By Mike Finger | San Antonio Express-News (SAEN), 2026-03-31 16:55:37
2026年3月3日，周二，在费城进行的一场NBA常规赛上半场，圣安东尼奥马刺队的维克托·文班亚马（右）在斯蒂芬·卡斯尔（左）的注视下扣篮。(AP Photo/Chris Szagola)
32小时左右。仔细想想，这并不算长。
这不过是一个为期四天的节假日工作周。这只够刷两季半的《黑道家族》(The Sopranos)，甚至还看不完到《松林外》(Pine Barrens) 那一集。这还占不到《法律与秩序》(Law & Order) 全剧时长的6%。
但如果把维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) 和斯蒂芬·卡斯尔 (Stephon Castle) 共同在场上的实际比赛时间加起来，也就只有这么多。1935分钟，分布在18个月和102场比赛中。这或许会让人们觉得，这两位最近两届的NBA年度最佳新秀现在应该对彼此了如指掌，但事实并非如此简单。
诚然，这些共同在场的分钟数每周都变得愈发令人惊叹，统治力也愈发强大。诚然，最近这些时间里出现了各种即兴的空中接力，两名年轻的超级巨星仿佛在空中就能完成彼此未尽的意图。诚然，这些时刻让马刺队看起来像是一支争冠球队，进度远超预期。
但他们还不够完美。尽管那些空接传球非常精彩，但卡斯尔偶尔还是会忘记他在和谁搭档。
“有时候他传得还是不够高，”文班亚马笑着说道。
如果这听起来像是在吹毛求疵，那只是因为文班亚马对他与卡斯尔所能成就的高度抱有极大的期望，甚至可能超过了那些最敢于幻想的球迷。
在过去的一周里，随着马刺队豪取四连胜，文班亚马和卡斯尔之间的同步性达到了令人震惊的程度。空中接力接踵而至，仅在圣安东尼奥客场大胜密尔沃基的比赛中就出现了不少于四次，而且这些球来自各种角度，源于多种战术配合。
但听这位身高7英尺4英寸的法国人说，我们还没看到真章。
“这仅仅是个开始，”文班亚马表示，“我希望能在接下来的，我不知道，15年里都做他的队友。所以希望我们能完成数以千计的空接。”
这将为“51区 (Area 51)”这个术语带来额外的——或许是意料之外的——维度。这个词源于这两位球员的球衣号码（5号和1号），同时也致敬了文班亚马的“外星人”人设。它最初是作为防守端的代称：当马刺队在2024年选中卡斯尔时，人们的想法是，他在外线不知疲倦的缠绕，结合文班亚马超凡脱俗的盖帽能力，将成为对手得分手的噩梦。
但随着卡斯尔和文班亚马共同积累了大量的比赛经验，他们在进攻端也变得同样强大，高阶数据足以说明这一点。在本赛季两人共同在场的1156分钟里，马刺队每百回合净胜对手17.9分。
这一效率超过了许多顶级双人组，如丹佛的尼古拉·约基奇 (Nikola Jokic) 和贾马尔·穆雷 (Jamal Murray)（11.0），底特律的凯德·坎宁安 (Cade Cunningham) 和杰伦·杜伦 (Jalen Duren)（12.6），甚至高于俄克拉荷马城的谢伊·吉尔杰斯-亚历山大 (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) 和切特·霍姆格伦 (Chet Holmgren)（17.7）。
当然，其中的一个重要因素是文班亚马和卡斯尔的防守比那些组合更好。但他们在球场的另一端也缩小了差距，卡斯尔现在学习利用优势的速度比去年快得多。
在过去的几场比赛中，他与文班亚马连线的空接传球看起来起初像是突破抛投。他在假掩护顺下时能准确找到文班亚马。现在甚至会出现这样的情况：当卡斯尔在罚球线接球时，文班亚马已经在内线卡住了防守人。
在这种情况下，如果卡斯尔传球足够快，对手根本没有机会。
“大多数时候，面对一个大个子，那些传球角度是不存在的，”卡斯尔说道，“但凭借他的覆盖范围，他有能力将那些看起来不像空接的传球转化为扣篮。”
当然，良好的战术安排大有裨益，默契度也同样重要。正如文班亚马在周一马刺队以129-114击败芝加哥后所指出的，他和卡斯尔“有机会在场上共同度过很多时间，他非常了解我”。
“我们之间的默契并非偶然，对吧？”文班亚马问道。
这绝非偶然。如果仅在1935分钟——大约32小时——的实战磨合后，表现就已经如此出色，那么想象一下，当文班亚马和卡斯尔像约基奇和穆雷那样长时间并肩作战后，“51区”还会增加多少新花样。或者像马刺队史上那些功勋卓著的队友那样。
蒂姆·邓肯 (Tim Duncan) 与托尼·帕克 (Tony Parker) 合作了15年，与马努·吉诺比利 (Manu Ginobili) 合作了14年。周一深夜，当卡斯尔得知文班亚马刚刚提议要和他的搭档共事那么久时，会是什么反应？
卡斯尔咧嘴一笑。
“那，”他说道，“听起来是个伟大的计划。”
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：With Stephon Castle, Victor Wembanyama predicts ‘thousands’ more lobs
With Stephon Castle, Victor Wembanyama predicts ‘thousands’ more lobs
San Antonio Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama, right, dunks the ball as Stephon Castle, left, look on during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)
Thirty-two hours, give or take. That’s nothing, when you think about it.
It’s a four-day holiday work week. It’s a two-and-a-half-season binge session of *The Sopranos,*which doesn’t even get you to the Pine Barrens. It’s less than 6% of Law & Order.
But add up all the actual game time Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle have spent on the floor together, and that’s all you have. It’s 1,935 minutes, which when sprinkled over 18 months and 102 games might make it seem sometimes like the last two NBA rookies of the year should know everything about each other by now, but it doesn’t work that way.
Yes, those minutes get more dazzling and more dominant every week. Yes, those minutes lately have featured the kind of impromptu alley-oops in which one young superstar appears to be completing the other’s thought in midair. Yes, those minutes make the Spurs look like title contenders, way ahead of schedule.
But they’re not perfect yet. As fun as those lob passes can be, Castle occasionally forgets who he’s working with.
“Still sometimes he doesn’t throw it high enough,” Wembanyama said, smiling.
If he sounds like he’s nit-picking, that’s only because Wembanyama’s expectations for what he can accomplish with Castle might surpass even those of the fan base’s biggest dreamers.
Over the past week, as the Spurs have piled up four blowouts in a row, the synchronicity between Wembanyama and Castle has been astounding. The alley-oops have come in droves, with no fewer than four of them during San Antonio’s romp in Milwaukee, and they’ve come from a variety of angles, out of multiple actions.
But to hear the 7-foot-4 Frenchman tell it, we haven’t seen anything yet.
“It’s just the beginning,” Wembanyama said. “I hope to spend, I don’t know, 15 years as his teammate. So hopefully we see thousands of lobs.”
This would bring an extra — and perhaps unanticipated — dimension to the term “Area 51,” a play off the two players’ jersey numbers, with a nod toward Wembanyama’s “Alien” persona. It began as a defensive reference. When the Spurs drafted Castle in 2024, the idea was that his relentless hounding on the perimeter, combined with Wembanyama’s otherworldly shot-blocking ability, would create a nightmare for opposing scorers.
But as Castle and Wembanyama have piled up those repetitions together, they’re becoming almost as formidable on offense, and the advanced numbers help illustrate this point. In the 1,156 minutes they’ve shared on the court this season, the Spurs are outscoring their opponents by 17.9 points per 100 possessions.
That’s a better rate than elite duos like Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray of Denver (11.0), Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren of Detroit (12.6), and even Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren of Oklahoma City (17.7).
A huge factor in that, of course, is that Wembanyama and Castle defend better than those other duos. But they’ve narrowed the gap at the other end of the floor, where Castle is learning to exploit edges much more quickly than he did last year.
Over the past few games, he’s connected with lobs to Wembanyama with quick passes that look at first like driving floaters. He’s hit Wembanyama on slip screens down the lane. And there now are times when Castle will catch the ball at the free-throw line while Wembanyama is sealing off a defender inside.
If Castle makes the lob quickly enough in those situations, opponents have no chance.
“Most times with a big (man), those kinds of angles wouldn’t be there,” Castle said. “But with his range, he has the ability to turn passes that don’t look like lobs into lobs.”
A good plan helps, obviously. So does familiarity. As Wembanyama noted on Monday, after the Spurs’ 129-114 victory over Chicago, he and Castle have “had the chance to spend lots of minutes on the court together, and he understands me very well.”
“That’s not just randomly that we’re in sync, right?” Wembanyama asked.
It’s not random at all. And if it looks this good after only 1,935 minutes of in-game, on-court time together — only 32 hours, give or take — imagine what wrinkles can be added to “Area 51” once Wembanyama and Castle have put in the kind of shared time that Jokic and Murray have. Or the kind of time other accomplished Spurs teammates did.
Tim Duncan played 15 years with Tony Parker, and 14 with Manu Ginobili. And late Monday night, when Castle was informed that Wembanyama had just proposed the idea of sticking with his running mate that long?
Castle grinned.
“That,” he said, “sounds like a great plan.”
By Mike Finger, via San Antonio Express-News