By Thilo Latrell Widder | Pounding The Rock (PtR), 2026-07-15 06:55:06
如果蒂洛·维德 (Thilo Widder)这个名字听起来很耳熟，那说明你的记性真不错！蒂洛是我们明尼苏达森林狼兄弟网站Canis Hoopus的撰稿人。在森林狼与马刺的季后赛系列赛期间，他曾与J.R.·威尔科 (J.R. Wilco) 一起参与了第二轮的“与敌共舞”（Fraternizing with the Enemy）栏目。他也乐于为其他博客撰稿。我们非常荣幸能邀请他为 Pounding the Rock 撰写这篇关于卡特·布莱恩特 (Carter Bryant) 及其对听障群体贡献的精彩文章。希望大家喜欢。——编辑注
当你想到篮球时，脑海中浮现的第一件事是什么？是看到皮球空心入网的画面吗？你是否能感受到那股瞬间涌入血管的兴奋感——那段记忆在刹那间化为了真切的身体感知？
还是说，你听到了它？
因为我能听到篮球。当迈克·布林 (Mike Breen) 喊出那声标志性的“Bang（进了）”时，我听到了篮球的呈现。我听到了球鞋在球场上摩擦出的吱吱声，也听到了马克·库班 (Mark Cuban) 令人匪夷所思地安装在篮筐内部的扬声器系统所传出的声音。
我听到了这一切。我为此而活。这是我爱上篮球不可或缺的一部分。
但如果不是这样呢？如果我像成千上万的球迷一样，根本听不到比赛呢？失聪正变得越来越普遍。全球已有超过4.3亿人面临某种程度的听力损失，世界卫生组织（WHO）估计，到2050年这一数字将升至7亿以上，届时约占全球人口的10%。
约两年前，ESPN发表了一篇关于体育迷所面临的“隐形残疾”的ESPN报道，至今仍让我记忆犹新。其中有一节讲述了一位名叫艾米·戈姆 (Amy Gomme) 的失聪球迷，她这样说道：
“这些联盟、这些球队正在流失一个全新的球迷群体。如果观赛体验足够包容，这些潜在的球迷是会来到现场看球的。”
我很好奇布莱恩特对此有何感想。
需要澄清的是，布莱恩特本人并非失聪人士。相反，他是被这个在NBA的商业呈现中似乎仍被边缘化的群体所塑造的。作为一个在无声家庭中长大的孩子，以及专门招收听障学生的加劳德特大学（Gallaudet University）的特别倡导者，布莱恩特在选秀前的视频中称自己是“他们平台的代言人”。这在当下显得比以往任何时候都更为重要。
“在很长一段时间里，我以为世界上有一半人是聋人，另一半人能听到声音，”布莱恩特说，“因为在我的成长环境里，我每天有一半的时间都是和聋人一起度过的。”
布莱恩特被称为“GODA”——即聋人成人的孙辈（grandchild of a deaf adult）。与隔了一代的“CODA”（聋人成人的子女，child of a deaf adult）相比，这个略显冷门的缩写从根本上塑造了今天的他。
这四个字母中的“G”所承载的分量远超想象。布莱恩特的祖父是多克·托雷斯 (Doc Torres)，你们中可能很少有人知道他。托雷斯被广泛认为是20世纪80年代加劳德特大学队中最耀眼的明星，但他却因失聪而被NBA拒之门外。此后，他在波多黎各打了近20年球，并在听障奥运会（Deaflympics）上赢得了两枚金牌。
NBA历史上只出现过一位失聪球员。兰斯·奥尔雷德 (Lance Allred) 在2007-08赛季曾为克利夫兰骑士队效力过三场比赛。从21世纪初到2010年代中期，他在16个赛季中辗转效力于17支不同的球队。
在发展联盟效力期间，奥尔雷德在为家乡球队犹他闪电队打球时，曾遭受来自教练的歧视性辱骂。
显而易见，当时的NBA并没有准备好接纳并赋能失聪球员。无论是缺乏准备还是缺乏关怀，他们根本没有为奥尔雷德——或者就此而言，为托雷斯——创造成功的环境。
这绝对不是因为缺乏天赋。这一点是毋庸置疑的。
卡特·布莱恩特选择加盟亚利桑那大学（一所拥有成熟NBA输送通道的大学）有诸多原因。他们打着快节奏的篮球，这能发挥他的优势。他的姑姑曾在那里打排球，而且他与教练组也很熟。这所学校有将与他体型相似的前锋培养成乐透秀和总冠军的历史。从阿隆·戈登 (Aaron Gordon) 到德里克·威廉姆斯 (Derrick Williams)，再到最近的本尼迪克特·马瑟林 (Benedict Mathurin)，这种契合度显而易见。
尽管如此，仍有一个选择必定曾拨动过布莱恩特的心弦。加劳德特大学本可以让他成为家族中与这所学校、这个他显然深切关怀的群体紧密相连的第三代人。
然而，这绝不可能在考虑范围内。去加劳德特大学意味着要放弃他在父母家中建立起来的梦想。
顺理成章地，他做出了唯一现实的选择，也是那个充满爱的家庭唯一会允许的选择。
尽管如此，如果留在加劳德特，他的祖父母就能来现场观看比赛，并首先被当作普通人对待，而不是被贴上残疾的标签。
最终，亚利桑那大学度过了一个不可思议的赛季。布莱恩特在攻防转换中快如闪电，他的身体对抗能力迅速提升，防守端也同样突飞猛进。转校生凯莱布·洛夫 (Caleb Love) 与他并肩作战，带领野猫队杀入了16强。
在那次征程中，甚至在整个大学赛季期间，卡特的心都牵挂着家人，毫无疑问，家人的心也同样牵挂着他。然而，尽管他们一如既往地关爱着他，但对于布莱恩特最希望关注他的人来说，想要追踪和观看他的比赛却变得越来越困难。
这听起来有些荒谬。亚利桑那大学的比赛都有电视直播，还有成群结队的记者为这些比赛撰写报道。媒体报道并非遥不可及。
然而……
“我认为篮球很独特，因为它是现场直播的活动，所以我能联想到的类似场景是剧院、电影院和音乐会。当这些活动实时进行时，很难找到字幕，因此在获取信息方面存在很大的延迟。”伯克利学院博士生、无障碍技术倡导者兼研究员阿波琳·塔迪 (Apolline Tardy) 说道。
“电影在影院上映时还没有字幕……即使是直播内容，字幕也经常有延迟，尤其是手动输入的字幕。这种体验太糟糕了，以至于我根本不关注。我不想看，因为这感觉是断断续续的。时效性太重要了。我能想象篮球是一项非常注重视觉的运动，你肯定不想看到有人投篮后，还要等40秒才知道是谁投的。”
只有四支球队——洛杉矶快船、菲尼克斯太阳、波特兰开拓者和布鲁克林篮网——提供 OneCourt（一种针对低视力或视力障碍人群的辅助设备）。而就目前公开的信息来看，没有任何球队为失聪球迷提供任何形式的支持。
他们的假设是，有需要的球迷会自己佩戴人工耳蜗，这些球迷所需要做的就是融入“健听人的世界”。
2021年，扎克·拉文 (Zach Lavine) 带着一群听障学生去看了芝加哥白袜队的比赛，延续了他自高中时期就许下的承诺。他在发布的信息中特意配上手语翻译，这无情地提醒着人们：NBA在这一领域依然毫无作为。
作为NBA或者任何体育联盟的球迷，你最喜欢的部分是什么？
是比赛中的某些瞬间让你想起最初爱上这项运动的时刻，那种回忆起十年前、十五年前或更久以前场景的怀旧感吗？
是那些交易吗？那些引发无休止争论、让人联想到平行宇宙的交易？如果马刺当年在与魔术的争夺中失去了蒂姆·邓肯 (Tim Duncan) 会怎样？如果他们在重建的最初几年里选到了更好的球员会怎样？
或者，就像我一样，是与同好们讨论这些问题时所形成的社群氛围？大家因为共同热爱一项正缓慢但坚定地成为世界第二大运动的体育项目而凝聚在一起。
许多反对无障碍建设的人声称，各个群体应该为自己的参与度负责。并没有太多证据表明失聪群体想要参与体育运动，那我们为什么还要开发工具来帮助他们呢？
更好的问题是：因为联盟未能邀请他们参与到这项运动中来，我们错过了多少可以相互了解的球迷？
布莱恩特曾被邀请加入那些被主流排斥的球迷所建立的比赛中，那是一个他们可以尽情打球而无需面对异样眼光的空间。然而，健听球员（那些习惯了在篮球场上大声呼喊指挥的球员）可以轻松交流，但在这些比赛中，手语却无用武之地。
“如果我在防守持球人，而我身后还有另外四个人，你基本上无法知道后面发生了什么，”布莱恩特在2月份接受《运动报》（The Athletic）采访时说道，“所以，能够观察余光、运用脚步，并对比赛有一种天然的直觉，这是不一样的。作为球员，我们把这一切视作理所当然，不怎么使用其他感官，因为我们不需要。”
布莱恩特听到了同样的球鞋摩擦声，同样让我们所有人为之倾倒的刷网声，但没有那些嘈杂的喊叫。他听不到有人喊掩护或换防，相反，这成了他的第二本能。
战术被内化，对位被默记，这种方式不需要言语沟通，而只需要信任队友会出现在该出现的位置。
那种固有的、不假思索的信念——相信会有人在那里，相信会有人伸出援手。
NBA的首要任务一直是全球化。
极其值得称道的是，他们想方设法将篮球从一项面向全球球迷的运动，转变为一项真正的世界性运动，这是一个意义非凡的跨越。如今，球迷们可以用西班牙语、日语、法语以及其他60种提供的语言来关注自己喜爱的球队。
NBA总决赛正以60种语言在214个国家和地区进行转播。https://t.co/DTgYQgLs8o
—— NBA官方公关 (@ NBAPR) 2025年6月21日
容我多说两句，NBA比赛的西班牙语广播始于1995年，当时迈阿密热火队与当地一家广播电台合作，决定为当地市场提供热火队比赛的西班牙语配音解说。连续一千多场比赛中，何塞·帕涅达 (Jose Pañeda) 坐在解说席上，让那些虽未被完全忽视、但也绝对未曾受到主动邀请的球迷们兴奋不已。
几年后，NBA批准了与 Telemundo 电视台的协议，在三年内进行了15场比赛的试播，从而为 ESPN Deportes 等频道打开了大门。几十年后，这些已成为 ESPN 网络的重要基石。
如果说联盟永远不会寻求与英语以外的球迷沟通的方式，那显然是荒谬的。然而，正是25年前一个俱乐部的单一举动，让整个联盟变得更好——不仅造福了西班牙语人群，也造福了中国、德国或巴西的球迷。
因为他们主动伸出了手。他们假设只要敞开大门，就会有人走进来，而事实证明他们是对的。
“我认为应该提出的一个论点是，失聪与语言障碍非常相似，”塔迪说，“如果我只说法语，我去美国看NBA，我根本不知道发生了什么……一些失聪人士只是将自己视为语言上的少数群体。他们说‘如果每个人都说美式手语（ASL），那么对任何人来说这都不是问题，因为每个人都可以依靠其他感官来生活。’”
针对失聪球迷的转播到底会是什么样子？这当然不像提供其他非英语口语选项那么简单。会像音乐会和电影那样，仅仅提供一个手语翻译那么简单吗？
“我的目标是让它不至于沦为次要选择——即你明知道有一个主要的信息来源（比如语音），然后你得到的是次要来源（比如以另一种方式翻译过来的内容），从而让你成为第二手听到它的人。”塔迪继续说道，“我认为，如果能有一种直接获取信息的主要方式，体验会顺畅得多……为什么不能直接安排一位失聪解说员，而不是让他去翻译健听解说员的话呢？”
全球有4.3亿失聪人口。这一数字超过了除世界上人口最多的两个国家之外的所有国家的人口总和。
他们——以及他们作为潜在球迷群体的价值——被忽视了。
卡特·布莱恩特正被忽视。
赛季已过半，这位15号秀依然未能挤进轮换阵容。他被频繁地在发展联盟和主队之间下放与召回，与那些饮水机管理员们同场竞技——而NBA球迷常常忘记，这些边缘球员同样是世界上最顶尖的500名篮球运动员之一。
最糟糕的是，他开始扣篮不进。曾经世界上最简单的事情，现在变得越来越困难。球场仿佛在对他尖叫。曾经的安静、专注于信任与执行的纯粹已不复存在，取而代之的是残酷的新现实。
起初，他变得张扬。他扮演着自己认为需要扮演的角色。他变得像个机器人，动作僵硬，距离正常的轮换角色越来越远。
他再次被下放到发展联盟。然而，这一次并没有给他设定具体的技术焦点。他没有被要求去练习投篮机制或持球创造力，尽管我相信这些也写在评估报告里。
不，他被告知要去寻找自我。
无障碍领域有一个概念叫做“想象中的需求”。用阿波琳的话来说，“无障碍设计的历史源远流长，但往往是由那些没有残疾体验的人凭空想象需求而设计出来的。当他们真正展示产品时……人们会觉得‘这很有趣，但我不会在日常生活中使用它，因为它不实用，或者因为在公共场合使用它会让我感到尴尬。’”
我认为同样的概念也适用于NBA球员的发展。我们自以为知道球员成功的决定性因素。我们热烈讨论控球技术、骨架身板或其他任何因素，是否能让我们喜爱的年轻球员从潜力股蜕变为明星。
也许这两者是不可避免的。布莱恩特是如何在一支12年来首次杀入总决赛的马刺队中，争得第一替补前锋的位置的？是因为更好的投篮吗？还是因为摆脱了机器人般的僵硬状态？
不，是因为找到了家。他在抚育他成长的那个大家庭中找到了归属。
布莱恩特重新融入了失聪群体，或者更准确地说，他在一个新的地方伸出了友谊之手。他在圣安东尼奥的阳光小屋听障学校（Sunshine Cottage School for the Hearing Impaired）主持了活动。在街上遇到失聪家庭时，他会用手语打招呼——这个如此简单举动，曾几何时竟变得如此陌生。
对卡特而言，寂静就是家。这不仅是指没有声音，更是指没有外界的干扰。他话很少，为人善良，说话轻声细语。他时刻提防着那些他并不指望会被提前告知的障碍。在推特上，他甚至被拿来和饺子作比较。
在这个充斥着通往联盟的隐形障碍的世界里——有些障碍悄无声息，有些则震耳犹聋、永无休止——他专注于眼前的一切。
这是一段安静的旅程。但它绝非没有沟通。也许下一步，是帮助将他成长过程中的那些没有无休止嘈杂声的球场理念，融入并重塑NBA的格局。也许，这首先会以在西部冠军球队中迎来一个爆发的二年级赛季的形式呈现。也许，它根本不会到来。
但无论这段旅程将他带向何方，毋庸置疑的是，他将用自己的方式去追寻。
带着无声的成长，和永远敞开的双臂。
带着未被听见、但并非未曾表达的言语。
带着他必将把握的未来，以及一个他从未停止聆听的群体。
寂静，从未如此震耳欲聋。
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。
查看原文：Carter Bryant and the Sound of Silence
Carter Bryant and the Sound of Silence
If the name Thilo Widder sounds familiar, you have a good memory! Thilo is a contributor at our Minnesota Timberwolves sister site Canis Hoopus, and he participated in the second round of Fraternizing with the Enemy with J.R. Wilco during their playoff series against the Spurs. He also enjoys contributing to other blogs, and we have the great honor of him providing this amazing piece on Carter Bryant and his contributions to the deaf community to Pounding the Rock. We hope you enjoy. -the Editors
What’s the first thing you think of when you think basketball? Do you see the sight of the ball dropping through the net? Can you just feel the excitement burst into your bloodstream, a memory turned physical with a moment’s notice?
Or, do you hear it?
Because I hear basketball. I hear its presentation when Mike Breen yells “bang.” I hear the sound of shoes squeaking up and down the court, of Mark Cuban’s speaker system bafflingly installed inside the hoop itself.
I hear it all. I live for it. It’s essential to how I have fallen in love with basketball.
But what if it hadn’t been? What if I, like thousands of fans, could not hear the game? Deafness continues to be a more and more common disability. Over 430 million people world-wide already deal with some sort of hearing loss with the WHO estimating that number to rise to over 700 million by 2050, approximately 10% of the world’s population by that time.
There’s an ESPN story about “Invisible Disabilities” faced by sports fans that has stuck with me many years after it was originally posted just about two years ago. There’s one section about a deaf fan, Amy Gomme, who said the following:
“These leagues, these teams are missing out on a new fan base, potential fans who would show up to games if the experience was inclusive enough.”
I wonder how Carter Bryant feels about that.
To be clear, Bryant is not deaf. Instead, he’s been molded by the community that still seems like such an afterthought to the NBA’s production. As a child in a non-hearing family, and a special advocate of Gallaudet University, a school for the hearing impaired, Bryant called himself the “face of their platform” in a pre-draft video. That seems more important than ever.
“For the longest time, I thought half the population was deaf and half the population was hearing,” Bryant said. “Because, just how I was brought up, half my day was spent with deaf people.”
Bryant is something called a GODA – or a grandchild of a deaf adult. The slightly less known acronym than its generationally separated CODA (child of a deaf adult) has fundamentally shaped the man he is today.
That G part of that set of four letters carries more than it seems. Bryant’s grandfather is Doc Torres, who few of you will know. Widely considered the brightest star of an 80s Gallaudet team, Torres was shunned from the NBA for his deafness. He would go on to play nearly 20 years in Puerto Rico and win two gold medals at the Deaflympics.
There has only ever been one deaf NBA player. Lance Allred played for the Cleveland Cavaliers for three games in the 2007-08 season. He would spend 16 seasons bouncing around 17 different teams from the early 2000s to the mid-2010s.
During his time in the G-League, Allred faced discriminatory abuse from his coach while playing for his hometown Utah Flash.
It was clear that the NBA was not ready to empower deaf players. Whether it was for a lack of readiness or a lack of care, they simply did not set up Allred – or Torres for that matter – for success.
It is certainly not from a lack of talent. That much is very clearly certain.
Carter Bryant decided on Arizona, a university with an established pipeline to the NBA, for any number of reasons. They played the fast paced brand of basketball that would empower him. His aunt had played volleyball there and he knew the coaches well. They had a history of turning forwards with similar body types to his own into lottery picks and champions. From Aaron Gordon to Derrick Williams to the more recent Benedict Mathurin, the fit was clear.
Still, there was an option that must have tugged at Bryant’s heart-strings. Gallaudet University could offer him a third generation of his family, tied to a school and a community that he clearly cares about so strongly.
And yet, it never could’ve been in consideration. To go to Gallaudet would be to abandon the dream he had built in his parents’ home.
He understandably made the only real choice he had, the only choice that loving family would’ve allowed.
Still, at Gallaudet, his grandparents would be able to attend games and be treated as people first, not as their disabilities.
Instead, Arizona had an incredible season. Bryant was a blur in transition and his body rapidly took form as his defense did the same. Transfer Caleb Love joined him to lead the Wildcats to the Sweet Sixteen.
During that run, or even during his whole college season, Carter’s mind was on his family, as undoubtedly theirs was on him. Yet, despite their continued care for him, Bryant’s games were getting harder and harder to follow and watch for the people that he wanted there most.
It seems silly to say. Arizona’s games were all televised. There are gaggles of reporters doing write ups for these contests. Coverage was not too far out of reach.
And yet…
“I think basketball is unique, because it’s a live event, so I think ways I could relate to that would be theater, cinema, concerts. It’s really hard to find caption films when they come out live, and so there’s a lot of delay in access to information.” said Apolline Tardy, a Ph.D student at Berkley College and an advocate and researcher of accessibility technology.
“Movies will come out in theaters, they don’t have captions yet… even if something is coming out live, the captions often have a delay, especially if they’re manually typed, and it’s just.. it’s such bad of an experience that I don’t follow at all. I don’t want to, because it’s kind of incoherent. The timing is so important. I imagine basketball is so visual, like you don’t want to see someone shoot and then wait 40 seconds to, to know who did it”
Only four teams – the LA Clippers, the Phoenix Suns, the Portland Trailblazers, and the Brooklyn Nets – offer OneCourt, a disability aid for low vision individuals or the vision impaired. As far as whatever is publicly available, no teams offer any sort of support for deaf fans.
The assumption is that fans who need them will have their own cochlear implants, that all these fans need to do is to join the “hearing world.”
In 2021, Zach Lavine took a group of hard of hearing students to a Chicago White Sox game, continuing a commitment that started when he was in high school. The interpreter he includes in his messages are a stark reminder of what the NBA has not done.
What’s your favorite part of being a fan of the NBA? Or any sports league for that matter?
Is it the moments in play that remind you of when you first fell in love with the game, the nostalgia of remembering what it was like ten, fifteen, however many years ago?
Is it the transactions, the trades that promise endless debate and the thoughts of different universes? What if the Spurs had lost Tim Duncan to the Magic? What if they had drafted better players in the first few years of their rebuild?
Or, as it is for me, is it the community that comes with discussing these questions with peers, who decide to unite in their care for a sport that is slowly but surely becoming the world’s second most popular game?
Many of those who push back on accessibility claim that communities should be responsible for their own engagement. There hasn’t been much proof that the deaf community wants to engage with sports so why should we build out tools to help them?
The better question is: how many fans have we missed out on learning from because the league failed to invite them into the game.
Carter Bryant was invited to join the game that those fans shunned had made, a space they could play without the usual questions. Whereas hearing players, players who have been socialized yelling out orders on the basketball court, can communicate with ease, there is no place for signing in these runs.
“If I’m guarding the ball and I have four other people behind me, you kind of have no idea what’s going on,” Bryant told The Athletic in a February interview. “So being able to check out your peripherals, use your feet and just have a sense of natural feel for the game, it’s different. We take it for granted as players, and we don’t use our other senses as much, but we don’t have to.”
Bryant heard the same floor squeaks, the same sound of the swish we have all fallen in love with, but without the barking. He didn’t hear a screen called out, or a switch, it instead became a second instinct.
Schemes were internalized, matchups memorized, in a way that would not require communication but instead only the trust that his teammates would be there.
Inherent, unthinking belief that someone would be there. That someone would reach out.
The priority of the NBA has been globalization.
They have, to their immense credit, found ways to build basketball from a game for fans all over the world to a worldly game, which is not an insignificant jump to make. Fans can now experience their favorite teams in Spanish, Japanese, French, and any of the other 60 languages offered.
The NBA Finals are being broadcast in 214 countries and territories in 60 languages. https://t.co/DTgYQgLs8o
— NBA Communications (@ NBAPR) June 21, 2025
If you’ll bear with me, Spanish broadcasts of NBA games first started in 1995 when the Miami Heat partnered with a local radio station and decided they would supply the local market with dubbed commentary of Heat games. For over a thousand straight games, Jose Pañeda sat in the booth and excited fans who had not been ignored entirely, but certainly also hadn’t been invited.
A few years later, the NBA greenlit a deal with Telemundo, leading to a 15 game trial period across three years, opening the door for ESPN Deportes and the ilk. Decades later and those are cornerstones of the ESPN network.
It is insane to argue that the league would never have sought out a way to communicate with fans outside of the English language. However, it took just one act of one franchise, 25 years ago, to make the league better, not just for Spanish speakers but for fans in China or Germany or Brazil.
Because they reached out. They assumed someone would be there if they opened their doors and they were right.
“I think an argument you should make is that deafness is very similar to a language barrier,” said Tardy, “If I only spoke French and I went to the NBA in the US, I wouldn’t know what was going on… Some deaf people just consider themselves a linguistic minority. They say ‘if everybody spoke ASL, then it wouldn’t be a problem at all for anyone, because everyone could just operate on other senses.’”
What would a broadcast for deaf fans even look like? It’s certainly not as easy as an option as for different non-English verbal languages. Would it be as simple as having an interpreter, as has been provided for concerts and films?
“My goal is that it doesn’t become secondary, that you know you have the primary source of information, that speech, for example, and then you have the secondary source, like it’s translated in another way, and then you become the second to hear it.” continued Tardy, “I think what would make the experience so much smoother is if there was a primary way to access information… why can’t there just be a deaf commentator that’s not translating a hearing commentator?”
430 million people are deaf worldwide. That is more people than the population of all but two countries in the world.
They – and their potential fandom – are ignored.
Carter Bryant is being ignored.
It’s the middle of the season and the 15th pick has still not cracked the rotation. He has been sent back and forth from the G-League, and he is playing against the end of the bench guys that NBA fans so frequently forget are among the top 500 players in the world.
Worst of all, he’s missing dunks. What was once the easiest thing on the planet is now coming harder and harder. It’s like the court is screaming at him. Gone is the quiet, the focus on simply trusting and executing, here is the new reality.
At first, he gets loud. He plays the character he thinks he needs to. He becomes robotic. His movements are stiff. He falls further and further from a normal role.
He is transferred back down to the G-League again. However, this time it comes not with a focus. He is not told to practice his mechanics or on-ball creation, although I’m sure that was in the notes as well.
No, he’s told to find himself.
There’s a concept in accessibility circles called imagined needs. In Apolline’s words, “accessibility has a long history of being made by people who don’t experience the disability and who imagine what the needs might be, and then when they actually show their products… this is fun, but I won’t use it in my day-to-day life, because it’s impractical, or because I just feel embarrassed to use that in public.”
I think the same concept applies to development in the NBA. We assume we know the swing factors for players to succeed. We rave about whether a handle or a buffer frame or any number of things are the things that will take our favorite young players from prospect to star.
Maybe these two things are unavoidable. What did it take for Bryant to find a spot as the first forward to sub in for a Spurs team that would make their first final in 12 years? Was it a better shot? Was it a return to non-robot form?
No, it was finding home. And he found it in the fraternity that grew him.
Bryant would re-engage with the deaf community, although it’s more accurate to say he extended an open hand in a new place. He led events at the Sunshine Cottage School for the Hearing Impaired in San Antonio. He signed hello to deaf families when out and about, an act so simple that had become so foreign.
For Carter, silence is home. Not just the lack of sound, but the lack of outside input. He speaks sparingly. He is kind, yet soft spoken. He is looking out for obstacles that he does not expect to be announced. He is compared to dumplings on Twitter.
In a world full of invisible barriers to the league, those silent and those overwhelmingly, unendingly loud, he has focused on what is directly in front of him.
It’s a quiet journey. But it was never one without communication. Maybe the next step is helping to take the courts he grew up on, the ones without the relentless chatter, and shaping the NBA landscape with them in mind. Maybe it comes first in the form of a breakout sophomore season on the Western Conference Champion. Maybe it does not come at all.
But what is undeniably certain is the means he will use to pursue that journey, wherever it leaves him.
With silent growth, and ever open arms.
With words unheard but not unspoken.
With a future he is sure to grasp, and a community he has never stopped hearing.
Silence has never been quite this loud.
By Thilo Latrell Widder, via Pounding The Rock