By Charlie Thaddeus | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2025-03-27 01:28:11
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。
一段萌芽中的连胜被粗暴地扼杀了
距离桑德罗·马穆克拉什维利(Sandro Mamukelashvili)恢复我对篮球，马刺，以及坦率地说，对生活本身的信心还不到一周，我却发现自己又深陷泥潭。什么泥潭？绝望的泥潭。你穿着没洗过的连帽衫，上面沾满了不明零食残渣，质疑自己理智的泥潭。这是一个糟糕的泥潭，我发现自己身陷其中。但是！我向自己，也向各位读者保证，我会振作起来，努力享受马刺队比赛的最后几周。所以，请握住我的手，和我一起来吧。让我们一起爬出这个泥潭。
不要留在泥潭的五大理由
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德文·瓦塞尔(Devin Vassell)的表现更好了。 确实如此！我能感觉到怀疑主义已经从四面八方渗透出来，但请耐心听我说。在过去的一个月左右的时间里，他场均接近20分，此外还展示了一些更具活力的组织能力，我们都希望这能成为德文·瓦塞尔整体体验的一部分。也许只是因为我们的一些更耀眼的球星缺席了，但他最近似乎悄悄地变得更加自信、稳定和多才多艺。昨晚就是一个他能成为什么类型球员的完美例子。他效率高、有侵略性，并且左右逢源。你可能会争辩说，这场比赛的结果证明了一个“好”的德文·瓦塞尔所能带来的上限，但如果抱着这样的态度，你不可能很快爬出泥潭，不是吗？就目前而言，他似乎回到了昔日的自己，这足以让我们乐观。马刺不需要德文成为维克托的第二把手，他们只需要他成为一个相当不错的角色球员。
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我们仍然可以观看克里斯·保罗(Chris Paul)为马刺队效力。 如果你仍然无法放下任何潜在的对CP的憎恨，那么“可以观看”可能有点夸张。但事情是这样的——抛开偏见，这家伙是个传奇。他是那种无论何时讨论篮球比赛，人们都会永远谈论的人。他不仅仅是一位名人堂成员，更是这个时代篮球运动的奠基人。我们能够日复一日地看到他身穿马刺球衣，代表圣安东尼奥，这真的很酷。他并没有把这当成一次退役巡游，而是全力以赴，这更加令人惊叹。我不知道如果没有克里斯·保罗，马刺这个赛季会是什么样子，但我可以大胆猜测答案会在“更糟”和“天啊”之间。这甚至还没有考虑到我们从这次“居住”中获得的长期利益。他能够传授给我们冉冉升起的新星们的智慧几乎是无法量化的。我认为没有克里斯·保罗在更衣室里，“斯蒂芬·卡斯尔(Stephon Castle)的年度最佳新秀竞选”这样的说法是不存在的。这是一份礼物，我们应该珍惜它。
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既然说到了“斯蒂芬·卡斯尔的年度最佳新秀竞选”，那斯蒂芬·卡斯尔的年度最佳新秀竞选怎么样呢？ 这是一个我们没有预料到的有趣的惊喜，不是吗？我的意思是，我认为我们在选秀时都喜欢这个选择。也许我们甚至很喜欢！但我知道我没有预料到会这样。我认为他会很棒，我认为他会短暂地展现出他未来的潜力，同时他会学习经验，并在联盟中站稳脚跟。但他却直接决定变得伟大？这太疯狂了。除了在数据上表现出色之外，每晚观看他的比赛也是一种享受。他运动能力超强，并且打球时带着一种充满力量和无畏的精神，我怎么看都看不够。马刺队里有一个经常在人群中完成精彩扣篮的家伙！我的意思是，如果他只做这些，他仍然是“不要留在泥潭”活动的主要支柱。我们需要抓住这个新秀赛季的每一秒，因为它感觉很重要。我们正在实时见证一些特别的事情发生。
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桑德罗·马穆克拉什维利。你必须离开泥潭，因为马穆可能会再次向我们展示一些魔法。你不能错过马穆之夜！ 我在开玩笑。我的意思是，不完全是，但也差不多。虽然你应该百分之百地随时警惕马穆之夜的到来，但他一个人并不是你离开泥潭的理由。然而，马穆和他其他的队友绝对是你锁定到最后的原因。比如布雷克·韦斯利和朱利安·尚帕尼。 马拉基·布兰纳姆。诸如此类。这些都是我非常喜欢的球员，而且，如果我们对自己诚实的话，他们可能不会继续和我们一起登上山顶。他们是优秀的球员。他们是优秀的马刺球员。他们正在为这支球队付出努力，我认为我们需要花时间和空间来欣赏和尊重他们。这一切都是我们身处的更大的、更广阔的NBA生态系统的一部分，这是一个需要掌握的重要视角。
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这都不重要！ 听我说，但我认为在我们的生活中多一些低风险或零风险的篮球比赛对我们有好处。我以为我已经准备好重返赛场了。我想要烟雾、闪光灯、备受瞩目的对决以及随之而来的一切。我仍然想要这些，而且我仍然对我们必须等待感到沮丧，但有时宇宙真的很擅长给你你需要的东西，而不是你想要的东西。如果我们现在正在为季后赛做准备，我肯定会一团糟。我会为那些可能根本不会发生的比赛而烦恼。我会充满压力地听那些我甚至不喜欢的NBA播客，只是因为他们可能会说一些关于马刺队的事情，我可以用力地点头表示同意，或者强烈地认为这是没有根据的胡说八道。那种生活即将到来，我不知道我们是否准备好了。我们必须进入状态。开始吃得更好，生活得更干净。也许开始冥想？我不知道，我们会想办法的。但我想说的是，我们应该享受像周二晚上被活塞队击垮这样的比赛。为什么？因为他们巧妙地将我们拆散（而且是在他们最好的球员缺席的情况下），但这……并不重要。输了26分？就像什么都没发生过一样。令人尴尬的篮球表现？也许吧。谁知道呢。我已经释怀了。你也可以！我们都可以！这场比赛不重要！多么幸运。我们看了一场篮球比赛，然后继续我们的生活。你怎么可能在这种美好的一天里还躺在泥潭里呢？离开泥潭吧！
WWL 赛后新闻发布会
- 一点点实力排名？这是在线体育评论员的经典套路。
- 是的，我想稍微尝试一下。我当然不想过多地关注昨晚的实际比赛过程，我实话告诉你。
- 天啊，真的有那么糟糕吗？
- 非常糟糕！整个事情基本上在第一节结束时就失控了，而且……是的。我们被托拜厄斯·哈里斯(Tobias Harris)打爆了。如果你在过去的5到6年里稍微关注过NBA，那么托拜厄斯·哈里斯能打爆任何人的想法都应该是非常令人沮丧的。
- 你认为这是一个反常现象吗？还是说之前的连胜才是奇怪的？
- 我不再假装自己知道任何事情。这个赛季的这个阶段有点像暮光之城，每支球队都在以奇怪的不同的方向前进，带着不同的动机和不同的能力。努力？能量？参与度？都非常多变和不稳定，可能还有其他以V开头的词。我唯一确定的事情是，这支特别的马刺队有能力在任何时候击败联盟中的任何一支球队，并且同样有能力输给我和我YMCA的朋友们。
- 你确信马刺队可能会输给你们在YMCA的业余比赛？
- 他们当然有可能。这是暮光之城，伙计。什么都可能发生。
点击查看原文：What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Pistons
What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Pistons
A budding win streak is rudely tossed aside
Not even a week since Sandro Mamukelashvili restored my faith in basketball, the Spurs and, frankly, life itself, I found myself deeply back in the pit. Which pit? The one of despair. The one where you’re languishing around in an unwashed hoodie, covered in unidentifiable snack remnants, questioning your sanity. It’s a bad pit, and I found myself in it. However! I made a pledge to myself and to you, the reader, that I was going to pull it together and try to enjoy these last few weeks of Spurs basketball. So please, take my hand, and come with me. Let’s climb out of this pit together.
Top 5 Reasons not to stay in The Pit
5. Devin Vassell has been playing better. He has! I can feel the skepticism already oozing out of the sides of this one, but bear with me. He’s averaging close to 20 points a game in the last month or so, in addition to showing a little bit more of the dynamic playmaking we’re all sort of counting on being a part of the overall Devin Vassell experience. Maybe it’s just the absence of some of our brighter stars, but he seems to have quietly become a little more confident, consistent, and versatile recently. Last night was a perfect example of the type of player he can be. He was efficient and aggressive and was making plays left and right. You could probably argue that the results of this game are a testament to the limits a “good” Devin Vassell can yield, but an attitude like that isn’t going to get you out of the pit very fast, is it? For now, the fact that he seems to be back to his old self is reason enough for optimism. The Spurs don’t need Devin to be the second banana to Victor, they just need him to be a pretty good banana.
4. We still get to watch Chris Paul play for the Spurs. Maybe “get to” is a bit of a stretch here if you’ve still somehow not managed to let go of any latent CP hate. Here’s the thing though—biases aside, the guy is a legend. He’s one of those dudes that people are just going to be talking about forever whenever the game of basketball is being discussed. He’s not just a Hall of Famer, he’s a foundational player from this era of the game. The fact that we get to see him, night in and night out, wearing a Spurs jersey and representing San Antonio is pretty cool. The fact that he’s kind of balling out, as opposed to just treating this like a retirement cruise, is even more amazing. I have no idea what the Spurs would’ve looked like without him this season, but I can hazard a guess that the answer would range somewhere between “worse” and “yikes.” That’s not even factoring in the benefits we’re going to see from this residency down the line. The wisdom he’s able to impart on our budding crop of players is almost impossible to quantify. I don’t think a sentence like “Steph Castle’s Rookie of the Year campaign” exists without Chris Paul in the locker room. That’s a gift, and we should treat it as such.
3. Speaking of “Steph Castle’s Rookie of the Year campaign,” how about Steph Castle’s Rookie of the Year campaign? That’s a fun little treat we weren’t necessarily expecting, yeah? I mean, I think we all liked the pick when it happened. Maybe we even loved it! But I know I didn’t see this coming. I thought he would be good, and I thought he would show brief glimpses of his future potential while he learned the ropes and got his feet wet in the league. Instead he just decided to be great, straight away? That’s insane. On top of being, you know, statistically good, he’s also an utter joy to watch every night. He’s hyper-athletic and plays with a physicality and fearlessness that I can’t get enough of. The Spurs have a dude throwing down nasty in-traffic dunks with regularity! I mean, shoot, if that’s all he was doing he’d still be a major pillar of the “Don’t Stay in the Pit” campaign. We need to soak up every second of this rookie season because it feels important. We’re watching something special happen in real time.
2. SANDRO MAMUKELASHVILI. YOU GOTTA GET OUT OF THE PIT BECAUSE MAMU MIGHT SHOW US SOME MAGIC AGAIN. YOU CAN’T MISS A MAMU NIGHT! I’m kidding about this one. I mean, not really, but kind of. While you should 1000% always be on alert for a Mamu Night, he alone isn’t a reason to get out of the pit. However, Mamu and the rest of his cohorts are definitely a reason to stay locked in down the stretch. Guys like Blake Wesley and Julian Champagnie. Malaki Branham. Things of that nature. These are guys who I am very fond of and who, if we’re being honest with ourselves, maybe aren’t going to get to continue on the journey up the mountain with us. They’re good players. They’re good Spurs. They are putting in shifts with this team that I think we need to take time and space to appreciate and honor them. It’s all a part of the bigger, wider ecosystem of the NBA that we’re swimming in, and that’s an important perspective to keep a grasp on.
1. None of this matters! OK hear me out on this one, but I think it might be good for us to have some low-to-no stakes basketball in our lives a little bit longer. I thought I was ready to be back in the mix. I wanted the smoke and the bright lights and the high-profile matchups and all the everything that comes with it. I still want that, and I’m still frustrated that we have to wait, but sometimes the universe is really good at giving you things you need instead of things you want. If we were gearing up for the playoffs right now I would be a mess. I’d be sweating matchups that probably aren’t even going to happen. I’d be stress-listening to NBA podcasts I don’t even like just on the off chance they might say something about the Spurs that I can vigorously nod along with or vehemently write off as uninformed nonsense. That life is coming for us, and I don’t know if we’re ready. We gotta get into shape. Start eating better and living cleaner. Maybe start meditating? I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. But my point in all of this is that we should enjoy games like Tuesday night’s dismantling at the hands of the Pistons. Why? Because they deftly pulled us apart (without their best player, mind you) and it just… didn’t matter. 26-point loss? Like it never happened. Embarrassing display of basketball? Maybe. Who could say. I’ve already moved on. You can too! We all can! This game didn’t matter! What a blessing. We got to watch a little basketball and move on with our lives. How could you possibly spend a beautiful day like this languishing in a pit? Get out of the pit!
WWL Post Game Press Conference
- A little power ranking? A classic of the online sports guy genre.
- Yea, I wanted to try it out just a little bit. I certainly didn’t want to look too hard at the actual gameplay from last night, I’ll tell you that much.
- Yikes, was it really that bad?
- It was pretty rough! The whole thing was basically out of pocket by the end of the first half and like… yea. We were getting cooked by Tobias Harris. If you’ve paid even cursory attention to the NBA over the last 5 to 6 years, then the idea that Tobias Harris is doing any cooking of anything should be pretty upsetting.
- Do you think this was an aberration? Or was the little win streak the weird one?
- I’m not going to pretend to know anything anymore. This part of the season is sort of a twilight zone, with every team moving in weird different directions with different motivations and different capabilities on any given night. Effort? Energy? Engagement? All extremely variable and volatile and probably other words that start with V. The only thing I know with any certainty is that this particular Spurs team is capable of beating anyone in the league at any given time and is equally capable of losing to me and my friends down at the Y.
- You know with certainty that the Spurs could lose a pickup game to you and your friends at the Y?
- They certainly could. It’s the twilight zone, bud. Anything could happen.
By Charlie Thaddeus, via Pounding The Rock