By Mike Finger | San Antonio Express-News (SAEN), 2026-06-20 13:34:51
2026年6月13日星期六，在霜银中心举行的NBA总决赛第五场第二节比赛间隙，圣安东尼奥马刺队中锋维克托·文班亚马（1号）在休息。
维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) 感叹道，在马刺队重返NBA总决赛之前，“可能还要打100场比赛”。
这还是在一切顺利的情况下。
而且，这还得建立在他们能再次让历史规律失效的前提下。
你最好别觉得他们做不到。这支在通往六月中旬总决赛的道路上，打破了所有关于年轻的所谓极限，也颠覆了半个世纪以来传统篮球认知的球队，绝不会去担心过去十年的NBA历史规律对马刺下一个难关的预示。
但人们告诫他们不要把刚刚取得的成就视作理所当然，这也是有原因的。
下一次想要做到会更加困难。
当新赛季的NBA在10月拉开帷幕时，文班亚马和马刺将再次成为争冠热门，他们甚至可能成为夺冠的最大热门。然而，这也伴随着与他们刚刚走过的道路截然不同的压力和挑战。同时，他们也深知自己正在尝试做一件在21世纪20年代还没有其他球队能做到的事情。
还记得联盟近年来涌现出的那些新晋超级豪强吗？像扬尼斯·阿德托昆博 (Giannis Antetokounmpo)、杰森·塔图姆 (Jayson Tatum)、尼古拉·约基奇 (Nikola Jokic)、卢卡·东契奇 (Luka Doncic) 和谢伊·吉尔杰斯-亚历山大 (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) 这样的超级巨星，人们曾坚信他们一旦打进NBA总决赛，就一定会再次回去。
但他们谁也没能做到。
至少在第二年没有。
众所周知，这是NBA历史上首次出现连续八个赛季由八支不同球队夺冠的情况，但影响远不止于此。自1947年总决赛创立以来，还从未出现过另一个连续八年的时期，期间竟然没有任何一支球队能够连续两个赛季杀入总决赛。
但这就是联盟目前所处的群雄并起、实力均衡的时代。自金州勇士在2019年输给多伦多猛龙、终结了连续五年闯入总决赛的壮举以来，已有14支球队在夺得分区冠军后试图重返总决赛。
这14支球队全部宣告失败。
这14支球队中没有一支的境况与如今的马刺完全相同，而且他们也并非都彻底放弃了夺冠梦想。例如，勇士（2019年和2022年）、热火（2020年和2023年）以及凯尔特人（2022年和2024年）在过去八年中都曾两次打进总决赛。只不过，这三支球队在两次总决赛之旅之间，都至少经历了一年的“空窗期”。
这其中或许是有原因的。正如软组织损伤的增加在一定程度上被归咎于NBA前所未有的疯狂比赛节奏一样，我们完全有理由相信，这些因素会让球队在短短14个月内连续进行两次长达两个月的季后赛征程变得异常艰难。
在过去的两个赛季中，卫冕冠军都被迫在缺少前一年关键球员的情况下结束季后赛。2025年，凯尔特人因塔图姆跟腱受伤而折戟。上个月，雷霆在与圣安东尼奥马刺进行的七场分区决赛中，大部分时间都缺少了饱受身体伤病困扰的杰伦·威廉姆斯 (Jalen Williams)。
因此，保持健康将是马刺的首要任务，而这正是文班亚马、斯蒂芬·卡斯尔 (Stephon Castle) 和迪伦·哈珀 (Dylan Harper) 的年轻活力可以发挥优势的地方。与2020年夺冠后的勒布朗·詹姆斯 (LeBron James)，或是夺得最近一次总冠军时的斯蒂芬·库里 (Steph Curry) 和约基奇相比，这些年轻人的双腿还没有积累哪怕是接近前者的比赛负荷。
但年轻并不能让你对伤病免疫，也无法让你避开其他可能让重返总决赛之路变得复杂的因素。到目前为止，我们没有任何理由怀疑20岁的哈珀不是一个极致的团队型球员，也没有理由怀疑朱利安·尚帕尼 (Julian Champagnie) 和德文·瓦塞尔 (Devin Vassell) 会不乐意继续坚守他们在今年季后赛中表现极其出色的角色。
然而，当人性中的微妙心理开始作祟时，会发生什么？哈珀作为一名绝对令人惊艳的组织核心，会甘心无限期地扮演马努·吉诺比利 (Manu Ginobili) 那样的第六人角色吗？如果他不甘心，那么因他而被贬为替补的先发球员会乐意接受这种重新分配吗？或者，如果马刺选择交易像达龙·福克斯 (De’Aaron Fox) 这样的球员，他们又该如何弥补这部分战力输出？
这些都是在总决赛的光环褪去后，球队管理层必须面对和解答的问题。格雷格·波波维奇 (Gregg Popovich) 曾喜欢说，没有两支球队是完全相同的，即使它们拥有大量相同的球员。阵容可能保持不变，但它所处的环境和背景已经变了。
可以肯定的是，米奇·约翰逊 (Mitch Johnson) 对此早有预案。同样可以合理推测的是，在NBA的其他29位主教练（包括那些尚未被聘用的主教练）中，大多数人都恨不得立刻用自己的休赛期烦恼去换取约翰逊手头的这些“甜蜜的烦恼”。
但如果约翰逊处理得当呢？马刺的下100场比赛将会像过去的100场一样飞逝而过。
它们甚至可能会带来另一次机会——一次绝不能被视为理所当然的机会。
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：Why after run to NBA Finals, Spurs will look to defy history again
Why after run to NBA Finals, Spurs will look to defy history again
San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama (1) takes a breath during a break in game play during the second quarter of game five of the NBA Championship at Frost Bank Center on Saturday, June13, 2026.
Victor Wembanyama laments that “there’s probably 100 games” before the Spurs can make it back to the NBA Finals.
That’s if everything goes right.
And it’s only if they can make history irrelevant again.
You probably shouldn’t put it past them. A team that defied all the supposed limits of youth and a half-century of conventional basketball wisdom on its way to mid-June will not be inclined to worry about what the last decade of the NBA suggests about the Spurs’ next hurdle.
But there’s a reason people are telling them not to take what they just accomplished for granted.
It will be harder to do it the next time.
When the next NBA season opens in October, Wembanyama and the Spurs will be contenders again, and they might be the odds-on favorites to win it all. That, however, comes with a different kind of pressure and a different path than the one they just navigated. It also comes with the knowledge that they’re trying to do something that no other team has done in the 2020s.
Remember all of the up-and-coming superpowers the league has produced in recent years? The stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jayson Tatum, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who, once they made it to the NBA Finals, were sure to return?
None of them did.
Not the next year, anyway.
It’s been well documented that this is the first eight-season stretch in NBA history in which eight different teams have been crowned as champions, but it goes deeper than that. Since the championship series began in 1947, there’s never been another eight-year period in which no team has managed even to make the Finals in back-to-back seasons.
But such is the period of parity the league is in now. Since Golden State lost to Toronto in 2019, ending a run of five consecutive Finals appearances, 14 teams have tried to run it back after winning their conference.
All 14 failed.
None of those 14 teams looked quite like the Spurs do, and not all of them had to give up their championship dreams for good. The Warriors (2019 and 2022), Heat (2020 and 2023) and Celtics (2022 and 2024), for instance, each made the Finals twice in the last eight years. It’s just that each of those three teams had to take at least one gap year between those runs.
There might be a reason for that. In much the same way that an uptick in soft-tissue injuries has been attributed in part to the NBA’s unprecedentedly frenetic pace of play, it’s at least conceivable that those factors could make it especially difficult for teams to mount a pair of two-month playoff runs over a 14-month period.
In each of the past two seasons, the defending champion has been forced to finish its postseason without a key player from the year before. In 2025, the Celtics lost Tatum to an Achilles injury. Last month, the Thunder played most of a seven-game conference finals series against San Antonio without a banged-up Jalen Williams.
So staying healthy will be the Spurs’ first order of business, and that’s where the youth of Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper could be an asset. None of those guys have accumulated anything close to the same kind of mileage that, say, LeBron James had on his legs after winning the title in 2020, or that Steph Curry or Jokic had by the time they won their last titles.
But youth doesn’t make you immune from injuries, or from the other issues that can complicate a repeat Finals run. Thus far, we’ve been given no reason to believe that the 20-year-old Harper is anything less than the ultimate team player, or that Julian Champagnie and Devin Vassell are anything less than thrilled with the chance to keep sticking to the roles they filled so brilliantly this postseason.
What happens, though, when human nature starts to creep in? Will Harper, an absolute playmaking revelation, be content filling Manu Ginobili’s sixth-man role indefinitely? And if not, will whichever starter that gets benched for him be enthusiastic about the reassignment? Or, if the Spurs choose to trade someone like De’Aaron Fox instead, how will they replace that production?
These are the kinds of questions that franchises have to answer once the afterglow of a Finals trip wears off. Gregg Popovich was fond of saying that no two teams are alike, even when they contain a bunch of the same players. A roster might stay the same. But the context around it changes.
It’s safe to say Mitch Johnson has a plan for this. It’s also fair to assume that, among the 29 other head coaches in the NBA (including those yet to be hired), most would trade their offseason concerns with Johnson’s in a heartbeat.
But if Johnson manages it right? The Spurs’ next 100 games will fly by like the last 100 did.
And they might even lead to another chance, not to be taken for granted.
By Mike Finger, via San Antonio Express-News