By Charlie Thaddeus | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2025-01-08 01:39:22
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。
一切都很棒，直到它突然崩塌
我不喜欢这场比赛。不，一点也不喜欢。你知道那种感觉吗？就像……羞愧？但不是为你自己感到羞愧——你为别人感到尴尬，但这感觉如此强烈，以至于你感觉羞愧感在你灵魂深处回荡。我知道“感同身受的尴尬”这个词，但它不足以形容这种感觉。那场失利太残酷了。科比·怀特(Coby White)的扣篮太残酷了。整个经历让我恍惚。我觉得我的灵魂在田野里游荡，仰望夜空，试图弄清楚我此时此刻在宇宙中的位置。
撇开夸张的说法，我们或许可以把这场比赛添加到不断增长的“学习经验”档案中，然后继续我们的生活。多年来，我们一直在强调年轻球队需要学习如何赢球，而这似乎是这支马刺队目前正在努力克服的障碍。没有迹象表明这会永远困扰他们，所以在他们解决这个问题之前，我们其他人只能默默忍受。
我知道这不是一个可以随意拨动的开关，但我相信当他们最终找到解锁方法时，会觉得之前的自己很傻。“什么？你意思是说我们只需要放慢节奏，在防守端别睡着就行了？” 即使这样也过于简化了。事实是，我不知道为什么这种先取得领先然后松懈的模式会不断发生。他们消耗了太多的精力？他们失去了专注力？其他球队摸透了他们的套路？很难说。
这从来都不是单一因素造成的。都是一些小细节的累积。斯蒂芬·卡斯尔(Stephon Castle)突然不再像一个经验丰富的老将。文班亚马(Victor Wembanyama)神奇的logo三分不再命中。德文·瓦塞尔(Devin Vassell)无法填补空缺。凯尔登·约翰逊(Keldon Johnson)和多米尼克·巴恩斯(Dominick Barnes)消失在背景板中。你看，如果我和你都能实时感受到比赛的失控，那么我很确定我们的球员在场上也能感受到。“感受到它”和“做些什么来改变它”之间显然存在脱节，因为现在的反应似乎更像是僵住而不是采取行动。克里斯·保罗(Chris Paul)在场很有意思，因为他就像一个人类晴雨表。你可以从他的肢体语言中读出一切。他在场上几乎变得狂躁——他的整个身体都在震动，大喊着：“加油！比赛还在继续，加油！”警报器响了，水涌了进来，每个人都在试图把它舀出去，然后……
然后，科比·怀特隔扣了你7英尺4英寸的超级巨星，人群沸腾，精彩片段充斥着社交媒体，而你只想躲到角落里，去任何其他地方。这不是输掉篮球比赛的唯一方式，但它非常有效。
我想我们现在每次输球后都会说类似的话，但马刺没问题。他们明显比过去很长一段时间都要出色，现在他们正处在一个伴随着更高期望的领域。现在应该会更难一些。这就是全部，文班在赛后评论中很好地总结了这一点：
“现在，我们应该有更多胜利。但我们配不上更多胜利，因为这就是我们的现状。”
18胜18负。大致上是赛季过半。在季后赛的争夺中。上周末对阵掘金的比赛。圣诞节对阵尼克斯的比赛。昨晚对阵公牛的比赛。这些是马刺需要开始通过的考验，在他们做到之前？
这就是我们的现状。
要点
- 我必须花点时间承认，从纯粹的篮球角度来看，客观上，看着克里斯·保罗试图独自扑灭突然吞噬我们房屋的大火，真的很酷。这是联盟历史上最伟大的球员之一，在他职业生涯的暮年，穿着马刺球衣，在场上以Alpha模式奔跑，几乎成功了。这真是值得一看。我当然希望不要经常看到这种情况，但是，你知道。我想我会试着享受这场奇观。
- 文班在最后时刻悄然消失。这不是一个趋势。它……有点……是一个需要注意的事情。“消失”可能不足以形容这里发生的事情。至少，它不够细致。他在这支球队中扮演着重要的角色，因为他疯狂的球场能力让他能够占据这个空间。他是防守的支柱，也是进攻的焦点。他是球场上的宇宙主宰，你知道，在大概三个季度的时间里，他似乎真的能够胜任这个角色并蓬勃发展。之后事情就变得有点棘手了。其他球队能够更清晰地集中精力攻击他。他们向他投来不同的目光，让他更加努力，并增加了他必须做出的决定的数量。你可以感觉到他在进攻端的难度增加了，他在进攻端越努力，他在防守端就越难为所有人擦屁股。我没有答案！我认为他只是习惯于能够做所有事情，因为从历史上看，他一直能够做到这一点。NBA其他球队似乎都想告诉他：“祝你好运！” 他要么需要更多帮助，要么需要，我不知道，变成一个更像篮球突变体/世界毁灭者的存在。我支持这两种选择。
- 说我们短暂的“完全体马刺”窗口期比我们希望的要短得多，这是一种轻描淡写的说法。我想我们现在都是“可用的”，但在我的眼里，有人受到出场时间限制并不等于“完全体”。这主要只是我为自己找的借口，因为我可以看出杰里米·索汉(Jeremy Sochan)目前还没有完全恢复，而我非常渴望他能够恢复。
- 对小伙子们来说，接下来的赛程有点残酷，对吧？很多客场？很多强队？也有很多时间来解决问题。这看起来不像是一支会沉沦太久的球队。
赛后新闻发布会问答
- 我喜欢你在开篇段落中寻求帮助来识别一种感觉，然后完美地描述了感同身受的尴尬的概念。然后，在承认感同身受的尴尬存在之后，你说，“但不是这样。是别的东西。”
- 嘿，听着，我在寒假期间休息了几个星期，有时很难让老脑子在第一次回来的时候就运转起来。
- 是啊。不过这似乎有点像一个非受迫性失误。你不需要在那里问修辞性问题，你可以直接描述感同身受的尴尬，然后说“看着马刺比赛的结尾，我感到了感同身受的尴尬”。
- 我知道，我本来可以这样做的，但我试图表达的是……我不知道。我的感觉比感同身受的尴尬更糟糕。我看着马刺分崩离析，我感觉就像，你知道，是我在分崩离析而不是他们。
- 再说一遍，这几乎是感同身受的尴尬的逐字逐句的定义。
- 好吧，你已经说明了你的观点。下次我会做得更好，现在我对此无能为力。
- 是的，你可以！你现在正在打字！你还没有把这个发给编辑！还没有人点击发布！你可以去修改它！
- 不，没什么可做的。你活在过去，而我已经把我的躺椅放在了我在未来的新家。我们要去密尔沃基了！
点击查看原文：What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Bulls
What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Bulls
Everything was great, right up until it wasn’t
Didn’t like that. Nope. Not one bit. What’s that thing where you’re, like… ashamed? But not personally ashamed—you’re embarrassed for someone else, yet it hits so hard you feel that shame rattling around in your soul. I know the term secondhand embarrassment exists, but that doesn’t quite feel hefty enough for this. That loss was brutal. That Coby White dunk was brutal. The whole experience left me in a daze. I feel like my soul is just wandering around in a field, staring up at the night sky, trying to figure out my place in the universe right now.
Histrionics aside, we can probably just add this one to the ever-growing “Learning Experience” file and move on with our lives. We’ve been banging the drum about young teams needing to learn how to win for years now, and this seems like a hump this particular Spurs team is banging up against at the moment. There’s no real indication it should stump them forever, so in the meantime, the rest of us are going to have to simply grin and bear it.
I know it’s not a switch that can be flipped, but I’m sure it’ll feel silly when they finally get it unlocked. “What do you mean all we had to do was slow things down and not fall asleep on defense?” Even that is oversimplified, though. The fact is, I don’t know why this pattern of racing out to a lead and then letting off the gas keeps happening. Are they expending too much energy? Are they losing focus? Are other teams figuring them out? Hard to say.
It’s never just one thing. It’s all the little stuff. Castle stops looking like an unreasonably seasoned vet all of a sudden. Wembanyama’s miraculous logo threes stop dropping. Devin can’t pick up the slack. Keldon and Barnes disappear into the background. Look, if you and I can feel it slipping away in real time, then I’m pretty sure our guys can feel it on the court. “Feeling it” and “doing something about it” is obviously where the disconnect is happening, because right now the response seems to be something closer to freezing up instead of taking action. It’s funny having Chris Paul out there because he’s sort of like a human barometer. You can read everything that’s happening in his body language. He gets almost manic out there—his entire being is vibrating, yelling, “LET’S GO. IT’S HAPPENING, LET’S GO!” And the sirens are going off, and the water is rushing in, and everyone is trying to bail it out, and then…
Well. Then Coby White dunks on your 7’4” superstar, the crowd goes nuts, the highlights flood social media, and you just want to slink off into a corner and be anywhere else. It’s not the only way to lose a basketball game, but it’s a pretty effective one.
I think we say something like this after every loss right now, but the Spurs are fine. They are demonstrably better than they’ve been in a long time and are now operating in a territory that comes with higher expectations. It should be a little harder right now. That’s kind of the whole deal, and Victor actually summed it up nicely in his postgame comments:
“Right now, we should have more wins. But we don’t deserve more wins because this is where we are at.”
18-18. Roughly halfway through the season. In the playoff hunt. The Nuggets game last weekend. The Knicks game on Christmas. The Bulls game last night. These are the tests that the Spurs need to start passing and, until they do?
This is where we’re at.
Takeaways
- I have to take a second and admit that, from a pure basketball perspective, it’s objectively pretty cool to watch Chris Paul try to singlehandedly put out a fire that has suddenly engulfed our house**.** This is one of the greatest players in the history of the league, in the twilight of his career, wearing a Spurs jersey, running around out there in Alpha mode and almost pulling it off. It’s a sight to see. I’d certainly like to stop seeing it so often, but, you know. I guess I’ll try to enjoy the spectacle.
- Victor quietly disappearing down the stretch. It’s not a trend. It is… sort of… a thing to keep an eye on, though. “Disappear” is probably too strong a word for what’s happening here anyway. At least, it’s not nuanced enough. He’s a player who assumes a massive role on this team because his insane abilities on the court allow him to occupy that space. He anchors the defense and is a focal point on offense. He’s the master of the universe out there, and for, you know, three quarters or so, it seems like he can really live in that role and flourish. Things get a little trickier after that. Other teams are able to focus their attack on him with more clarity. They throw different looks his way, make him work harder, and ramp up the number of decisions he has to make. You can feel the degree of difficulty go up for him on offense, and the harder he has to work there, the more difficult it is for him to mop up after everyone on defense. I don’t have any answers here! I think he’s just used to being able to do everything because, historically speaking, he’s been able to pull that off. The rest of the NBA seems intent on telling him, “good luck with that!” He either needs a little more help, or he needs to, I don’t know, become even more of a basketball mutant/destroyer of worlds. I’m here for either option.
- To say that our brief window of being “Full Strength Spurs” was significantly briefer than we would’ve liked is an understatement. I guess we’re all “available,” but having people on minutes restrictions doesn’t equal “full strength” in my eyes. This is mostly just an excuse for me to say that I can tell Jeremy Sochan isn’t all the way right at the moment, and I’m pretty desperate for him to get there.
- Bit of a brutal stretch of schedule here for the boys, yeah? Lot of travel? Lot of good teams? Lot of time to figure things out, too. This doesn’t seem like a group that’s going to stay down for too long.
WWL Post Game Press Conference
- I like that in your opening paragraph, you ask for help identifying a feeling and then describe in perfect detail the concept of secondhand embarrassment. Then, after acknowledging that secondhand embarrassment exists, you go, “it’s not that though. It’s something else.”
- Hey, look, I’ve been off for a few weeks during winter break, it’s sometimes hard to get the old Brain Worms firing on the first time back.
- Yea. Seems like a bit of an unforced error though. You didn’t need the construct of asking the rhetorical question in there, you could’ve just described secondhand embarrassment and gone with that and been like, “Watching the end of the Spurs game, I felt secondhand embarrassment.”
- I know, I could’ve done that, but I’m trying to get across that like…I don’t know. What I felt was worse than secondhand embarrassment. I was watching the Spurs fall apart and I felt like, you know, it was me who was falling apart instead of them.
- Again, that’s almost word for word, the definition of secondhand embarrassment.
- Fine, you made your point. I’ll do better next time, there’s nothing I can do about it now.
- Yes there is! You’re typing this right now! You haven’t sent this in to the editors! No one has hit publish! You can go fix it!
- Nope, nothing to be done. You’re living in the past and I’ve set my lawn chair up at my new house in the future. We’re on to Milwaukee!
By Charlie Thaddeus, via Pounding The Rock