第二棒 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. 如果KD想要夸口自己也是件可以被理解的事情, 他是这世界上第二好的球员 - 在同一 类别上仅次於大他四岁的LBJ, 而LBJ的Miami Heat去年才刚在总冠军赛中击败Thunder. 在KD和LBJ之间(在场下是朋友, 奥运的队友, 然後又是一起训练的夥伴), 正在NBA展开 十数年内如同史诗般的对决, 就像一阴一阳相互制衡的Magic和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. 要从何开始说LBJ和Durant间的故事? 简单来讲- 对立. LBJ就像是Marvel漫画中中跳出来的人物一般(编按: 超人 蝙蝠侠 蜘蛛人 钢铁人 复仇 者联盟都是Marvel漫画中出来的英雄), 充满了力道美感的肌肉群. 而KD...就像是皮克斯电影跳出来的人物般, 像个人型螳螂, 6-9的身高但是几乎瘦弱得 令人不安, 还有不成比例的超长翼展. 体育记者很勉强的去形容KD: capellini(编按: 一种细长的面条 有兴趣自己google 我 很难联想)以及翼手龙. 他的身体看上去就像是个在工程上的错误, 早期的职业生涯中, 这件事似乎是真的(编按: 指身体看起来不协调这件事情): 2007选秀会之前, 一个小小的测试中, 发现KD一次都无法举起作为标准值的185磅 (Al Horford, KD的下一轮pick, 他举了20次). LBJ在18岁时进入了联盟後, 就马上像个坦克般辗过周遭所有防守他的老将; 反观KD, 19 岁进入NBA, 却总是在外线游走跳投并避免身体上的碰撞, 然後花了很多时间去选择跳投 的时机. 虽然他赢得了年度最佳新秀, 但表现在效率上并不好, 而且团队战绩真是惨不 忍睹. 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. 尽管在肌肉上的条件有着差异, 但KD有着LBJ可能永远没有的优点. LBJ的跳投显得生涩 并且动作僵硬, Durant的跳投协调感自然, 快速, 还有夸张的准. 他那长得古怪的胳膊 不但没有影响投篮方式反而增强他的力量, 所以他好像没用力就可以把球投出了30英尺. 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. Durant真正明显优於LBJ的地方就是人们对於他的评价. LBJ最臭名昭彰的一点, 就是在 2010夏天的电视节目中宣布, 他将弃克里夫兰而去, 投奔向充满五光十色魅力的迈阿密. 而迈阿密这支球队本身就已经很好, 在他还没有加入之前, 在联盟中就已经是霸主了. (这个决定导致LBJ与公众之间的关系崩溃了. 当他到达迈阿密, 他出席了一个曾经答应 的WWE活动, 在场边, 他被戏剧性的嘘爆了.) 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. 同一年的夏天, 在LBJ决定做出决定之後, 很难想像Durant会做出这样的决定, 他悄悄地 在Twitter上宣布他签下了五年的合约继续留在Oklahoma(联盟中第三小的市场, 这里没 有海滩, 名人, 和夜生活). 这点上可以得到一个想法: 如果球队需要他, 那麽KD有生之 年将会一直在这里. 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. 换句话说, Durant好像是从OKC商会下方的实验室发明出来的, 有着Oklahoma这个州的特 质, 在国际观感中: 这个州的人民仁慈, 高水准, 充满职业道德, 社区精神良好, 还有... 谦逊. (OKC的市长告诉我, 他认为奥克拉荷马人是谦卑的, 因为他们一靠近德州人, 德 州人永远一直在吹嘘) 在Durant的带领下, Thunder已经成为NBA最好, 最年轻, 最受欢迎的球队. 兄弟情谊和 良好的风气成为这支球队的标志, 这点有助於迎来OKC和NBA的黄金时代, 这将使得OKC的 散良风俗发酵并悄悄地散播到世界各地: 温和 谦虚 乐於助人 (编按: 马的 最後一句是 什麽绕口令.) -- 先翻到这 里面有太多抽象的意象 只好把意思重整一遍再翻出来 所以有些字句可能跟原文不太近似... --

※ 发信站: 批踢踢实业坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 42.79.182.231 看原文我觉得很有意思 要翻出来怎麽翻都翻不出味道来 只好很苦恼的把这句话有趣的地方简化成我能表达的方式 这句让我几乎连睡觉的时候都在想要怎麽翻比较好... 整篇文章看完之後 很多地方都写得超有趣的...静待後面的人翻罗 ※ 编辑: Tyrael 来自: 42.79.182.231 (12/04 12:24)