[外電] 雷霆—誕生在美國中部的籃球童話 part1

看板Thunder (奧克拉荷馬市雷霆)作者loserkobe (喪家犬科比)時間13年前 (2013/01/22 23:06)推噓1(1推 0噓 9→)

留言10則, 2人參與討論串1/1

A Basketball Fairy Tale in Middle America By SAM ANDERSON Published: November 8, 2012 http://ppt.cc/S1BX N.B.A. scoring champions are, as a rule, weirdos and reprobates and in some cases diagnosable sociopaths. Something about dominating your opponent, publicly, more or less every day of your life, in the most visible aspect of your sport, tends to either warp your spirit or to be possible only to those whose spirits are already warped. Michael Jordan, when he wasn’t busy scoring, was busy punching a teammate in the face and gambling away small fortunes. Allen Iverson, in his spare time, recorded an aesthetically and morally terrible rap album and gave an iconic speech denigrating the very notion of practice. Kobe Bryant is and shall forever be Kobe Bryant. Wilt, Shaq, Pistol Pete, Dominique, McGrady, McAdoo, Rick Barry — it’s a near-solid roster of dysfunction: sadists, narcissists, malcontents, knuckleheads, misanthropes, womanizers, addicts and villains. While it’s true that plain old N.B.A. superstars do occasionally manage to be model citizens (cf. Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, Steve Nash), there is something irredeemable about a scoring champion. Kevin Durant, the star of the Oklahoma City Thunder, is the youngest scoring champion in N.B.A. history. At 24, he has led the league in scoring for three consecutive seasons, and all signs point to him keeping that up for the foreseeable future. It follows, then, that Durant should also be a prodigy of a head case. He should have been arrested for reckless driving at around age 9, broken his hand in a strip-club brawl at age 12 and accidentally shot his chauffeur no later than age 15. Instead, Durant has a reputation roughly on par with Gandhi. He seems to be — not just for a scoring champion, but for anyone — almost inhumanly humble. His motto, which he intones constantly, is “Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.” His pregame ritual involves kissing his mother, as does his postgame ritual. Once, in college, during probably the greatest freshman season of all time, a reporter asked Durant if he realized that he had just single-handedly outscored the entire opposing team in the second half of a game. Durant answered, with absolute sincerity, “Who, me?” When I asked the Thunder coach, Scott Brooks, to tell me about his superstar, he laughed. “Whatever you say nice, you can print it out and I’ll just say I said it,” he said. “Because it’s true.” Durant could be forgiven for wanting to brag a little. He is currently the second-best basketball player in the world — a category in which he trails only LeBron James, who is four years older, and whose Miami Heat beat the Thunder last year in the finals. The budding rivalry between KD and LBJ (off the court they’re friends, Olympic teammates and sometimes, controversially, workout partners) is the kind of thing the N.B.A. has been fantasizing about for decades, a yin and yang as tightly balanced as any since Magic and Bird. LeBron and Durant are, conveniently for storytelling purposes, opposites. LeBron looks like something out of a Marvel comic: a sentient pile of muscles. Durant looks like something from a Pixar movie — a humanoid praying mantis. He is 6 feet 9 inches tall and almost disturbingly skinny, with disproportionately long arms. Sportswriters, struggling to describe him, have compared him to capellini and a pterodactyl. His body looks almost like an engineering mistake, and early in his career it seemed as if it might actually be one: before the 2007 draft, there was a minor kerfuffle when it was discovered that Durant couldn’t bench-press 185 pounds, the standard predraft litmus test, even a single time. (The next pick in the draft, Al Horford, lifted it 20 times.) LeBron entered the league as a teenager and promptly knocked around all of the grown men who tried to guard him. As a 19-year-old rookie, Durant drifted around, shooting jumpers and trying to avoid contact, and still spent much of his time picking himself up off the floor. Although he won Rookie of the Year, he wasn’t particularly efficient in doing so, and his team was horrible. Despite their discrepancy in visible muscle tone, Durant has strengths that LeBron will probably never have. LeBron’s jump shot, for instance, is funky-looking, jerky, angular and streaky. Durant’s is natural, pure, quick and stunningly accurate — somehow, his ridiculous arms manage not to get in the way but to amplify his power, so it looks as if he’s shooting with zero effort even from 30 feet away. Durant’s real advantage over LeBron, however, is civic. LeBron infamously held a prime-time TV special in the summer of 2010 to announce that he was abandoning Cleveland for the glamour of Miami — a P.R. debacle known as the Decision. When he arrived in Miami, he took part in a histrionic rally at which he promised, on a stage surrounded by a W.W.E. -style light show and smoke machines, that his new team was so good it was going to dominate the rest of the league without even trying. It’s impossible to imagine that kind of behavior from Durant. In the middle of the overheated summer of 2010, the day before LeBron’s Decision, Durant announced quietly, on Twitter, that he had just signed a contract to stay in Oklahoma — the third-smallest market in the league, a place devoid of beaches and celebrities and night life — for another five years. You got the feeling he would have committed to the Thunder for the rest of his life if only the Players’ Union would have allowed it. Durant, in other words, seems to have been invented in a laboratory beneath the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce to serve as the international face of Oklahoma — a state known for its citizens’ kindness, levelheadedness, work ethic, community spirit and, above all, humility. (The mayor of Oklahoma City told me that he thinks Oklahomans are humble because of their proximity to Texans, who will never stop bragging about anything.) Led by Durant, the Thunder has become one of the N.B.A.’s best and youngest and most popular teams, an international icon of brotherhood and good will that has helped to usher in golden ages in both Oklahoma City and the N.B.A., an electric blue Trojan horse inside of which Oklahoma has managed to smuggle its ethos to the rest of the world: good folksy folks humbly helping other folksy folks stay humble and helpful. Oklahoma sits right in the middle of the country: it’s not the cultured East or the wild West or the frigid North or the humid South but exactly where all those things meet. The mountains touch the prairies, which touch the plains. This has created, over the millenniums, crazy animals and crazy weather and crazy 25-car pileups of culture. In 1889, the almost unbelievable land run sent tens of thousands of ragtag settlers from all over the country literally racing to claim tracts of practically uninhabitable land. Oklahoma, in other words, is the Hadron supercollider of states: it slams disparate things together, over and over, producing endless crises of cohesion. Even tornadoes, the region’s defining devil winds, are a result of a meteorological collision: a convergence of three different weather systems that happens with freakish regularity in Oklahoma and its immediate environs. Meteorologists in Oklahoma are basically rock stars. Professional athletes, on the other hand, have rarely had much of a presence here. That began to change in 2006, when a consortium of wealthy Oklahomans, led by the financier Clay Bennett, bought the Seattle SuperSonics — a once-proud franchise that had been stuck for years in the drain-swirl of mediocrity. Most people assumed, cynically, that Bennett was buying the team in order to move it, as quickly as possible, to Oklahoma City, his hometown. He had pledged to make a good-faith effort to keep the team in Seattle — an effort that came into suspicion shortly after the sale, when the new owner demanded that Seattle come up with nearly $300 million to build a new arena. Seattle refused, at which point the ownership group announced, regretfully, that it was going to have to move the Sonics to a city with a suitable arena — a city that also happened to be Oklahoma City. The fallout was intense: lawsuits, protests, scandal. Even Oklahomans who love the team admit that they were uncomfortable with the way it was acquired. The sportswriter Bill Simmons, in solidarity with the people of Seattle, referred to the Thunder exclusively in his columns as the Zombie Sonics. 雷霆——誕生在美國中部的籃球童話（《紐約時報雜誌》的封面故事，part 1）這文是今年11月份一期紐約時報雜誌（《Newyork Times Magazine》的封面故事。通常來說，NBA的得分王們大都是一群個性偏執古怪，放蕩不羈，在某種意義上具有反叛社會傾向的人。那些每天在賽場上或多或少統治著對手的球星們，意志易於受到消磨，或者說，有些人的精神原本已經被扭曲。 Michael Jordan忙於得分之餘，在場下曾對隊友的臉揮拳相向（譯註1，見文後），並且因喜好賭博而損失了不少銀子。 Allen Iverson,，閒暇時錄製過一張從美學角度和道德層面上說，都十分糟糕的rap專輯；他還在一次標誌性演說中，把“訓練”的定義抹黑到面目全非。 Kobe Bryant，他是且永遠將會是那個“ Kobe Bryant”。張伯倫，Shaq， Pistol Pete，Dominique，McGrady，McAdoo，Rick Barry等（:注：以上提及的球星均為歷屆得分王），幾乎都是一幫異於常人的傢伙：虐待狂，自戀狂，不滿現狀者，頭腦魯鈍者，憤世嫉俗者，風流好色者，（嗑藥）成癮者，甚至還有流氓惡棍。儘管那些樸實無華的老派NBA巨星中，也不乏“模範公民型”的人物（比如Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, Steve Nash等等）；但說起歷任得分王們，則確實有些無可救藥的意味在裡頭。 Kevin Durant，這位俄克拉荷馬雷霆隊的當家球星，是聯盟歷史上最為年輕的得分王。雖然他年僅24歲，卻已經連續三個賽季拿到這一殊榮，並且在新賽季里大有繼續蟬聯的希望。由此而推的話，Durant同樣該是一位特立獨行的天才。他應該9歲就因危險駕駛而被拘捕，12歲就在脫衣舞俱樂部因打架鬧事而折傷手，並在不滿15歲時就對自家司機開槍走火。然而與之相反的是，Durant的名譽都差不多可以和聖雄甘地相提並論了（誇張修辭，大家理解就好→→ ）。他看起來——不說以得分王的身份而論，就算從普通人的角度來說— —都可謂超乎尋常的謙遜。他常常掛在嘴邊的一句座右銘，就是——“ Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”（勤奮苦練勝過怠惰天才）。無論是比賽的開場前還是結束後，親吻母親都是Durant的習慣舉止。大學一年級期間，Durant 打出了可能是NCAA 有史以來，大一新生髮揮最為出色的賽季。一位記者詢問Durant，他是否意識到自己以一己之力，在下半場所得分就超過對手全隊。Durant對此萬分懇摯地回應：“您是在說誰，我嗎？” 當我採訪雷霆主教練Brooks，請他為我描述下隊中這位超級球星時，Brooks教練報以一笑：“無論你對他有多少溢美之辭，都可以刊印出來。我會承認自己說過這些話，”他表態道：“因為它們都是事實。” 即使對Durant意圖帶點誇耀的成分，也是情有可原的。現在的Durant，堪稱是當今籃球界的第二人。而他唯一正追趕著的身影，就是比其年長四歲、上賽季率領邁阿密熱火隊擊敗了雷霆的——LeBron Jasmes。 KD和LBJ之間所萌生的強強對抗（賽場之外，他倆是好朋友，一起參加奧運會的夢之隊隊友；有時還會搭檔訓練，儘管這點頗引爭議），是聯盟數十年來夢寐以求的場景。這是自魔術師和大鳥上演經典的“黑白雙雄”對決後，NBA 又湧現出的一組剛柔相濟的球星。 LBJ和Durant，出於我們行文便利，把兩個人放在了對立面。LBJ看起來非常像從驚奇漫畫（譯註2 ）中走出來的角色，肌肉線條清晰分明；而Durant卻神似皮克斯電影裡的類人螳螂。他身高達到6 英尺9 英寸（即官方選秀身高所公佈的206 厘米，諸位相信麼= = ），削瘦得令人近乎不安，還擁有一雙和身體不成比例的長臂。體育新聞記者都為瞭如何描述 Durant而傷透腦筋，他們將其類比為天使細麵（這是意大利麵的一種），和（古生）翼手龍。 Durant的身體構造彷彿是工程學上的一個錯誤。這話在KD 職業生涯的早期似乎也得到驗證：2007 年參與NBA 選秀之前，Durant在體能測試中甚至舉不起一次185 磅重的臥推（而緊接其後探花順位的Al Horford，臥推成績可是高達20 次之多）。在當時，此事還引發了一場小小的混亂。當初，年少風發的LBJ進入聯盟，面對一干企圖防守自己的壯實球員，很快就能在其間猶如閑庭漫步般打球。反觀Durant，作為一位年方19 的新秀，他卻在球場上四處遊走，偏於跳投，力求避免對抗。賽場之外，Durant也花費了大量時間加以練習，促使自己進步。儘管Durant榮膺年度最佳新秀的頭銜，整體表現卻不夠高效，而（那一年）雷霆戰績也同樣慘淡。不過，儘管兩者間那種強健的肌肉力量差別顯著，Durant卻擁有LBJ也許從來不曾擁有的優勢。例如，LBJ的跳投看著有些古怪，穩定性不夠，動作也生硬易變。Durant的跳投卻顯得那麼自然純粹，靈動敏捷，而且極其的精準——不知何故，Durant那雙長得離譜的手臂，非但沒有成為他的投籃阻礙，反而加強了自身力量。因此，即便離地30 英尺的投籃，Durant完成起來似乎也易如反掌。 Durant真正勝過LBJ地方，在於他那種好好公民的思想意識。2010 的夏天，LBJ在黃金時段舉行了一次不光彩的全國電視直播，宣布他要捨棄克利夫蘭騎士，轉投入邁阿密熱火的迷人懷抱——從而引發了一場災難性的，以“決定”著稱的公關危機。當LBJ抵達邁阿密，他還參加了一場戲劇色彩濃厚的集合。舞台整個刮起最炫WWE 風被，被搖滾樂演出般的聲色燈光和煙霧製造機所環繞。LBJ站在台上向世人承諾，自己所加盟的新球隊是如此出類拔萃，他們甚至無需嘗試就足可躋身聯盟霸主的地位。而上述種種言行，我們很難想像會發生在Durant身上。就在2010 那個酷夏中旬， LBJ的“決定”前夕，Durant悄無聲息地通過推特宣布和雷霆達成續約——俄克拉荷馬是聯盟排名倒數第三的小球市，在這裡缺少明媚醉人的海灘，不見衣香鬢影的名流，也沒有五光十色的夜生活——Durant需要在這裡再待五年。而給人的感覺是，只要球員工會允許，Durant將有意在這裡待上一輩子。 Durant，換句話說，就像從俄克拉荷馬商會的下屬實驗室裡走出來的人物，成為一張向世人展示俄州形象的名片——這個州的公民，以其心地善良，頭腦冷靜，富於職業道德和團體精神而聞名於世，還有，最最重要的一項品性，謙遜。（俄城市長告訴我，俄克拉荷馬人的謙遜氣質得益於毗鄰德克薩斯州的緣故，德州人民自來慣於大吹大擂。囧）在Durant的帶領下，雷霆成長為NBA 裡面最出色，最年輕又最受歡迎的球隊之一。雷霆是兄弟情深和善意良願的典範，幫助俄城和聯盟雙方開闢著黃金時代。與此同時，雷霆還是一匹鐵青色的“特洛伊木馬”（譯註3 ），俄克拉荷馬那些內在的精神氣質，通過它而被傳遞到世界其他地區：一群友好和氣的人們，謙遜地幫助其他的友好人士保持謙遜不驕和助人為樂的品格。俄克拉荷馬坐落在美國中部：不同於文化底蘊深厚的東部地區，野性猶存的西部地區，天寒地凍的北部地區，或者溫暖濕潤的南部地區，而是東南西北所有一切的交匯地帶。連綿群山挨著大平原，草原又和平原緊緊相連。數千年間，這裡誕生了瘋狂的動物，極端的氣候，和那種狂熱的25 車連環相撞似的文化- - 。 1889 年，在那場令人幾乎難以置信的西進運動中，成千上萬的烏合之眾，從全國各地湧入俄克拉荷馬這片看似幅員遼闊，但實際上並不適宜定居的土地（譯註4 ）。換句話講，俄克拉荷馬就是這個國家的強子超級對撞機：將各種迥然相異的事物聚合到一起，一而再再而三地產生出無窮無盡的內聚危機。甚至於龍捲風這種在當地被定義為“惡魔之風” 的天氣現象（譯註5 ），也是氣象學上碰撞的結果：三種不同的天氣系統在此匯合，對於俄克拉荷馬及其周邊地區而言，龍捲風堪稱是司空見慣的現象了了。在俄州，氣象學家的地位基本等同於搖滾明星。從另一方面來講，職業運動員在俄克拉荷馬的存在感並不強。隨著以資本家克萊. Bennett為首的俄克拉荷馬聯合財團，買下西雅圖超音速隊——一支曾經輝煌一時，如今沉浮數年苦苦在谷底掙扎的球隊，這個狀況（運動員的微弱存在感）得以改善。當時大多數人對西雅圖隊的易主冷嘲熱諷。因為他們確信，Bennett買下球隊的意圖，就是要把它盡快搬回自己的故鄉——俄克拉荷馬城。儘管Bennett曾經做出承諾，會竭盡全力把球隊留在西雅圖——不過這個承諾，在他買下球隊不久就飽受質疑。因為這位球隊的新東家，請求西雅圖投入近3 億美元興建一座新球館。西雅圖市拒絕了。鑑於此，球隊的新管理層宣布，將不得不把它搬遷到一座擁有合適球館的城市——這座城市正是俄克拉荷馬城。遷隊一事掀起了軒然大波：繁瑣的法律訴訟，紛擾的球迷抗議，漫天的流言蜚語。甚至連喜愛球隊的俄克拉荷馬人民，也承認以這種方式獲得球隊（遷入），是一件令人不太舒坦的事情。著名的體育專欄作家Bill Simmons，堅定地與西雅圖人站在同一戰線。在其專欄中，西蒙斯冠以雷霆獨一無二的稱呼——超音速殭屍隊。本文譯註注1： 95 — 96賽季，在公牛的賽季前訓練營裡，幫主和隊友科爾發生了一點爭執，還擊打了後者的面部- -。不過後來Kerr回憶時談到：“ 當時就是競爭嘛，那可能是發生在我身上最棒的一件事之一了，真的。” Kerr說道，“我需要站到喬丹面前討回來，我覺得我的舉動贏得了他的尊重。雖然我們兩個打了一架，但之後我們兩人建立了非常好的關係。你必須得證明自己，一旦你證明了自己足夠強硬，那你就會沒事。” 注2 ：驚奇漫畫（marvel ），美國漫畫中的超級英雄主要來自於兩個巨頭的漫畫公司。一個是 DC，一個就是Marvel。 Marvel 漫畫公司旗下有5000多名漫畫英雄，始建於1939年。2009年12月31日，迪士尼公司(DIS)以42.4億美元的價格完成了對Marvel Entertainment Inc的收購，從而獲得了蜘蛛人、鋼鐵人以及其它5000多個漫畫角色的所有權。注3：特洛伊木馬的故事源於古希臘的神話傳說。特洛伊的王子帕里斯拐走了希臘斯巴達的王后——絕色美女海倫，引發了長達十年的特洛伊戰爭。希臘聯軍圍困特洛伊久攻不下，於是假裝撤退，留下一具巨大的中空木馬。特洛伊守軍不知是計，把木馬運進城中作為戰利品。夜深人靜之際，木馬腹中躲藏的希臘士兵打開城門，裡應外合，特洛伊最終淪陷。注4 ：俄克拉何馬州(Oklahoma )是美國中南部的一個州。東接密蘇里州和阿肯色州，西鄰新墨西哥州和得克薩斯州，南隔雷德河與得克薩斯州相望，北接科羅拉多州和堪薩斯州。面積181089平方公里，在50州內列第20位。人口3，579，212（2006年數據）。首府名為俄克拉何馬城。州名來源於印第安喬克托語，意為為“紅種人的土地” 此地原為印第安人的聚居地，1800年歸法國所有。1803年根據購買路易斯安那協議，該地區歸美國所有。1880年住在這一地區的印第安部族有60多個。 1889年4月22日，美國聯邦ZF決定把俄克拉何馬州向白人移民開放，許多白人紛紛湧入，搶先爭奪大片肥沃土地，故該州又稱“搶先州”。1907年正式成為美國第46州。注5 ：: 美國中部多為草原地貌，被稱為中部平原區，少有崎嶇險阻擾亂大氣活動。由於墨西哥暖流帶來的暖空氣形成大量雨雲，使得來自北部加拿大的寒流迅速退卻，在美國境內低氣壓不斷發展，最終形成龍捲風。俄克拉荷馬州屬於龍捲風的多發地帶，時常受到風災侵襲翻譯:http://bbs.hupu.com/4696320.html -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 114.36.95.225