By Devon Birdsong | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2025-04-15 08:14:08
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。
关于耐力、终结和必然性
教我如何投篮的男人，出生在奥斯卡·罗伯特森(Oscar Robertson)之后一个月。他的名字叫查理·戴维斯(Charlie Davis)，与奥斯卡不同，他投篮时完全是平足站立，身体正对着篮筐，将球从臀部猛拉到肩膀上方；这是老派定点投篮近乎柏拉图式的理想状态。
他的投篮弧度很小，但无论从哪个角度看，球似乎总能弹进篮筐。即使我个子更高，他的出手速度也太快了，我很难盖帽。
随着我长大，对篮球这项运动了解得更多，这逐渐变成了一种挫败感。这种投篮方式显然已经过时，但在简单的投篮游戏中却很难克服。查理坚称，自从高中毕业后，他几乎没怎么打过球了，我相信他。他的工作性质决定了他没有太多空闲时间。
查理在很多方面都很老派。他从小接受一种正在衰落的边疆生活方式的熏陶，由那些生活在没有围栏和铁丝网的西部地区的男人抚养长大。他大部分时间都在放牧、工作或打猎。
他更喜欢用黑火药步枪打猎，因为他觉得否则对动物来说是不公平的，而且他的口袋里总是装着某种肉干。在难得的闲暇时光里，他喜欢看西部片。《原野奇侠》是他最喜欢的。
他的工作是一名自雇的社区杂工。这是一个时代的遗迹，那时的小乡村社区恰好在城市承包商和工匠的服务范围之外，这又是一个开始从集体记忆中消退的角色。
早上五点，他起床，处理家务，然后去镇上与其他工匠一起吃早餐和喝咖啡。他们会告诉他那些他们不想做的工作，或者觉得开车去太远的工作，条件是他也会这样做，如果某项工作超出了他的能力范围。
不过，这种情况并不多见。虽然他的大部分收入来自粉刷工作，但他同时拥有木匠、水管工和电工的技能——铺设人行道、铺屋顶，甚至重新连接一座古老教堂的电路，这座教堂仍然有按钮式电灯开关。
多年来，随着查理年纪渐长，附近的城市不断扩张，他的工作逐渐减少，直到最终，随着公司将业务多元化地扩展到更大的城市，个体工匠开始前往乡村寻找工作，他的工作机会也枯竭了。
驱车穿过奥斯汀西部的山丘，听着比尔·舍宁(Bill Schoening)为圣安东尼奥马刺队进行的最后一场电台比赛，我不禁想起了查理。
我记忆中的比尔·舍宁始于2002-2003赛季，也就是他开始解说比赛的第二年。我来到奥斯汀与我的祖父母同住，并开始真正地与我的祖母一起观看马刺队的比赛。
但我有晚上10点必须睡觉的铁律，所以西海岸比赛打到一半，我就不得不收拾东西回房间了。我的失望之情溢于言表。我仰面躺在床上，想象着比赛可能出现的各种情况。
第三次发生这种情况时，我的祖母在走廊里找到了我，递给我她早上散步时用的松下FM/AM手持收音机。
“戴上耳机，比赛结束后再睡”，她用一种假装严厉的语气说道，她的声音严肃，但眼睛却闪闪发光。“它已经设置为1200了，别乱动，用完后放在浴室里。”
戴上耳机，伸展在床垫上，我进入了一个全新的篮球世界。我学会了如何从比尔·舍宁急促、南方化的洋基口音中辨认出球员在球场上的位置，并在此过程中掌握了一些我之前不熟悉的术语。
渐渐地，一切都开始为我打开，我能够根据马刺队的位置和比尔的描述，想象出他们所采用的战术。当我在屏幕上看到他们时，我会在脑海中听到他的节奏。
这是一种跨越距离的工作伙伴关系，比尔提供细节，我的大脑填充其余的画面。我可以看到蒂姆(Tim Duncan)在他的“办公室”里——左侧低位附近就位，大卫·罗宾逊(David Robinson)在肘区寻找空间，马努·吉诺比利(Manu Ginobili)做着他那疯狂的动作，从一条腿摇摆到另一条腿，将高位和低位之间的空间分割开来。
我可以看到这一切，这意义重大，因为其中一些西海岸比赛是对阵湖人队、科比(Kobe Bryant)和沙克(Shaquille O’Neal)的，谁也不想错过这些比赛。
有时我会直接回房间，不想在比赛中被打断。我用这种方式听了很多季后赛，甚至包括一场总决赛。
因为淘气而被早早送上床，我用祖母从祖父的车库里顺来的卡西欧880手持电视的2.3英寸屏幕观看了对阵底特律活塞队的第七场比赛的全部过程。
它的耳机插孔坏了，所以我听了舍宁的解说，这成为了我成年后只要电视解说惹恼我时就会采取的做法。
现在，收音机的信号像多年前一样发出噼啪声，当我上下山去探望我的祖母时，这提醒我，我正在收听的是一种正在衰落的媒介。
比尔的声音中有一种微妙但不寻常的颤抖，他最后时刻的解说让他肾上腺素飙升，多次错误地用晚上的用语来描述比赛（而不是白天的）。
不过，他很快就找到了节奏，不像马刺队，他们被猛龙队狠狠地压制着。在第二节开始几分钟后，我终于驶入了疗养中心的停车场。
在2月20日寒冷的凌晨，我的祖母走到外面去取早报，结果中风了。与格雷格·波波维奇(Gregg Popovich)不同，她在零下30度的天气中躺了半个多小时才被邻居发现。
考虑到所有情况，她的康复情况比预期的要好。她没有丧失说话能力，并且在辅助下可以再次行走。对她来说，真正令人恼火的是：她无法在她的房间里收看马刺队的比赛。
所以，我就在那里，在餐厅里设置电视，准备观看本赛季的最后一场比赛。我们一起走下走廊，来到两把舒适的椅子旁。
她第一次抬头看了看比分，不由自主地嘟囔了一句。
“我不知道为什么”，她道歉说，“但当他们输掉本赛季的最后一场比赛时，我真的很恼火。”
“好吧，还没结束呢”，我回答道，尽量听起来积极一些。我可能比她更希望看到一场胜利。
我们在剩下的第一节和半场比赛中都在谈论马刺队。我们谈到了格雷格·波波维奇的康复，以及维克多·文班亚马(Victor Wembanyama)的血栓，并开玩笑说她对球队的关注如此之深，以至于她的健康状况都与球队的状态同步了。
马刺队一直陪伴着她。从他们来到德州中部的那一刻起，她就一直关注着他们。经历了长子的不幸去世、母亲的阿尔茨海默病、丈夫的悲惨离世——银黑军团一直是她生活中的一个不变的因素。
当然，她对体育之外的更强大的力量抱有信心，但有时更容易在马刺队身上看到进步。经历了潮起潮落，她一直在关注着他们，从“冰人”到“海军上将”，再到邓肯，再到文班。
他们总是通过努力、团队合作和无私来赢得胜利，这是一种与世隔绝的理想化的消遣。
“他们会再次做到的”，她肯定地说。“你看着吧。”
所以，我看了，突然之间，局势开始转变。
在第一节让猛龙队得了74分之后，马刺队打出了压迫性的防守，并在内外线随心所欲地得分。意识到他们对人手不足的猛龙队的阵容优势，马刺队毫不留情地冲击篮筐，在每一次机会中都制造犯规。
随着每一个进球，我的祖母的脸上都洋溢着光彩，欢快的惊叹声仿佛让时光倒流。
她的丈夫过去常常问我，是什么让人们如此热衷于观看体育比赛。她的热情真诚地让他感到困惑，我从来没有觉得我对这个问题有一个好的回答。其中一些东西是基本的，难以表达的。
但现在，在一个时代的终结之际，我感觉我找到了答案：它从根本上来说是关于分享经验，分享记忆，而不是其他任何东西。
老一代正在逐渐退出舞台。比尔·兰德(Bill Land)、比尔·舍宁、格雷格·波波维奇，我的祖母。
终结的结局即将到来，延迟了十年，在回顾中才向我们显现，因为这就是我们处理它的方式。“三巨头”早已退役。大卫·罗宾逊很快就要六十岁了。年龄正在让位于青春，我不确定我是否喜欢这样。
我记得我的祖父母试图向我解释广播剧的吸引力。他们出生在大萧条时期，电视还没有出现——广播是至高无上的。我们一起听《草原之家伙伴》，我终于明白了其中的含义，但不是以他们的方式，因为意义取决于记忆，有些记忆对他们来说意义重大，但对我来说却不是。
我希望有一天我会发现自己以同样的方式向孙子孙女解释篮球广播的吸引力。
比尔·舍宁作为电台播音员的结束并不是篮球广播的终结。只是感觉是这样，因为我第一次看到了终结。一个年轻人会取代他的位置，我不可避免地会抱怨这件事。但时间比我们想象的要近，这总是令人不安。
随着地貌的持续萎缩，使用广播的人会越来越少。比赛将变得更加容易观看，GPS导航将取代行驶中的交通信息，而新闻已经进入了我们的手机。FM DJ将让位于播放列表，最终我们都会发现自己向后代讲述我们在广播中听到的热门歌曲，以及我们收听的电台。
查理·戴维斯中风后，我也去看望了他几次，中风结束了他的工作生涯。我最后一次见到他时，他正在看《原野奇侠》。
我第一次，结局像一道闪电一样击中了我。
我终于明白了这对他的意义，他是由那些记得牛群小径，并在漫长的征程中将牲畜赶往东部铁路货运站的人抚养长大的。
我一直以为他觉得自己像肖恩，一个正在衰落的美国西部的象征。相反，我意识到，他觉得自己像追逐他的那个男孩。
看着我的祖母看着马刺队在第四节赢得比赛，我也有同样的感觉。
我第一次敏锐地意识到末日即将来临，而且我现在知道为什么我会继续观看马刺队的比赛。
无论输赢，我知道在某种程度上，我会在未来的岁月里继续观看，为了那些让我想起球员的动作，那些让我想起人的动作，那些让我想起那一刻的动作。
那孤独的打板投篮，带我回到蜷缩在祖母身边的沙发上，看着蒂姆·邓肯以四双的成绩终结篮网队的比赛的时刻。
那欧洲步，带我回到她偷偷地递给我那台迷你电视，同时用温暖而压低声音的眼神看着我的时刻，这样我就不会错过与她分享这一时刻的机会。
那个发球战术，让我想起去年三月在奥斯汀的那场比赛，以及我们俩都默默地意识到这将是她最后一次亲临现场观看比赛的那一刻，以及随之而来的那次非常私人的交流。
“谢谢你一直陪我看体育比赛。”
“这是我一生中最美好的乐趣之一。”
现在是第四节结束的时候了，我可以看出她很疲惫，但我也知道在她比赛结束之前，她不可能离开那张椅子。她现在在问问题，这是她从来没有做过的，因为她总是相信自己70多年观看篮球的经验。
那是凯尔登(Keldon Johnson)吗？多伦多那家伙犯规了吗？现在是谁的球？
在两分钟左右的时候，斯蒂芬·卡斯尔(Stephon Castle)突破了多伦多队的防守，投进了一个11英尺的漂移球，同时造成了犯规，这给了马刺队喘息的空间，而他们不会放弃这个优势。
没有人搀扶，我的祖母站了起来。这让我们俩都感到惊讶。
当她缓缓地坐回椅子上时，她看着我，眼睛闪闪发光。
“他真的越来越好了，不是吗？”
“是的”，我回答道，我的心像一个没有经验的聚会小丑手中的气球动物一样扭曲，“他确实越来越好了。”
收获
- 拥有克里斯·保罗(Chris Paul)在球队中意义重大，但我认为哈里森·巴恩斯(Harrison Barnes)对这支球队的老将影响同样重要。当然，即使他被国王队不光彩地抛弃了，他的合同也物有所值，国王队就是无法摆脱自身的局限。巴恩斯不仅仅是打满了本赛季的全部82场比赛，更重要的是他给每场比赛都带来了努力、激情和无私。他是本赛季我最喜欢的非文班的马刺球员，我希望PATFO能与他续约。他拥有你想要的角色球员的一切，而且他的努力似乎具有感染力。
- 拥有比永博(Bismack Biyombo)这样一位真正的老将中锋固然不错，但我真诚地希望马刺队能利用这个休赛期来加强他们的内线轮换。即使在文班健康的时候，由于缺乏一个能够保护篮筐的替补，也导致了防守的彻底崩溃，并破坏了第一阵容所取得的任何进攻收益。我个人希望他们能在选秀大会上用亚特兰大的选秀权来解决这个问题，因为有很多有前途的选择预计会在首轮末段被选中。我的选择是来自圣约瑟夫大学的拉希尔·弗莱明(Rasheer Fleming)，他是一位多才多艺的威胁者，有能力打4号位和5号位，并且已经展现出了一些在外线投篮的潜力。
- 我很高兴看到布兰哈姆(Malaki Branham)和韦斯利(Blake Wesley)在过去的几场比赛中表现出色，但我不知道他们是否做得足够好，以至于如果PATFO在选秀大会上选择另一名年轻后卫，他们就不会被取代。然而，保罗可能离开，以及第二阵容中缺乏其他后卫，最终可能会让他们在合同的最后一年得到一些出场时间。我仍然不认为他们中的任何一个能够进入轮换阵容，但我希望他们能证明我是错的。
- 在某个时候，你会想知道圣安东尼奥的管理层更看重谁，凯尔登·约翰逊还是德文·瓦塞尔(Devin Vassell)。瓦塞尔拥有过多的投篮技巧，但缺乏情境多样性，需要大量的投篮才能找到节奏，而且似乎没有像约翰逊那样奠定基调。凯尔登尽管在投篮和防守方面存在缺陷，但无论他扮演什么角色，都能带来真正的爆发力，而且是这场比赛中扭转局面的重要组成部分，无论出于什么原因，他都不会退缩。在某个时候，马刺队可能会将其中一人交易出去，我很好奇他们更看重什么。
本场比赛的主题曲：
Rush乐队的Time Stand Still
点击查看原文：What we learned from the Spurs win over the Raptors
What we learned from the Spurs win over the Raptors
On endurance, endings, and eventualities
The man who first showed me how to shoot a basketball was born just a month after Oscar Robertson. His name was Charlie Davis, and unlike Oscar, he shot the ball completely flat footed, his body squared to the basket, pulling the ball sharply from his hip to just above his shoulder; the near-platonic ideal of an old-school set shot.
There was precious little arc to the shot, and yet it seemed to bank its way into the hoop no matter the angle. Even if I had been taller, the release was so quick it would have been hard for me to block it.
As I grew older and learned more about the game of basketball, it became a point of frustration. It was so obviously antiquated, and yet so hard to overcome in a simple game of horse. Charlie insisted he hadn’t played much since high school, and I believed him. The nature of his work left little room for it.
Charlie was old-fashioned in a lot of ways. A child raised in the ways of a fading frontier, by men of a west without fences and wire, he spent most of his days ranching, working, or hunting.
He preferred to hunt with black powder rifles because he felt it wasn’t sporting to the animals to do otherwise, and he always seemed to have some kind of jerky in one of his pockets. On the rare occasion that he had nothing to do, he loved to watch westerns. Shane was his personal favorite.
For work, he was a self-employed community journeyman. A relic of a time when small country communities fell just outside the reach of city contractors and tradesmen, it’s another role that’s beginning to fade from collective memory.
At five in the morning, he’d get up, handle chores around the house, and then make his way into town for breakfast and coffee with a group of other tradesmen. They would give him news of work they didn’t want, or felt was just too far to drive for, with the understanding that he’d do the same if a job seemed to be beyond his scope.
Not much was, though. While he made the bulk of his living on painting jobs, he had the skill-sets of a master carpenter, plumber, and electrician as well — laying down sidewalks, shingling roofs, and even rewiring the electrical workings of a church so old that it still had push-button light switches.
Over the years, as Charlie aged and the nearby cities sprawled, the jobs slowed to a trickle, until finally, as corporations diversified their way into the trades in larger municipalities, individual tradesmen began making their way out into the country to find work, and the jobs dried up.
Driving through the western hills of Austin, listening to Bill Schoening call his last radio game for the San Antonio Spurs, I couldn’t help but think of Charlie.
The Bill Schoening of my memory starts back in the 2002-2003 season, just a year after he started calling games. I’d come to Austin to live with my grandparents and had begun to really and truly watch the Spurs with my grandmother.
But I had an ironclad 10 o’clock bedtime, so halfway through West Coast games I had to pack it in and go to my room. My disappointment could not have been more apparent. I lay flat on my back in my bed, imagining all the ways the game could be going.
The 3rd time this happened, my grandmother met me in the hallway and handed me the Panasonic FM/AM handheld radio she used while walking in the morning.
“Use your headphones, and go to bed after it’s over”, she said in a tone of mock severity, her voice serious as her eyes twinkled. “It’s already set to 1200, so don’t fiddle with it, and leave it in the bathroom when you’re done.”
With my headphones in, stretched out across my mattress, I entered a whole new world of basketball. I learned how to recognize where players were on the court from the urgent, southernized Yankee register of Bill Schoening’s voice, picking up terminology I had been unfamiliar with in the process.
Little by little, things began to open up for me, as I was able to visualize sets that I’d seen the Spurs in based on their location and Bill’s description. When I saw them on the screen, I’d hear his cadence in my head.
It was a kind of working partnership across the distance, with Bill supplying details and my head filling in the rest of the picture. I could see Tim setting up in his office just outside the left block, David Robinson finding space at the elbows, Manu Ginobili doing that crazy thing where he sashayed from one leg to the other as he split the space between the high post and low post.
I could see it all, which was a big deal because some of those West Coast games came against the Lakers and Kobe and Shaq, and no one wanted to miss those.
Sometimes I would just go straight to my room, not wanting to be interrupted in the middle of a game. I listened to a number of playoff games that way, and even a championship.
Sent to bed early for malfeasance, I watched the entirety of Game 7 against the Detroit Pistons on the 2.3-inch screen of the Casio 880 Handheld TV my grandmother had nicked from my grandfather’s garage.
The headphone jack on it didn’t work, so I listened to Schoening instead, something I’d carry into my adult life whenever the television commentary irked me.
Now, the radio reception crackled as it had all those years ago, as I ascended and descended the hills on the drive to see my grandmother, reminding me that I was listening to a medium on the decline.
There was a subtle but uncharacteristic shakiness in Bill’s voice as the adrenaline of his finals calls caused him to mistakenly refer to the game in evening (rather than daytime) terms on multiple occasions.
He found his rhythm quickly, though, unlike the Spurs, who the Raptors were soundly stomping. Minutes into the second quarter, I finally pulled into the parking lot of the skilled nursing center.
In the frigid early morning hours of February 20th, my grandmother had walked out to pick up the morning paper and suffered a stroke. Unlike Gregg Popovich, she lay there for over half an hour in sub-30-degree weather before a neighbor found her.
All things considered, her recovery has been going better than expected. She hadn’t lost the power of speech and was walking again with assistance. For her, there was really one point of major vexation: she couldn’t get Spurs games in her room.
So, there I was, setting up the TV in the dining room for the last game of the season. We walked down the hallway together, and into a pair of comfortable chairs.
She looked up at the score for the first time and let out an involuntary minor swear.
“I don’t know why”, she said, by way of apology, “but it just really bothers me when they lose the last game of the season.”
“Well, it’s not over yet”, I replied, trying to sound positive. I wanted to see a win for her perhaps more than even she did.
We spent the rest of the quarter and the half talking about the Spurs. We talked about Gregg Popovich’s recovery, and Victor Wembanyama’ s blood clots, and joked that she was so locked into the team that even her health was mirroring theirs.
They’d always been there for her, the Spurs. From the moment they’d made their way to Central Texas, she’d followed them. Through the untimely loss of her oldest son, the Alzheimer’s of her mother, the tragic passing of her husband – there had always been a constant in the Silver and Black.
To be sure, she had faith in a greater power than sports, but it could sometimes be easier to see progress with the Spurs. Through ebb and flow, she’d watched them, from Iceman, to Admiral, to Duncan, to Wemby.
Always they won through hard work, and team play, and unselfishness, an idealized distraction from the world at large.
“They’ll do it again”, she said with certainty. “You watch.”
So, I did, and suddenly the tide began to turn.
After giving up seventy-four points to the Raptors in the first half, the Spurs were playing swarming defense and scoring at will inside and outside. Recognizing their roster advantage over the shorthanded Raptors, the Spurs were driving relentlessly at the hoop, forcing fouls at every opportunity.
With each bucket, my grandmother’s face lit up, gleeful exclamations turning back the years.
Her husband used to ask me what it was that so attached people to the spectating of sports. Her enthusiasm genuinely confounded him, and I never felt like I had a good response for the inquiry. Something about it is elemental, and hard to express.
But now, at the end of an era, I felt like I had an answer: that it is, at its core, about the sharing of experience, of memory, more than anything else.
The old guard is shuffling out. Bill Land, Bill Schoening, Gregg Popovich, my grandmother.
The finality of the end is arriving, ten years in delay, dawning on us in retrospect because that’s the way that we process it. The Big Three are long retired. David Robinson will soon be sixty years old. Age is giving way to youth, and I’m not sure that I like it.
I can remember my grandparents trying to explain to me the appeal of the radio drama. Born into the Great Depression, the television was yet to come for them – the radio reigned supreme. We listened to A Prairie Home Companion together, and I finally grasped the meaning, but not in the way they did, because meaning is dependent on memory, and there were memories that meant things to them that were never mine.
I expect I’ll one day find myself explaining the appeal of basketball on the radio to a grandchild in the same manner.
Bill Schoening’s end as radio announcer isn’t the end of basketball on the radio. It just feels that way, because for the first time I can see the end. Someone young will take his place, and I’ll inevitably grumble about it. But the time is closer than we think, and that’s always unnerving.
Fewer and fewer people will use the radio as the landscape continues to shrink. The games will become even more accessible, GPS navigation will replace drive-time traffic, and news has already made its way to our phones. FM DJs will give way to playlists, and eventually we’ll all find ourselves telling our progeny about the hits we heard on the radio, and the stations we listened to.
I visited Charlie Davis several times after he, too, suffered a stroke that ended his working life. The last time that I saw him, he was watching Shane again.
For the first time, the ending hit me like a thunderclap.
I finally understood what it meant to him, a man who’d been raised by men who remembered cattle trails and who’d herded livestock on long drives to the rail-heads that would ship them all east.
I’d always assumed he’d felt like Shane, a symbol of a fading American West. Instead, I realized, he felt like the boy chasing after him.
Watching my grandmother watch the Spurs pull out a 4th quarter win, I felt the same way.
For the first time, I’m acutely aware that the end is near, and I know now why I will continue to watch the Spurs.
Win or lose, I know that on some level I will keep watching over the years for the play that reminds me of the player, that reminds me of the person, that reminds me of the moment.
The lonely bank-shot that takes me back to watching Tim Duncan close out the Nets with a quadruple-double while I’m curled up on the couch next to my grandmother.
The euro-step that takes me back to the moment that she furtively handed me that mini-television with a warm yet silencing look, so that I wouldn’t miss out on sharing the moment with her.
The inbound play that reminds me of the one in Austin from March of last year, and the moment we both wordlessly recognized that it would be her last in-person game, and the deeply personal exchange that came with it.
“Thank you for always watching sports with me.”
“It’s been one of the great pleasures of my life.”
It was the end of the fourth now, and I could tell she was tiring, but I also knew there was no chance she’d leave that chair until the game was over. She was asking questions now, something she never did, having always trusted her 70+ years of watching basketball.
Was that Keldon again? Did that Toronto fellow foul him? Whose ball is it?
Right around the two-minute mark, Stephon Castle burst through Toronto’s defense and dropped a floating 11-footer into the bucket while drawing a foul to give the Spurs the breathing room they wouldn’t relinquish.
Unassisted, my Grandmother stood up. It took us both by surprise.
As she eased herself back down into her chair, she looked over at me, eyes aglow.
“He’s really getting better, isn’t he?”
“Yeah”, I replied, my heart contorting like a balloon animal in the hands of an inexperienced party clown, “he’s definitely getting better.”
Takeaways
- As big a deal as it has been having Chris Paul on the team, I’d be willing to argue that Harrison Barnes has been just as important a veteran influence on this team. Certainly, he’s been worth every penny of his contract despite being unceremoniously offloaded by a Kings organization that just cannot get out of their own way. It’s not just that Barnes played all 82 games this season, but the degree of effort, and fire, and unselfishness he’s brought with him to every single contest. He’s been my favorite non-Wemby Spur this season, and I’d love to see PATFO extend him. He everything you want in a role-player, and his effort appears to be contagious.
- As nice as it’s been having an actual veteran center in Bismack Biyombo, I sincerely hope the Spurs use this off-season to shore up their big man rotation. Even when Wemby was healthy, the lack of a rim-defending backup caused the defense to absolutely crater and undermine any offensive gains made by the first unit. Personally, I’d love to see them address this in the draft with the Atlanta pick, as there are a number of promising options projected for the latter part of the 1st round. My pick would be Rasheer Fleming out of St. Joseph’s, who profiles as a versatile menace capable of playing both the 4 and the 5, and has shown some promise shooting from outside.
- As happy as I was to see Branham and Wesley play solidly over the last couple of games, I just don’t know that they’ve done enough not to be usurped by another young guard if PATFO opt for one in the draft. However, the probable exit of Paul, and the lack of other guards in the 2nd unit may end up seeing them get some run in the last year of their contracts. I still don’t see either of them being able to break into the rotation, but I’m rooting for them to prove me wrong.
- At some point, you have wonder who San Antonio brass values more, Keldon Johnson, or Devin Vassell. Vassell has an overflow of shooting skill, but lacks situational versatility, requiring a lot of shots to get in rhythm, and doesn’t appear to set the tone in the same way that Johnson does. Keldon, in spite of shooting and defensive flaws, brings a real burst of energy regardless of his role and was a huge part of the comeback in this one, refusing to back down for any reason. At some point, the Spurs are probably going to have to ship one or the other out in a trade, and I’m curious to see what they value more.
Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:
Time Stand Still by Rush
By Devon Birdsong, via Pounding The Rock
