By Mike Finger, Columnist | San Antonio Express-News (SAEN), 2026-04-22 01:29:55
圣安东尼奥马刺队前锋维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) (1) 在 2026 年 4 月 21 日周二于圣安东尼奥霜银中心球馆举行的 NBA 季后赛首轮第二场对阵波特兰开拓者的比赛上半场中头部撞击地面。他因脑震荡缺席了余下的比赛。
一切可能就这样结束，就在那一瞬间。
它可能发生在下巴第一次重重撞击地板，以及随之而来的第二次撞击之间。它可能发生在那惊心动魄的七秒钟里——球队救世主双眼紧闭，随后在痛苦中睁开。
计划崩盘就是这么快。一个充满希望和天命感的赛季陷入沉沦就是这么快。圣安东尼奥的“嘉年华 (Fiesta)”变成“季后赛祭灵日 (Dia de los Playoff Muertos)”就是这么快。
周二晚上在霜银中心球馆的好消息是，维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) 重新站了起来。
现在我们要看看马刺是否也能做到这一点。
他们仍有可能击败波特兰开拓者队闯入季后赛第二轮，甚至走得更远。但当文班亚马在第二节开始对朱·霍勒迪 (Jrue Holiday) 做出转身动作时，事情就不再像看起来那么简单了，无论这位身高 7 英尺 4 英寸的法国人需要缺阵多久，这都是事实。
夺冠愿望是如此脆弱，不是吗？前一分钟，座无虚席的球馆还在沸腾，整座城市都在憧憬第二个王朝能延续多久。下一分钟，这位刚刚举起年度最佳防守球员奖杯的常规赛 MVP 决选球员就脸朝下摔倒在篮下。瞬间，提前的庆祝变成了提前的恐惧。
在以 103-106 输掉比赛后，马刺与开拓者的季后赛首轮系列赛总比分战至 1-1 平，文班亚马未来的伤情细节尚不明确。主教练米奇·约翰逊 (Mitch Johnson) 确认他的当家球星遭遇了脑震荡。约翰逊和另外两名球队官员表示，文班亚马没有在接受其他伤病的评估。
但即使他在下周的某个时间点获准复出，击败西部第七也绝非走个过场。
周二晚上在霜银中心球馆对阵波特兰的上半场比赛中，维克托·文班亚马在重重摔倒后坐在地板上。
马刺需要弄清楚的是，第二场比赛最后八分钟的表现是否预示着更多的麻烦。即便文班亚马不在场，他们也在第四节初建立了 14 分的领先优势，但就在那时，局面开始失控。
跳投开始砸在篮筐后沿，抛投开始磕在篮筐前沿。突破路线被切断，几次传球显得草率。马刺还没反应过来，他们的领先优势就消失了，系列赛的领先优势也化为乌有。
约翰逊指出，他的球队“不像第一场比赛那样沉稳”，这或许在预料之中。他的轮换阵容中大多数成员都是职业生涯第二次打季后赛，这意味着这是他们第一次有机会体验类似于季后赛关键时刻的氛围。
他们必须在缺少核心球员的情况下应对那些紧张的最后时刻，而结果并不理想。但这并不意味着那些时刻不可能打好。
毕竟，文班亚马在常规赛缺席了 18 场比赛，马刺赢下了其中的 12 场。他们在没有他的情况下两次击败波特兰，击败过尼古拉·约基奇 (Nikola Jokic) 率领的掘金，还击败过勒布朗·詹姆斯 (LeBron James)、卢卡·东契奇 (Luka Doncic) 领衔的湖人。
文班亚马是马刺完成联盟历史上最令人印象深刻的单赛季大翻身的最大原因。但他并不是唯一的原因。
“显然，失去大个子对我们是一个沉重的打击，”前锋凯尔登·约翰逊 (Keldon Johnson) 说，“但我们是一支优秀的球队。”
但问题就在这里。即使是像马刺这样阵容深度、平衡性和多维性兼具的优秀球队，也会发现季后赛就像在刀尖上行走。在投丢一球后多纠结几秒，或者花太长时间抗议一次对你不利的判罚，整个系列赛的走向就可能发生转变。
如果这些年轻的马刺球员——这些在季后赛和刮胡刀方面都还是新手的人——需要就此吸取教训，那么他们刚刚得到了极具说服力的教训。
既然已经被提醒了这一切结束得有多快，他们还有什么值得庆幸的吗？
他们仍有机会确保这一切不会就此终结。
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：After Victor Wembanyama’s tumble, time for Spurs to get back up
After Victor Wembanyama’s tumble, time for Spurs to get back up
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) hits his head on the court during the first half of Game 2 of a first-round NBA playoff series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Portland Trail Blazers at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Tuesday, April 21, 2026. He sat out the rest of the game due to a concussion.
It all can end, just like that.
It can happen between the first horrific bounce of a chin off a hardwood floor, and the second horrific bounce that follows it. It can happen during the seven scary seconds when the eyes of a franchise’s would-be savior stay closed, right before he opens them in agony.
That’s how quickly a plan can fall apart. That’s how quickly a season of hope and apparent destiny can crash into irrelevance. That’s how quickly Fiesta can become Dia de los Playoff Muertos.
The good news Tuesday night at Frost Bank Center was that Victor Wembanyama got up again.
Now we’ll find out if the Spurs can do the same.
They still might make it past the Portland Trail Blazers and into the second round of the NBA playoffs. They might go a lot farther than that. But it’s not going to be as easy as it looked when Wembanyama started his second-quarter spin move around Jrue Holiday, and that truth applies no matter how long the 7-foot-4 Frenchman needs to sit out.
Championship aspirations are such fragile things, aren’t they? One minute, a packed arena is rocking, and the city around it is contemplating how long a second dynasty can last. Then the Most Valuable Player finalist who’d just hoisted a Defensive Player of the Year trophy lands face-first under the basket, and in an instant, premature celebration morphs into premature dread.
After a 106-103 loss that left the Spurs’ first-round playoff series with the Trail Blazers tied 1-1, any details of Wembanyama’s status moving forward remained unclear. Coach Mitch Johnson confirmed his star center suffered a concussion. Johnson and two other team officials said Wembanyama was not being evaluated for any other injuries.
But even if he’s cleared to return at some point in the next week, beating the seventh seed in the Western Conference will be no mere formality.
Victor Wembanyama sits on the court after taking a hard fall in the first half against Portland on Tuesday night at Frost Bank Center on Tuesday, April 21, 2026.
What the Spurs need to figure out is whether the last eight minutes of Game 2 were a sign of more trouble to come. Even with Wembanyama out of the game, they built a 14-point lead early in the fourth quarter, but that’s when it started going haywire.
Jump shots started clanging off the back of the rim. Floaters started bouncing off the front. Driving lanes were cut off. A couple of passes got sloppy. Before the Spurs knew it, their lead in the game was gone, and so was their lead in the series.
Johnson noted that his team was “not as poised” as it had looked in Game 1, and perhaps that’s to be expected. Most members of his rotation were appearing in their second career playoff game, which meant that this was the first chance they’d ever had to experience something resembling playoff crunch time.
They had to navigate those tense final minutes without their best player, and those final minutes didn’t go well. But it wasn’t as though those minutes couldn’t have gone well.
After all, Wembanyama missed 18 games during the regular season, and the Spurs won 12 of them. They beat Portland twice without him. They beat Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets without him. They beat LeBron James, Luka Doncic and the Lakers without him.
Wembanyama was the biggest reason why the Spurs pulled off one of the most impressive single-season turnarounds in league history. But he wasn’t the only reason.
“Obviously it’s a big hit that we don’t have the big fella,” forward Keldon Johnson said. “But we’re a good team.”
That’s the catch, though. Even good teams as deep and as balanced and as multi-dimensional as the Spurs can find the postseason to be a razor’s edge. Dwell a few extra seconds on a missed shot, or spend a bit too long protesting a call that doesn’t go your way, and the direction of an entire series can turn.
If these young Spurs, still newcomers to razors of both the playoff and shaving varieties, needed any lessons about that, they just received some convincing ones.
And if there’s anything they should be grateful for, now that they’ve been reminded how quickly all of this can end?
They still have a chance to make sure it doesn’t.
By Mike Finger, Columnist, via San Antonio Express-News