By Jared Weiss | The Athletic, 2025-11-06 12:05:46
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。
洛杉矶——无论他走到哪里，都有一整支球队在等着维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama)。防守他的不是一名球员，而是一整套体系。
这种情况也带来了终极的机会。NBA球队梦寐以求的，就是能随心所欲地瓦解对方的防守阵型。而文班亚马每天早上醒来，还没来得及拉开百叶窗，就已经身陷包夹之中。他打球时，默认就要面对双人包夹。
在过去一周，这种防守正在撕裂他与篮球之间的连接。他火热的开季表现正式告一段落。扑灭火焰的方法是将其完全窒息，而各队防守就像一张巨大的毯子，将他牢牢罩住。文班亚马和圣安东尼奥马刺队还没能找到办法，让他从这种防守缠绕中解脱出来。
但他的教练希望他无论如何都要去要球。不只是伸手示意，也不只是挥手要球。即便他迷失在一片紫金色的海洋中，他仍然身在其中，并且仍然应该为夺回属于自己的东西而战。
“他应该对着球馆里的每个人大喊，”马刺队教练米奇·约翰逊 (Mitch Johnson) 说。“包括他的队友和我自己。他会没事的。我们会变得更好。”
文班亚马正面临着他本赛季的第一个十字路口。在以116-118输给由卢卡·东契奇 (Luka Dončić) 领衔的洛杉矶湖人队后，他和马刺队正在思考，他的自我定位该如何与典型的超级巨星心态相融合。文班亚马在季前赛期间专注于组织策应，大部分时间里，除了中锋，他几乎打了所有位置。
常规赛开始后，他回到了低位，但随着联盟掌握了更多关于他的比赛录像，他开始难以适应。约翰逊在周三表示，既然对手开始用更矮但更壮实的球员来防守他，他就必须抵抗住被挤出自己位置的压力。他需要更早地落位，这样球队就有更多的时间来组织进攻。他需要更多地沉肩对抗防守，迫使裁判吹响哨子。
文班亚马可以做很多事情来打得像个超级巨星。但目前的结果与他已经展现出的潜力并不相符。
周三晚上，东契奇出手27次，得到35分。而文班亚马在过去两场比赛中合计出手28次，得到28分。这位马刺队的大个子远非那种定义MVP级别球员的高球权掌控者。
他正在学习如何定义何为“正确的打法”。是接受防守给你的机会，还是迫使防守给你你想要的？
“这比你想象的要难，”文班亚马上个月告诉The Athletic。“有时候，说起来容易做起来难。但真正的挑战就在于此，一遍又一遍地做好那些简单的事情。”
文班亚马的成熟超越了他的年龄。很少有21岁的年轻人能处理好强加在他们身上的同等压力和责任。不——是他们自己赢得的。
他并非那种一场比赛被喂球100次，只希望他万一接到球后能知道该怎么做的人。他已经证明了自己清楚地知道想要什么。但他正在学习要得到它有多么困难。球星和体系之间必须有良好的连接才能解决这个问题。
但现在，这种连接还不存在。
“就我个人而言，我从未见过球队采用这样的防守方式，”文班亚马说。“我们需要作为一个集体去适应，很明显，我们对阵菲尼克斯太阳队时（进攻）也打得很糟糕。……我们有时会陷入停滞。所以我们正在学习，我们会学到的。”
这需要他去学习如何对抗各种防守覆盖和比赛计划。这需要约翰逊围绕他来调整全队。这需要他的队友们利用对手防守他时露出的空当。他必须习惯包夹来得有多快。后卫们需要知道如何保护好球，并在他身边足够快地做出决策，从而让进攻流畅起来。
目前来看，这套体系运转不畅，这表明围绕文班亚马的战术太过容易被预测。
“真的，没什么可担心的，”文班亚马说。“感觉比赛节奏很快。随着我们作为一支球队和个人都变得更好，对手在防守端的强度也相应提升了。在某种程度上，我觉得现在的比赛节奏很快。”
当文班亚马处于无球状态时，他面对的防守球员比NBA几乎任何人都多。防守方总是想用最大的力量去挤压他，这意味着在他到高位时顶他一下，如果他切入低位，再顶他一下。
太阳队完全贯彻了这一比赛计划，在禁区周围基本摆出了一个箱形联防：当文班亚马到达罚球线时，一名防守球员会去冲撞他，如果他继续内切，另一名防守球员会在低位等着他。那场比赛后，文班亚马说，很明显太阳队在赛前投篮训练时，一直在演练如何应对马刺队给他传球的各种方式。
这种策略的目的，既是为了在整场比赛中不断消耗文班亚马的体能，也是为了确保他永远无法获得任何顺下冲击篮筐的机会。当防守方有几个高大的侧翼可以依靠身体对抗他，还有一些后卫既能在他处于低位时下手抢断，又能在他在移动中时轮转换位制造进攻犯规，这使得他面前有太多防守球员，让他无法找到节奏。
“感觉有时候你就是需要退后一步，审视自己所做的一切，看看自己是如何进步的，并试着预判接下来会发生什么，”他说。“因为防守不会变得更软弱或更容易。”
这又回到了文班和马刺队对他身份定位的理解上。关于如何最好地使用他，似乎还缺乏确定性。他在十月份证明了，在开阔场地中他极具破坏力，并且可以在任何他想出手的地方投篮。现在，他却花费了太多精力在低位争抢位置，以至于他的出手机会常常看起来像是一个无奈之下的结果。
本赛季，他的三分球出手与罚球出手比例发生了戏剧性的反转，看起来他似乎忘记了何时以及为何要投三分。去年，文班亚马为了将自己培养成一名射手而经常出手三分，但今年为了发展组织策应能力而放弃了它们。
有时，他让比赛看起来像是队内训练赛，是他磨练那些注定将改写这项运动的技术的练习场。他看起来像是在为未来而战，为那个假想中的文班和理想化的马刺队而战。但他也必须继续培养自己的杀手本能。
如今有很多关于控球后卫必须学会寻找自己投篮机会的讨论，这样他们才能吸引足够的防守注意力，从而使他们的传球富有成效。这正是他常常看起来忽略的一课，而他的教练在赛后的评论中也明确表示，这个问题需要得到解决。
但公开的讨论与他们的秘密计划是并行不悖的。
对于文班亚马能成为什么样的球员，他们有一个宏大而细致的构想。我们知道其大致轮廓。但那些能将他从伟大推向最伟大的细节，那些微小的元素，仍然属于机密。
“我不会全盘托出，因为我们还有对手和媒体要面对，”文班亚马告诉The Athletic。“但我们有一个方向，那就是成为一个多维度的球员、团队型球员和组织者。”
文班亚马在周三赛后对逆境表示欢迎，他说他和球队需要在真实的比赛中经历这些挣扎的历练才能成长。他在这个休赛期做了大量工作来模拟压力，但这终究只是模拟。为不可预测性做准备总有其局限性，他现在正看到赛后复盘中有多少工作要做。
成长不是线性的。在NBA更是远非如此。赛季就像不断扩大的同心圆一样向前滚动，伴随着不断的调整和重新评估。这是你想要的和你得到的之间持续的推拉。马刺队现在没有得到他们想要的，必须重回战术板前。
“但万事皆同理，生活也是如此，”文班亚马说。“我们要么做出回应，要么无动于衷。而我们，会做出回应。”
点击查看原文：Victor Wembanyama, Spurs need to solve swarming defenses that have slowed him down
Victor Wembanyama, Spurs need to solve swarming defenses that have slowed him down
LOS ANGELES — Wherever he goes, Victor Wembanyama has a whole team waiting for him. He is not defended by one player. He is defended by an entire organization.
The situation presents the ultimate opportunity. NBA teams dream of bending defenses to their will. Wembanyama wakes up in the morning and gets doubled before he can open his blinds. He plays with a default double.
That has been tearing at the fabric of the connection between him and the ball this past week. His hot start is officially over. You put out a fire by smothering it, and defenses have been throwing a blanket over him. Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs have not figured out how to free him from the defensive entanglement.
But his coach wants him to demand the ball anyway. Not just ask for it. Not just wave for it. Even when he’s lost in a sea of purple jerseys, he’s still in there and he still should be fighting to get what’s his.
“He should yell at everybody in the gym,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “Including his teammates and myself. He’ll be fine. We’ll be better.”
Wembanyama is facing his first crossroads of the season. After losing 118-116 to Luka Dončić’s Los Angeles Lakers, he and the Spurs are figuring out how his ego juxtaposes with the typical superstar mindset. Wembanyama spent the preseason fixated on playmaking, spending most of his minutes playing every role besides center.
Once the regular season started, he moved back to the post and has struggled to adapt as the league got more tape to work with. Johnson said Wednesday that he needs to resist getting pushed off his spot now that teams are guarding him with smaller but stouter players. He needs to get to his position earlier so they have more clock to work with. He needs to drop a shoulder into the defense more and force the refs to use their whistles.
There are so many things Wembanyama can do to play like a superstar. But the results don’t line up with the potential he’s already demonstrated.
Dončić took 27 shots en route to 35 points Wednesday night. Wembanyama has 28 points on 28 shots in his last two games combined. The Spurs’ big man is far from the kind of usage king that defines MVP-caliber players.
He’s learning how to define what makes the right play. Take what the defense gives you or force the defense to give you what you want?
“It’s harder than you think,” Wembanyama told The Athletic last month*.* “Sometimes, things are easier said than done. But this is where the real challenge is, doing the simple things over and over again.”
Wembanyama is mature beyond his years. Few 21-year-olds could handle the same pressure and responsibility foisted upon them. No — earned by them.
He isn’t getting the ball thrown at him 100 times a game in hopes he might know what to do if he manages to catch it. He’s demonstrated he has a clear idea of what he wants. But he’s learning how hard it is to get it. There has to be a good connection between star and system to account for that.
It’s not there right now.
“Personally, I haven’t seen this kind of defense from teams,” Wembanyama said. “We need to adapt as a collective, and obviously, our (offense) was bad against Phoenix as well. … We got stalled out some times. So we’re learning. We’re going to learn.”
That’s on him to learn how to fight coverages and game plans. It’s on Johnson to get the team aligned around him. It’s on his teammates to take advantage of the gaps they’re yielding. He has to get used to how quickly the double teams are coming. The guards need to know how to take care of the ball and make quick enough decisions around him to get flow into the offense.
Right now, it’s not working, and that points to things being too predictable around Wembanyama.
“There’s no worry, really,” Wembanyama said. “It feels like the game is going fast. As we got better as a team and we got better individually, as well, it’s like the opponents have stepped up in some ways defensively. I feel, in a way, that the game feels fast right now.”
Wembanyama is seeing more bodies when he is off the ball than almost anyone else in the NBA. Defenses want to lean into him at all times with maximum leverage, which means hitting him once up top and then hitting him again if he goes down low.
The Suns sold out on this game plan, running essentially a box zone around the paint in which a defender would hit him when he reached the free-throw line, then another defender would be waiting for him in the post if he kept cutting. After that game, Wembanyama said it was apparent that Phoenix spent all of shootaround walking through the Spurs’ various approaches to getting him the ball.
The idea is both to chip away at Wembanyama’s stamina over the course of the night and to make sure he can never get any downhill motion toward the rim. When the defense has a few big wings who can lean on him and some guards who can both swipe at the ball when he’s in the post or rotate over for the charge when he’s on the move, it puts too many bodies in his way to let him get a rhythm.
“It feels like sometimes you just need to take a step back and look upon what you’ve done, how you’ve gotten better, and try to anticipate what’s coming,” he said. “Because the defenses aren’t getting any softer or easier.”
This taps back into Wemby and the Spurs’ understanding of his identity. There seems to be a lack of certainty about how to best use him. He demonstrated in October that he is destructive in the open floor and he can get a shot off wherever he wants. Now he is spending so much energy fighting for post position that his field-goal attempts often look like a reluctant outcome.
He flipped his 3-pointer to free-throw ratio so dramatically this season that it looks like he forgot when and why to take a 3. Wembanyama took those shots often last year to develop himself into a shooter, then abandoned them this year in the pursuit of playmaking development.
At times, he has made the games look like scrimmages, reps for him to hone what should inevitably be a game that will rewrite the sport. He looks like he is playing for the future, for the hypothetical Wemby and the idealized Spurs. But he has to keep developing the killer instinct as well.
There’s so much talk these days about how point guards have to learn to hunt their shot so they can draw enough defensive attention to make their passing fruitful. That’s the lesson he often looks like he is neglecting, and his coach made it clear with his comments after the game that it needs to be addressed.
But the public discussion runs parallel to their secret plan.
They have a grandiose and meticulous idea for what Wembanyama can become. We know the broad strokes of it. But the details, the little elements that can push him from great to greatest, are classified.
“I’m not going to tell all of it because we still got opponents and the media,” Wembanyama told The Athletic. “But there is a direction, and it’s a multidimensional player, team player and playmaker.”
Wembanyama welcomed the adversity after the game Wednesday, saying he and the team need these struggling reps in real games if they’re going to grow. He did so much work this offseason to simulate pressure, but it’s still merely a simulation. Preparing for unpredictability has its limits, and he’s seeing how much work comes in the postmortem.
Growth is not linear. Far from it in the NBA. The season rolls through expanding concentric circles. Refinements and reassessments. It’s a constant push and pull between what you want and what you get. The Spurs are not getting what they want and have to return to the drawing board.
“But it’s the same for everything, for life in general,” Wembanyama said. “We either respond or not respond. We’ll respond.”
By Jared Weiss, via The Athletic