Нью-Йорк Никс баг 2026 оны зургаадугаар сарын 13-нд Сан Антонио Спөрсийг 94-90-ийн харьцаатайгаар буулган авч, NBA-ийн аварга боллоо. Шийдвэрлэх тав дахь тоглолтын төгсгөлд Жэйлен Брунсон 45 оноо авч багаа ялалтад хөтөлсөн бол Сан Антонио Спөрсийн залуу тоглогчид туршлагагүйн улмаас чухал мөчүүдэд алдаа гаргаж хожигдлоо.
Виктор Вэмбаньяма 19 оноо авч, 7-оос 19-ийн шидэлтийн хувьтай тоглосон ч тоглолтын төгсгөлд Митчелл Робинсоны эсрэг самбараас бөмбөг авалт хийж чадаагүй нь багийн хувьд том цохилт болсон юм. Тоглолтын дараа тэрээр энэ цуврал нь өөрийн амьдралын хамгийн том сургамж болсныг онцлоод, алдаа бүр нь маш үнэтэй тусдаг гэдгийг хүлээн зөвшөөрөв.
Дасгалжуулагч Мич Жонсон багийнхан нь аварга болоход хараахан бэлэн болоогүй байсныг дурдаад, өрсөлдөгч баг илүү байсныг хүлээн зөвшөөрлөө. Сан Антонио Спөрсийн залуус ирэх улиралд энэхүү гашуун туршлагаа ахиц дэвшил болгон ашиглаж, дахин хүчирхэгжиж ирэхээ илэрхийлсэн юм.
Дэлгэрэнгүй эх сурвалжийг харах
Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
SAN ANTONIO — Some things can only be understood through experience. Heartbreak hits different. Nothing can prepare you for the weight of devastation. It seeps deep into your soul and crushes your spirit. It changes you.
There it was, etched into the face of Devin Vassell, the brave soul who stepped to the podium after it was all over. Vassell began to talk about how you can mess up in the regular season and get away with it when he heard the sound.
Echoing into the news conference room were the jubilant cheers of New York Knicks fans, family members and the team itself. The champions were in his house, kicking their feet up.
It froze him, stopping his sentence in its tracks. He looked up toward the ceiling, loudly tapping the table, trying to hold it together as the heartbreak bubbled to the surface. The moderator tried to move on, thinking Vassell needed a breather. But he had to live in this moment. This pain is what turns into progress. It’s what builds the character his Spurs team needed.
“I’m not done,” he said after the Knicks came back, yet again, to beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 and become NBA champions. “Obviously, in the finals, with everything being amplified, one mistake can cost you a game. I think we had a couple that cost us multiple.”
This was the thing the Spurs just didn’t quite understand, at least as a collective. Sure, they could comprehend the price of mistakes. But to truly feel it? To find responsibility, they needed to make the mistakes.
These moments trigger growth from grief. They are painful reminders of just how bad losing hurts and can be used as a tool to call upon in the heat of the moment later on. The emotional scars they bring serve as a competitor’s note to self.
“I think that, compared to anything before, this is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment,” Victor Wembanyama said. “I can’t tell you exactly what the lesson is, but we’re learning from that, for sure. I’m learning more than any other time in my life before.”
Searching for the key realization, Wembanyama found it among the mistakes, from his poor shot choices, to his struggles establishing post position and attacking the rack, to the pass fired into a teammate’s back. Decisions small and large.
“One of many things I learned is the margin of error is very, very thin,” Wembanyama said after his season ended with just 19 points on 7-for-19 shooting. “Our domination stints are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of the series. But our errors, our mistakes, are punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this so much.”
Wembanyama will have to face the fact that the series ended when Mitchell Robinson completely bodied him on the glass with 22 seconds left in the fourth quarter, that the 7-foot-4 superhuman couldn’t secure the rebound with the season on the line. He’ll have to own that his otherworldly defense wasn’t as destructive against the Knicks’ complex offense, or that his ability to attack the paint all but perished against the Oklahoma City Thunder and Knicks.
The Spurs will have to live with the truth that they should have been up 3-1 heading into Saturday evening, but two blunders for the ages ruined that. They were this close to being the team that hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy. The finals were incredibly close, even if they ended quickly.
The Spurs thought they could outrun inexperience, but it comes for everybody. It’s undefeated.
“We weren’t ready to win an NBA championship. The better team won,” coach Mitch Johnson said. “We did a lot of good things, and we didn’t finish the job. That’s what it is.”
They gained more in a playoff run than any team could possibly hope for, short of a title. Their incredibly young stars learned everything there is to know about a championship run. Wembanyama projected confidence through it all, saying Friday that everybody in the locker room knew they were about to go out and win the next day.
He appeared to be right for most of Game 5, before the Knicks roared back again and for good. Inevitably, Jalen Brunson’s crunch-time mastery won the day and the championship. He had 45 points. The rest of his team had 49. The Spurs just don’t have that. Whether it was De’Aaron Fox’s shooting woes or Wembanyama’s struggle to create his own shot late in games, they couldn’t come close to reliably answering the call like Brunson.
“What I’m pissed about is that there’s probably a hundred games before we can be back in the finals,” Wembanyama said. “I don’t know how to say it in English, but I’m going to have to hold that inside of me and slow down and wait and execute for a hundred games.”
Now, another summer of vengeance begins. Last offseason, it was revenge on his body. He faced down the threat of his blood clot, which drove a summer of transformation. The dividends were obvious from the get-go this season and bore fruit as time wore on. He transformed into the actualized Wemby, no longer just a theory.
This summer, it will be revenge against his mistakes.
But he learned things in this series that couldn’t have been foreseen. Even the most meticulous training cannot quite capture the duress of the finals. It’s hard to simulate the feeling in your gut that it’s all on the line.
Wembanyama and the Spurs finally saw what that looks like, when your best is the only thing that stands a chance. They learned that being more talented doesn’t make you the better team. Being unflappably confident doesn’t actually fix your crunch-time offense. It won’t make Fox’s shots go down, nor will it give Wembanyama a signature move that can actually guarantee him a bucket.
In the end, that’s what did the Spurs in. They didn’t have the one thing that was certain. Their offense was too often a journey without a destination. Their dominance was upended by their ignorance. They did not own the floor in a way that champions do. There’s a difference between being a great player and being a winner. There is a focus and desperation that is just different.
The Spurs’ young star lived it. At the very end of the night, after all of his teammates walked off into the summer, Wembanyama remained.
He found himself standing in a hallway, embraced by his parents, head down on their shoulders. In the distance, the reverberation of dreams realized blended with the smell of champagne and cigar smoke.
The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.
“It’s painful, but I’m not running away from that,” Wembanyama said. “I’m using that to fuel me.”
