By Mike Finger | San Antonio Express-News (SAEN), 2026-03-28 15:55:38
2026 年 3 月 19 日，星期四，圣安东尼奥马刺队前锋维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) (1) 在弗罗斯特银行中心赢得比赛后击鼓庆祝。马刺队在最后一秒以 101-100 险胜。
俄克拉荷马城认为他们拥有最有价值球员。芝加哥认为他们拥有真正的“冰人”。而一位杜克大学球员的父亲，在为这个疯狂的比较道歉的同时，还是坚持认为他的双胞胎儿子之一已经是下一个蒂姆·邓肯 (Tim Duncan) 了。
如果你执意要寻找所谓的轻视——就像圣安东尼奥的一些人总是做的那样——仍然可以找到蛛丝马迹。
但随着马刺队逼近新时代的第一个季后赛，球迷群体也许是时候进行一次心态上的重新校准了。那种被忽视的感觉，无论是想象中的还是真实的，正变得越来越难遇到。
对于一支历史上以证明外界的吹捧是错误为荣的球队来说，下一步该做什么？
下一步就是证明这些赞誉是名副其实的。
这种调整并不容易。旧习难改，而在 NBA 中，很少有比马刺队比赛中那种“得不到尊重”的集体自嘲更根深蒂固的习惯了，这可以追溯到半球馆体育馆 (HemisFair Arena) 时代。人们崇拜乔治·格文 (George Gervin)、大卫·罗宾逊 (David Robinson) 和邓肯，但为他们欢呼往往意味着要感叹他们没有得到应有的尊重。
这种情绪往往被夸大了，尤其是在那段夺得五座总冠军的征程结束时，马刺队已享誉全球，被视为职业体育界的模范组织。但文班亚马的到来彻底扭转了局面。
现在，圣安东尼奥的一位球星在关键时刻还没在老牌职业球员面前证明任何事情之前，就被封为了下一个超级巨星。现在，全美电视网络正争先恐后地将圣安东尼奥的比赛塞进转播表。现在，圣安东尼奥成了无数博眼球热评的源头，在马刺轮换阵容中有六名球员还没打过一场季后赛之前，就把他们从竞争者提升到了夺冠热门，甚至是 NBA 的下一个王朝。
觉得文班亚马没有得到足够的认可？联盟官网刚刚在最有价值球员 (MVP) 榜单中将他排在第一位。
觉得没人欣赏马刺队跃居西部第二的统治力？看来很多有钱人（博彩者）确实很欣赏。尽管像马刺这样缺乏经验的球队夺冠是史无前例的，但博彩公司现在给出的夺冠概率排在全联盟第三，仅次于过去两年的冠军得主。
这种造势已经震耳欲聋，而季后赛的每一场胜利只会让声音更大。马刺球迷再也不能理直气壮地宣称全美对这支球队的赞美是勉为其难的了。他们不再是那支只吸引纯粹篮球迷的“无聊球队”。现在，他们是每个泛球迷都想看的表演，当季后赛开始在失败者中引发不可避免的阴谋论时，这可能会变得非常有趣。
例如，在马刺队赢得第一轮系列赛后，对手球迷要过多久才会开始猜测联盟在暗中操纵？
这些理论通常是留给像湖人队这样的豪门球队的，巧合的是，湖人最近也重现了一些昔日的荣光。如果目前的排名保持不变，文班亚马将在第二轮面对勒布朗·詹姆斯 (LeBron James) 和卢卡·东契奇 (Luka Dončić)，联盟和电视网会觉得无论谁赢都是双赢。
到那时，圣安东尼奥可能会再次寻找那些所谓的轻视。詹姆斯和东契奇会得到几次哨子，而这将被引用为马刺长期以来与“不被尊重”作斗争的最新证据。
毕竟，有多少球队的标志性人物不得不为了保护自己的商标，去对抗另一个体育项目中的后起之秀呢？这就是格文本周所做的，因为他得知芝加哥熊队四分卫凯莱布·威廉姆斯 (Caleb Williams) 已提交申请，想要成为“冰人 (Iceman)”。
与此同时，一位曾在 2007 年季后赛被马刺队无情淘汰的球员在接受采访时暗示，他的儿子正走在成为“现代版”邓肯的道路上。卡洛斯·布泽尔 (Carlos Boozer) 有理由为他的儿子卡梅隆 (Cameron) 感到自豪，后者是杜克大学打进八强赛的明星大一新生。但这不又是另一个低估邓肯伟大的例子吗？
在过去，这可能是马刺球迷的看法。但从今年春天开始？
他们可以将其视为一种赞美。
尽管这看起来有些不自然，但这可能不会是最后一次。
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。
点击查看原文：How the Spurs have gone from proving hype wrong to proving it right
How the Spurs have gone from proving hype wrong to proving it right
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) hits the drum after a win at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Thursday, March 19, 2026. The Spurs won in the last second, 101-100.
Oklahoma City thinks it has the most valuable player. Chicago thinks it has the real Iceman. And a Duke dad, apologizing for a crazy comparison while making it anyway, thinks one of his twins already is the next Tim Duncan.
If you’re intent on looking for supposed slights — as some in San Antonio almost always are — there still are places to find them.
But as the Spurs close in on the first postseason of a new era, it’s probably time for the fan base to undergo a motivational recalibration. Dismissiveness, whether imagined or not, is getting more difficult to come by.
And for a franchise that historically took pride in proving what the hype got wrong?
The next step is proving the hype right.
This adjustment isn’t going to be easy. Old habits die hard, and few NBA habits are older than the communal Rodney Dangerfield routine at Spurs games dating back to the HemisFair Arena days. People adored George Gervin and David Robinson and Duncan, but cheering for them meant lamenting that they got no respect.
That issue often was exaggerated, especially by the end of a five-championship run that gave the Spurs a worldwide reputation as one of professional sports’ model organizations. But the arrival of Victor Wembanyama flipped the script.
Now it’s a star from San Antonio who’s been anointed the next big thing before he’s proven anything against the grizzled old pros when it counts. Now it’s San Antonio that national TV networks are trying to squeeze into their broadcast schedules over and over again. Now San Antonio is the source of endless click-chasing hot takes promoting them from contenders to favorites to the NBA’s next dynasty before six guys in the Spurs’ rotation even have appeared in their first playoff game.
Think Wembanyama isn’t getting enough credit? Well, the league’s official website just listed him as No. 1 in its rankings for Most Valuable Player.
Think nobody appreciates how dominant the Spurs have been in vaulting to second place in the Western Conference? Well, it looks like plenty of people with money sure do. Even though it would be completely unprecedented for a team as inexperienced as the Spurs to win an NBA championship, oddsmakers now give them the third-best chance in the league, right behind the two teams that happened to win the last two titles.
The hype already is deafening, and every postseason victory only is going to make it louder. These are no longer the days when a Spurs fan could reasonably claim that national praise for the local cagers came begrudgingly. They’re not the boring team anymore, appealing only to the purest of hoop heads. Now they’re the show every casual fan wants to watch, and this could prove to be hilarious when the playoffs start providing their inevitable conspiracy theories among the losers.
How long, for instance, will it be after the Spurs’ first series victory before fans of the opposing team start speculating that the league pulled strings to make it happen?
Those theories usually are reserved for glamour teams like the Lakers, who coincidentally are rediscovering some of their vintage luster lately, too. If the current standings hold, and Wembanyama faces LeBron James and Luka Donĉić in the second round, the league and the networks will figure they can’t go wrong either way.
By then, San Antonio might be looking for those supposed slights again. James and Donĉić will get a couple of calls, and this will be cited as the latest evidence in the Spurs’ long struggle against perceived disrespect.
After all, how many franchises have an icon who’s had to defend his own trademark from an up-and-coming whippersnapper in another sport. That’s what Gervin had to do this week when he learned that Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams had filed paperwork to become the “Iceman.”
Around the same time, a player who the Spurs once unceremoniously trounced from the 2007 playoffs gave an interview suggesting that his son was on the path to becoming “a modern-day version of” Duncan. Carlos Boozer is right to be proud of his son, Cameron, a star freshman on Duke’s Elite Eight team. But wasn’t this another example of someone underselling how great Duncan really was?
In the old days, that might have been how some Spurs fans took it. But starting this spring?
They can take it as a compliment.
As unnatural as that seems, it probably won’t be the last.
By Mike Finger, via San Antonio Express-News