By Devon Birdsong | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2025-11-21 23:52:45
势头（Momentum）是个奇妙的词。它在语言学中有着一段独特的历史，甚至在学术界，关于我们究竟是何时开始在科学范畴使用这个词，至今仍存有一些争议。
早在公元530年，我们就有了关于这一概念的文献记载。当时，约翰·斐洛波诺 (John Philoponus)，一位来自罗马统治下埃及的哲学家兼神学家，在一部评注中反驳了亚里士多德 (Aristotle) 的物理学观念。他认为，在投掷物体的行为中，一股“推动力”（impetus）被赋予了该物体——这实质上预言了科学中的惯性概念。
然而，直到17世纪末18世纪初，这个词才真正开始在学术界得到应用。英国数学家约翰·沃利斯 (John Wallis)、约翰·詹宁斯 (John Jennings) 和艾萨克·牛顿 (Isaac Newton) 正式将“momentum”（动量）作为一个科学术语，用以构建数学理论和定律。
这个词花了如此长的时间才达成共识，着实令人着迷。它至少在公元前75年就已存在于拉丁语中（甚至可能更早，以“mowementom”的形式出现在原始意大利语中），却耗费了近1800年才进入大众的日常用语。
我的意思是，几乎整个罗马帝国都曾讲拉丁语，但这个词却花了那么长时间才普及开来。这不合逻辑，或者说至少在某种程度上违背了数学概率。
我认为，问题的根源在于它的同源异形词——“moment”（时刻）和“movement”（运动）。
从实用角度看，这很合理。既然已经有了“movement”来描述动作，为何还要用“momentum”？既然可以用“moment”来形容一段时间，又何必多此一举？
但这就是“momentum”（势头）的奇妙之处，它并非一个静态的术语，它的内涵包罗万象。
你可以用它来形容首节末段马刺队的状态——当时老鹰队开始掀起一波攻势，眼看就要将领先优势扩大到两位数，而马刺球员们则连投进一球都难如登天。
你也可以用它来形容马刺在他们的双向合同奇兵大卫·琼斯·加西亚 (David Jones Garcia) 登场后，突然找回状态的那几分钟。他与凯尔登·约翰逊 (Keldon Johnson) 以及前双向合同的佼佼者朱利安·尚帕尼 (Julian Champagnie) 一起，向那支被圣安东尼奥替补球员的侵略性所震惊的老鹰队发起了猛攻。
你甚至可以用它来形容，当主场观众看到球队在第三节又一次陷入他们早已习以为常的低迷时，那种从激动到担忧的反应——这是他们在后三巨头时代最害怕看到的银黑军团的样子。
这个词本身蕴含着一种张力，一种期望与力量的弹性。它不仅描述着运动，也暗示着运动的休止，这为它同时注入了希望 与 恐惧的双重特质。
而希望与恐惧，基本上涵盖了你作为一个体育迷在观看主队比赛时所能感受到的全部情绪。这不仅是戏剧性的巅峰，更是刺痛人心的那一道现实微光。
坦白说，我们自己的生活也充满了同样希望与恐惧的回响，只是它们通过代理人的方式，在一块满载着青春梦想与岁月沉淀的硬木地板上上演。
我们渴望他们的胜利，是出于一种想以某种微小方式与之产生关联的愿望。我们为他们的失利而悲伤，也是因为我们同样觉得这与我们切身相关。
“势头”有一个不言而喻的特性：一件好事的发生，要么让你觉得好事会接踵而至，要么让你为相反的情况而焦虑。一场胜利能让你第二天的心情莫名地好起来，这种感觉难以量化。
我对此深有体会，因为过去几年我写的文章大多都是关于失利的。现在这种节奏的转变真是太好了。然而，这也让我意识到这一切的短暂。人们很容易忘记，马刺球迷曾经历过长达二十多年的胜利辉煌，其成就在NBA现代史上至今无人能及。
眼下的这一刻可能转瞬即逝，甚至在它真正开始之前就已结束。即便在胜利之中，伤病和缺阵也在提醒我们这一点。
但这正是“势头”的伟大之处：它不受限于某个瞬间。实际上，这个词本身没有极限，极限只存在于我们的观念之中。
这是一个可以与时间捆绑的概念，它比眨眼更长，比千年更短。“势头”既可以永恒，也可以短暂，全在于我们对它的信念。
亚里士多德认为，“momentum”（如他所构想的）是一种无形的内在力量，推动着生命体穿越生活和时间本身。它是某种内在的、无形的东西，与生命的本质紧密相连，引领我们走过高潮与低谷。
当看到朱利安·尚帕尼终于腾空而起，完成那记他多年来一直尝试的暴扣时，我情不自禁地表示赞同。
一次又一次，他不断尝试，尽管遭遇封盖和投失，尽管他的垂直弹跳会让比尔·兰比尔 (Bill Laimbeer) 脸红，尽管他的控球水平远低于联盟平均水准。
他内心的某种东西驱使着他去追求——不顾失败和尴尬，去追逐那个瞬间。而在他完成暴扣的那一刻，即便比赛还剩六分钟，也感觉像是为比赛盖棺定论的一击。这就是“势头”，它被浓缩成一个高光集锦，却将能量延续到了比赛终场，甚至更远。
我不知道未来会怎样，无论对我自己还是对马刺而言。但我知道，他们正用本不该赢球的阵容，在缺少核心球员的情况下，不断赢下那些看似不可能的比赛。这是许久以来，第一次让我感觉到了“势头”。
愿这股势头永不终结。干杯。
赛后观察
- 我第一个承认，米奇·约翰逊 (Mitch Johnson) 最近几周的执教表现有些起伏不定。他有时没有对一些明显该挑战的判罚提出挑战，没有抱怨过犯规尺度的差异，有时用人过多，或者让某些球员打得太久，总的来说，在轮换时间的分配上很难预测。但天啊，这场比赛他完全掌控了局面，在看似完美的时机进行了正确的换人，并在球队势头起伏的关键节点精准地叫了暂停。无论谁遭遇伤病困扰，这支球队都能继续前进，这证明了他学习和适应的速度有多快。这让我想起了埃里克·斯波尔斯特拉 (Erik Spoelstra) 接替传奇教练帕特·莱利 (Pat Riley) 的第一个赛季。圣安东尼奥或许真的为自己找到了一位好教练。
- 虽然我已经在上文对尚帕尼本场的表现大加赞赏，但我真的想花点时间来表扬一下圣安东尼奥所有的侧翼射手们。他们（尽管手感有些起伏）在远距离投射上表现得非常高效，几乎可以互换使用。有些人可能会感到惊讶，但在过去五场比赛中，马刺的三分命中数排名联盟第7，命中率排名第9，而这还是在文班缺席了几场比赛的情况下取得的。如果没有这些射手挺身而出并命中投篮，他们根本不可能赢下这些比赛。他们能否在赛季剩余时间里保持这种状态，将非常值得关注。
- 说到这里，哈里森·巴恩斯 (Harrison Barnes) 的表现有多惊艳？当大部分轮换球员都经历过手感火热和冰凉/状态不佳的起伏时，巴恩斯却总能在关键时刻稳定输出，过去几场比赛他的得分有很大一部分是在第四节得到的。考虑到他的投射和防守，萨克拉门托 倒贴选秀权让马刺 接手他，至今仍让我惊愕不已！我的意思是，国王还是那个国王，而且他在圣安东尼奥确实打得更好了一些，但我的观点不变。他们甚至没有为他换回哪怕是次轮签！
- 我还需要指出，作为近期经常批评德文·瓦塞尔 (Devin Vassell) 的人，我对他最近在防守端的表现 印象极为深刻 。老实说，我认为他可能正在打出职业生涯至今在防守端的最佳表现。虽然他在选秀时就以此著称，但过去我们只零星看到过这样的闪光。如果他能够在不失防守状态的情况下，在进攻端再提升一点，那么一旦文班和队友们恢复健康，这支球队将几乎无法被击败。目前，他和巴恩斯正在激烈争夺球队最佳侧翼防守者的称号，这本身就是一件大事。
今日离场曲目：
MC Hammer – Gaining Momentum（势头渐起）
由生成式 AI 翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准。
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
Momentum is a funny word. It has an odd history within language, and there’s still some academic disagreement about precisely when we began using it in a scientific capacity.
As early as 530 AD, we have documented arguments about the concept, as John Philoponus (a philosopher and theologian from Roman-held Egypt) wrote a commentary apposing Aristotle’s concept of physics, arguing that an impetus was imparted to any object in the act of throwing it, essentially predicting the scientific concept of inertia.
It wasn’t until the late 1600’s and early 1700’s that the word really started to see academic use though, as English mathematicians John Wallis, John Jennings, and Isaac Newton formalized mathematical theories and laws using the word momentum as a scientific term.
That it took so long to come to a consensus on the word is fascinating. It had existed in Latin since at least 75 BC (and possibly earlier as ‘mowementom’ in Proto-Italic), and yet it took almost 1800 years to make its way into the common lexicon.
I mean, just about the entire Roman Empire spoke Latin at one point, and yet it took that long. It defies logic, or at least some degree of mathematical probability.
The root of the issue, I think, comes from its linguistic doublets, the words ‘moment’ and ‘movement’.
It makes sense in a practical sort of way. Why use momentum to describe motion when you already have movement? Why use it to describe a space of time when you could use moment instead?
But that’s the thing about momentum, it’s not really a static term, it contains multitudes.
You could use it to describe the way that the Spurs looked by the end of the first quarter, as the Hawks began to surge their way to a lead that looked like it would stretch to double digits based on the way that Spurs players were unable to so much as buy a shot.
You could also use it to describe the way that the Spurs suddenly found their form in the minutes after their two-way wonder David Jones Garcia took the court, as he, Keldon Johnson, and former two-way standout Julian Champagnie began to take it to a Hawks team in shock at the aggression of San Antonio’s bench players.
You could even use it to describe the way the once-animated home crowd began to react to the kind of third-quarter swoon they’ve grown to fear most from the Silver and Black in a post-Big-Three world.
There’s something in the word that carries a kind of tension, an elasticity of expectation and force. It’s not just that the word is describing movement, but also the cessation of it, that imbues the word with qualities of both hope and fear.
And hope and fear cover basically the entire spectrum of emotion you can feel as a sports fan watching your favorite team. It’s not just the height of drama, but the glimmering shard of reality that pierces the human heart.
If we’re honest, our lives are themselves filled with the echoes of those same hopes and fears, acted out in proxy on a hardwood court teeming with the dreams of youth and the weight of experience.
We crave their victory out of a desire to be associated with it in some small way. We grieve their losses because they feel personal to us in the same manner.
It’s an unspoken property of momentum that one good thing happening to you begets either the feeling of more to come, or the anxiety of the opposite. A win can make the next day feel better in a way that’s hard to quantify.
I should know, since I’ve mostly been writing about losses for years. It’s a nice change of pace. And yet, it stirs within me an awareness of the brevity of it all. It’s easy to forget that Spurs fans experienced two-plus decades of victory in a manner that remains unmatched in the modern era of the NBA.
This moment could end, and quickly, before it even really begins. And there are injuries and absences that remind us of that even in victory.
But that’s the great thing about momentum: it’s not constrained to just a moment in time. There is, in actuality, no limit to the word, only the idea that there is one.
It’s a concept that can bind itself to time for longer than a blink and less than a millennia. Momentum is both as eternal and as brief as our belief in it.
Aristotle believed that momentum (as he conceived it) was an unseen inner force that propelled living beings through both life and time itself. Something inner and intangible tied to very nature of living that carried us through the highs and lows.
Watching Julian Champagnie finally levitate into the kind of dunk that he’s been trying to lay down for years, I couldn’t help but agree.
Again, and again, and again he had tried, in spite of blocks and misses, a vertical that would make Bill Laimbeer blush, and a handle that falls well short of league average.
Something within him had moved him to pursue it – to chase that moment in spite of defeat and embarrassment. And the moment that he did it, even with six minutes left in the game, it felt like a nail in the coffin. That’s momentum for you, crystallized into a single highlight, but carrying itself to end of the contest, and beyond.
I don’t know what the future will bring, for myself or the Spurs. But I know that they keep winning games that they shouldn’t, with players they shouldn’t, without players they need. And for the first time in a long time, that feels like momentum.
Here’s to hoping it never ends. Cheers.
Takeaways
- I’d be the first to agree that Mitch Johnson’s coaching has been a little uneven over the past few weeks. He hasn’t been calling what feel like obvious challenges, he hasn’t gone off about foul disparity, he’s sometimes used too many players, or played some players too much, and generally been hard to predict when it comes to minutes allocation in general. But boy was he all over it in this one, making the right substitutions at seemingly the perfect times, and calling timeouts at precisely the right moments of positive and negative momentum. That this team just keep rolling on regardless of who gets snake-bitten is a tribute to how quickly he’s catching on and adapting. It reminds me a little bit of Erik Spoelstra’s first season taking over for the legendary Par Riley. San Antonio might really have themselves a coach here.
- While I’ve already given Champagnie his flowers for the game, I really want to take a moment to praise all of San Antonio’s wing shooters, who (in spite of some streakiness) have really just been interchangeably effective from long-distance. It may shock some to know this, but the Spurs are actually 7th in the NBA in three-pointers made and 9th in percentage over the last five games, and that’s with Wemby missing some games. There’s no way they’d be winning these games without these shooters stepping up and knocking it down. It’ll be interesting to see if they can keep this up for the rest of the season.
- To that end, how amazing has Harrison Barnes been? While most of the rotation has had their shooting streaks and droughts/off-games, Barnes has been reliably clutch, scoring a good share of his points over the last several game in the fourth quarter. Between his shooting and his defense, I remain flabbergasted that Sacramento paid the Spurs to take him off their hands! I mean, the Kings are gonna Kings, and he has been playing a little better in San Antonio, but the point stands. They didn’t even get 2nd round picks for him!
- I also need to note that as a frequent critic of Devin Vassell lately, I’ve been very impressed by how well he’s been playing on the defensive end. I honestly think he might be playing his best ball on that end of the court, and while he was touted for it in draft, we’ve only seen flashes of this in the past. If he’s able to turn it up just a little more on the offensive end without losing that form, this team will be nigh impossible to beat once Wemby and Co. are healthy. It’s a close contest between him and Barnes for best wing defender on the team right now, and that’s a big deal.
Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:
Gaining Momentum by MC Hammer
By Devon Birdsong, via Pounding The Rock