By Charlie Thaddeus | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2024-12-21 02:30:00
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。
兵强马壮的马刺队在加时赛中取得胜利
我真的不知道该如何评价这场比赛。总感觉哪里有点不对劲，但我又说不上来。一场有趣的胜利？当然。和其他人一样，我坐在那里，看着时间一分一秒地过去，马刺领先，主场球迷欣喜若狂，感觉很棒。至少与近况相比，本赛季这样的时刻相对来说已经很多了。看看这支球队和他们取得的进步，你很难找到什么值得生气的地方。然而，我却感觉有点不对劲。我的问题是什么？
首先，我们必须明确一点：任何胜利都是好事。我们热爱胜利，我们不会把胜利视为理所当然。球队的表现有很多值得称道的地方，我的意思是，维克托·文班亚马(Victor Wembanyama)打出了那种精彩到难以用言语形容的比赛。（他现在经常打出这样的比赛，以至于变得异常寻常。）球队很健康。每个人都回来了。每个人都在做出贡献。这是我们整年都在渴望的一切。我们能够而且应该为此感到非常兴奋。
我认为，马刺队又一次无意中提高了我的期望值，可能比实际情况要高。我希望这场比赛能轻松取胜。我希望他们能以我认为他们现在应该具备的效率，轻松击败老鹰。看着他们在防守端时不时地走神让我很恼火。每一个愚蠢的失误都像指甲划过黑板一样刺耳。他们放任老鹰紧咬比分，直到比赛突然变成白刃战，这几乎让所有同时发生的美好事情都黯然失色。马刺在常规时间的最后一攻太糟糕了，我差点没看加时赛。
这可能是一种愚蠢的态度。可能吧。我不知道。我不会告诉你该如何看待马刺，如果你能够放松下来，享受这些年轻人从失败的边缘夺回胜利——去年的比赛有很多证据表明他们无法做到这一点——那么你更有力量。我能做的只是坐在那里，摇头，低声说着不祥的话，比如“他们还没准备好”，而我的妻子则从房间的另一边斜视着我。
“他们赢了，不是吗？”她说。
“不是他们应该赢的方式，”我咆哮道。
“好吧，这很愚蠢。”
这确实很愚蠢。几个月来，我一直很兴奋，因为马刺终于引进了一些像克里斯·保罗(Chris Paul)和哈里森·巴恩斯(Harrison Barnes)这样的老将来加强他们的年轻阵容，而现在我却翻着白眼，因为一个39岁的老将不得不在最后时刻对阵东部一支胜率50%的球队时拯救我们。“如果这一代最伟大的控球后卫不在身边拯救世界，会发生什么？”我对着天空自言自语。他们沉默的回应震耳欲聋。当然，宇宙一定同意我们需要找到一个控球后卫的长期解决方案。
听着，我犯了想要跳过步骤的错误，正如我们经常在这里谈到的那样，这不是一个你可以跳过步骤的过程。它漫长、缓慢，充满了细小的进步时刻，中间穿插着各种各样的挫折，这些挫折旨在提醒你，你在旅程中的确切位置。马刺在哪里？嗯，他们不再处于山底了，这是肯定的。不过，像这样的比赛很好地提醒了我们，他们离起点比终点更近。
这场比赛结束后，我觉得这场胜利是空洞的，但这更多的是因为我自己的不耐烦阻碍了客观性。马刺正在学习如何赢得比赛，这并不容易。我可以指出所有我想要指出的问题，但在一天结束的时候，胜利就是胜利。
马刺还没有达到我想要的水平，这不是最糟糕的问题。
要点：
- 坦率地说，我认为我的一个问题是马刺全员回归，这是今年的第一次。我一直告诉自己，“等着吧，一旦我们所有人都回来了，我们就会真正地开始爆发。”现在我们终于全员回归了，但看起来仍然不像我想要的那样。我是否期待着马上就能看到一个成品？不。我是否期待它看起来比现在更完整？是的，我想是的。这是一种理解篮球如何运作的明智方式吗？这个问题的措辞令人困惑，我拒绝回答。
- 文班拿下了42分，感觉他甚至都没怎么费力。在这样的夜晚，他能让比赛看起来如此轻松，真是太疯狂了。当然，有些夜晚，他会让比赛看起来对一个拥有他这样身材的人来说异常困难，但这次他显然状态火热。他的投篮看起来很棒。我的意思是，让他一场比赛投15个三分球看起来很疯狂，我还会继续这么说，以此作为免责声明，因为这很疯狂，我们需要承认这一点。但是看看他！他投进了7个三分球，而且看起来是那么轻松和自在。这是他不用在内线苦战就能轻松得到的21分。这是我们这边任何人都无需三思的21个快速得分。这是联盟中每支球队都必须开始认真对待的21个决定性得分，因为文班不再是“理论上”的外线武器——他是真实的，而且非常出色。
- 这只是一个轶事观察，没有任何高级数据或分析的支持，但我隐隐怀疑查克·巴塞(Chuck Bassey)只是略微知道如何上篮。暴扣？他很擅长这个，我喜欢他的每一次暴扣。篮筐附近的其他任何东西？我的伙计唯一的想法似乎是把球扔到篮板上，然后祈祷好运。我想明确一点，我喜欢查克，并支持他所有的努力，所以这与其说是批评，不如说是我指出了我认为在整个“SeaBass”体验中非常有魅力的一点。
- 由于各种交易和选秀操作，我们显然都希望亚特兰大老鹰每次上场都输球。我无意冒犯他们或整个亚特兰大市，但我希望他们表现糟糕，每场比赛都输。这为这场比赛增添了一点额外的趣味，我真的很喜欢马刺的胜利有一种模糊的“胜利乘数”的概念。
- 一些愚蠢的东西：
再来一次
投票给马刺 ️ https://t.co/0Oa9RiTHZr https://t.co/JW7KkAVkuo pic.twitter.com/7w1QI8JmbZ— 圣安东尼奥马刺 (@ spurs) 2024年12月20日
WWL赛后新闻发布会：
- 你是否担心这些帖子会变成你自己的治疗环节，让你整理自己关于马刺的内心冲突？
- 嗯，我不担心。我认为我对这个想法感到很舒服。
- 你认为这就是人们想要的吗？坐在这里听你抱怨马刺的胜利不是正确的胜利方式？
- 你是什么，帖子警察？人们渴望我机智地解读一个精神错乱的体育迷的内心世界。
- 那就是你，你就是一个精神错乱的体育迷。你认为这健康吗？
- 不，当然不。因此需要治疗。
- 人们渴望这个？
- 他们为此付出了额外的代价。
点击查看原文：What We Learned from the Spurs win over the Hawks
What We Learned from the Spurs win over the Hawks
A full strength Spurs team snags a win in extra time
I truly don’t know what to make of that game. Something about it felt a little off to me, and I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it. A fun win? Sure. Like everyone else, I had a good time sitting there, watching the clock tick down with the Spurs ahead and the home fans going nuts. It was a feel-good moment in a season that, at least compared to recent history, has been relatively full of them. You look at this team and the progress they’ve made, and you’d be hard-pressed to find something to be mad about. Yet, here I am, feeling a little off. What’s my problem?
Let’s get this out of the way first and foremost: any win is good. We love wins, and we don’t take them for granted. There was a ton to like about how the team played and, I mean, Victor had one of those games so outrageous it’s difficult to even put into words. (He’s having those games so frequently now that it’s becoming remarkably unremarkable.) The team was healthy. Everyone was back. Everyone was contributing. It’s everything we’ve been clamoring for all year. We can and should be very excited about that.
I think there’s a chance that, for the umpteenth time, this Spurs team has accidentally raised my expectations higher than they probably should be. I wanted this game to be easy. I wanted them to routinely dispatch the Hawks with a level of efficiency I think they should be more than capable of by now. Watching them lose focus on defense here and there annoyed me. Every silly turnover was nails on a chalkboard. The way they let the Hawks just hang around and hang around until, all of a sudden, the game turned into a knife fight down the stretch soured just about everything else cool that was happening simultaneously. The Spurs’ final possession of regulation was so bad I almost didn’t watch overtime.
This is probably a dumb attitude to have. Probably. I don’t know. I’m not going to tell you how to watch the Spurs, and if you were able to relax and enjoy these young guys snatching a victory back from the jaws of defeat—where last year we have plenty of evidence they couldn’t pull that maneuver off—then more power to you. All I could do was sit there, shake my head, and mutter ominous things like “they aren’t ready yet” while my wife side-eyed me from across the room.
“They’re winning, aren’t they?” she said.
“Not how they need to,” I growled.
“Well, that’s stupid.”
It is stupid. I’ve spent months being excited that the Spurs finally brought in some veterans like Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes to bolster their young roster, and now I’m rolling my eyes because a 39-year-old is having to bail us out down the stretch against a .500 team in the Eastern Conference. “What’s gonna happen when the greatest point guard in a generation isn’t around to save the day?” I muse aloud to the heavens. Their silent response is deafening. Surely, the cosmos must agree that we need to figure out a long-term solution at point guard.
Look, I’m guilty of wanting to skip steps and, as we’ve talked about routinely around these parts, this is not a process where you get to do that. It’s long, it’s slow, and it’s full of tiny moments of progress punctuated by a revolving door of setbacks that are designed to remind you exactly where you are on your journey. Where are the Spurs? Well, they’re no longer at the bottom of the mountain, that’s for sure. Games like this are a good reminder, though, that they’re a lot closer to the start than the finish.
I left this game feeling like the win was an empty calorie, but that has more to do with my own impatience getting in the way of objectivity. The Spurs are learning how to win, and that’s not easy to do. I can point out all the problems I want, but at the end of the day, a win is a win.
The Spurs not being quite as good as I want them to be yet is not the worst problem to have.
Takeaways:
- Candidly, I think one of my issues is that the Spurs were back at full strength for the first time all year. I’ve been telling myself, “just wait, once we get everyone back, then we’re really gonna be cooking.” Now we finally had everyone back, and it still sorta didn’t look like I wanted it to. Was I expecting a finished product right away? No. Was I expecting it to look more finished than this? Yeah, I think I was. Is that a smart way to understand how basketball works? That question was worded confusingly, and I refuse to answer it.
- Victor scored 42 points, and it didn’t even feel like he was working too hard to do it. It’s insane how easy he can make it look on nights like this. Sure, there are nights when he makes the game look amusingly difficult for someone with his size, but he was obviously in the zone this time. His shot looks good. I mean, it looks crazy to have him taking 15 threes a game, and I’m going to keep saying that as a disclaimer because it’s crazy and we need to acknowledge it. But look at him! He made 7 of those threes, and they looked so easy and so comfortable. That’s 21 nonchalant points he didn’t have to grind for in the paint. That’s 21 quick points no one on our side had to think twice about. That’s 21 decisive points every team in the league has to start taking seriously because Victor is no longer “theoretically” a weapon from beyond the arc—he’s real, and he’s spectacular.
- This is just an anecdotal observation and not backed by any advanced stats or analytics, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Chuck Bassey is only vaguely familiar with how to do a layup. Raucous dunks? He’s got those on lock, and I love every single one of them. Anything else around the rim? My man’s only thought seems to be heaving the ball off the backboard and hoping for the best. I want to be clear that I love Chuck and support all his endeavors, so this is less a criticism and more me pointing out something I find pretty charming about the whole “SeaBass” experience.
- Thanks to various trade and draft machinations, we are obviously all rooting for the Atlanta Hawks’ demise every time they step on the court. No offense to them or the city of Atlanta writ large, but I want them to be bad and lose every game. It added a little extra spice to this game, and I really enjoyed the concept of the Spurs’ win having a sort of vague “win multiplier” attached to it.
- Silly stuff this:
another moment for this one
Vote Spurs ️ https://t.co/0Oa9RiTHZr https://t.co/JW7KkAVkuo pic.twitter.com/7w1QI8JmbZ— San Antonio Spurs (@ spurs) December 20, 2024
WWL Post Game Press Conference:
- Are you concerned at all about the tendency to turn these posts into de facto therapy sessions for you to just sort out your own demons with regard to the Spurs?
- Well, I wouldn’t sat I’m concerned about it. I think I’m pretty comfortable with the notion actually.
- You think that’s what the people want? To sit hear and listen to you complain about the Spurs’ win not being the right kind of win?
- What are you, the Post Police? The people crave my witty dalliances with the inner workings of an unhinged Sports Fan.
- That’s you, though. You are the unhinged Sports Fan. You think that’s healthy?
- No, of course not. Hence the therapy sessions.
- And the people crave this?
- They pay extra for it.
By Charlie Thaddeus, via Pounding The Rock