was still developing as a player, Gretzky held himself to a higher standard. And so he pored over recordings of the games, willing himself to see his faults and failings, searching for an answer to a problem that would have seemed inconsequential to most.
And after a couple days of undisturbed immersion, he found it in the footage of his game against the Soviets: the shrewd and experienced Russian players had decided to stop defending him as if he were going to shoot, opting to prepare for his passes instead. Gradually, as the game had gone on, the passes had become harder and harder for even the phenomenal Gretzky to make, and the openings for goals had become laughably large and seemingly impossible to pass up.
“I’d been passing 90 per cent of the time,” he later declared. “I was too predictable. Every time I’d come down the line, they’d play me to pass, not shoot. The pass was getting too tough and the shot too easy to pass up. Now I decided to shoot more.”
Right then and there Gretzky determined that he would change his style of play, and look to shoot even more (a wild outcome for a player who’d just scored 55 goals in a single season), and the rest, as they say, is history.
Watching the Spurs in the first half of their NBA Cup game against the Suns, I couldn’t help but get the unshakeable feeling that Victor Wembanyama may also need to alter his mindset.
Matched up against one of the weakest front-courts in the NBA, Wemby continued to prioritize his long-distance shot long after it became obvious that it was refusing to fall.
This isn’t to say that I believe that Wembanyama should stop shooting threes, or that he should spend all his time in the post banging bodies, but rather that he needs to become more aware of when the opportunities inside become laughable and look to exploit them at every opportunity.
Gretzky didn’t become any less of a transcendent passer after his Canada Cup revelation (In fact, he still tallied more total assists than any other NHL player managed to compile total combined goals and assists!), but his change in strategy (and awareness of how opponents had been playing him) greatly increased his already startling degree of effectiveness.
Early in the 2nd half Wembanyama scored most of his points for the night, many of them coming in close proximity to the hoop. Shockingly, he appeared to abandon this approach in the 4th, as the Suns pulled away.
Yes, the Spurs had a historically bad shooting night as a whole. And yes, Victor was not the only player to have an off-night. And yes, the Suns have a lot more championship experience than the upstart Silver and Black. But this is not the first time this season that this has been an issue, and great players adapt.
A 20-year old Wayne Gretzky scored 12 combined points in just seven games in the 1981 Canada Cup. Years later he claimed that he’d played so badly that he should have been sent to Siberia.
Despite his prowess on the score sheet, he later confessed, half-jokingly, “I played so badly [in the 1981 Canada Cup that] they should have sent me to Siberia.”
It was not the first great defeat of his career, and it certainly wasn’t the last.
But great players live up to great expectations — both of their own making and of others’. It’s what makes them great. It seems unfair to ask for more, and yet, somehow, greatness always asks that of those who stand at the threshold.
What comes next is always what matters most.
Takeaways
- Although he did end up coming off of the bench, Jeremy Sochan made it very clear that it’s going to be hard to keep him out of the starting lineup for long, rebounding from injury with a double-double and a defensive presence that cannot be understated. Saying that Sochan was seemingly everywhere has almost lost its luster after so many contests in which he has unfailingly made his presence known. Still, his reintegration is going to take some time, and may have upset some of the standing rhythms the team had developed in his absence. Not that that should in any way affect his standing, as he was one of the players giving maximum effort even as defeat loomed. If Sochan can develop even just a Bruce Bowen-esque corner three, he’ll likely become both lineup and match-up proof, and that’s a scary thought for teams already tired of his motor and overall peskiness.
- With the addition of Sochan, resident coach Mitch Johnson tightened the rotation up to just 9 players, which might have been okay if not for a complete implosion on Zach Collins’ part. Collins has long been an easy scapegoat, but he was every bit deserving in this one, and you have wonder if the Spurs won’t be looking for other options come trade season rather than simply waiting for the draft. The backup center solution has become a real conundrum, as Charles Bassey, Collins, and Sandro Mamukelashvili come with significant drawbacks, and the Spurs likely want a player capable of going two-big with Wemby as well as providing rim protection for the 2nd unit. They certainly have to assets if they decide to make changes.
- It should also be noted that it was a very rough game offensively for Chris Paul, who chose a rough time to have a dud on that end of the court. The one thing the Suns have in spades are capable guards, and they exploited Paul’s defense at every opportunity, as rookie Stephon Castle has clearly already earned himself enough of a reputation on that end that they avoided him when able. Paul’s offensive contributions (limited though they are) are paramount to offset his shortcomings and declining athleticism, and San Antonio’s offense just is not the same without it.
Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:
Move on Up by Curtis Mayfield
By Devon Birdsong, via Pounding The Rock