One of the miracles of the modern Thunder — and there are several — is how quickly they’ve made people forget the stain of their origin. The re-branding of the franchise has been quick and efficient: the team is now widely perceived as principled, well run and — above all — thoroughly Oklahoman. ESPN recently named it the No. 1 sports franchise in America. This fall, it seemed like a step toward closure when the Seattle City Council approved a plan to build a new basketball arena there. Simmons announced, just a few weeks ago, that he was officially retiring the phrase Zombie Sonics. In almost no time at all, the Oklahoma City Thunder had achieved escape velocity. Much of the credit for this turnaround goes to Sam Presti, the Thunder’s general manager. Presti took over the team the year before they left Seattle. He was 29, the youngest G.M. in league history. His first move was to draft Kevin Durant, which anyone would have done. His second, less obvious decision was to strip the roster of all the veterans and big contracts that would have prevented him from rebuilding from scratch. When the team moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City, Presti found himself in charge of not only the worst team in the league but also one of the worst in the history of professional basketball. The Oklahoma City Thunder won 3 games out of their first 32. This record, 3-29, is now a kind of touchstone in the organization — almost everyone I talked to invoked it at some point, and many of them even exaggerated it to 3-30. Most G.M.’s would have panicked, but that isn’t Presti’s way: he moved patiently, methodically. He overhauled not only the roster of the team but also the culture of the organization. This involved rethinking everything, no matter how small, from meeting times to media policy to the decorations on the practice-facility walls. Everyone soon became familiar with the Presti buzzwords: process, system, patience, sustainability. He made a habit of promoting people within the organization so that, from top to bottom, the Thunder became very young and tightly knit. He stressed community outreach to an unusual degree. He devoted extra resources to the development of the young Thunder players and, on the marketing side, refused to call attention to any single player apart from his teammates, even Durant, who was quickly becoming an international superstar. Meanwhile, Presti used high draft picks to surround Durant with other promising young players — Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, James Harden — all of whom overachieved, relative to the rest of their draft classes, to an almost amazing degree. The Presti rebuild, a meticulously rational plan, now looks a lot like a fairy tale. The Thunder has improved, year by year, exactly on schedule: they made the playoffs in their second season, the Western Conference finals in their third and the Finals last year. If the Thunder doesn’t win the title this year, it will seem almost unfair — a violation of the basic laws of narrative. Among basketball fans, Presti has become a mythic braniac legend, the managerial equivalent of Kevin Durant: young, focused, dominant and improbably humble. I met Presti two weeks before the start of training camp at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, a site that commemorates, powerfully, the city’s defining tragedy: the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Presti shook my hand in the lobby, quickly and firmly, and then proceeded to say nothing for many minutes. The museum’s director was giving us a tour, and Presti seemed relieved to cede the floor completely to her. He wore a polo shirt, casual pants, fashionable glasses and hip sneakers. He was very slim — no excess — and was fidgeting a lot, bouncing rhythmically at the knees. We were at the memorial because, as Presti told me later, “This place is part of our existence.” Presti sits on the memorial’s board, and he makes sure that every player who joins the Thunder visits the site before he ever plays a game. The idea is to teach them the character of the citizenry they’ ve just joined, to help them recognize, as Tom Brokaw put it on the night of the bombing, Oklahomans’ “essential sense of goodness, community and compassion.” After our tour, Presti and I talked for a while outside. He struck me as one of the most cautious people I’ve ever met, constantly stopping and rephrasing, weighing and reweighing his words, openly worried that I was going to misinterpret the team’s relationship to the memorial as a P.R. grab, or that I was going to focus my article on him at the expense of others. He ascribed most of the Thunder’s success to either luck or his colleagues. The most revealing thing Presti said to me that day had to do with the grounds of the memorial, which were impressively tidy. Despite a suffocatingly hot run of late-summer days, the grass was thick and lush and perfectly mowed, with perfect circles around the perfect trees. Presti pointed out how much work it takes to keep everything looking like that, how much deliberate organization, but also how important it is. At the Thunder’s training center, after a practice in early October, Kevin Durant and I sat on folding chairs at the edge of the gym. He was wearing a black tank top, black shorts and ridiculously colorful shoes. (Loud footwear is one of his few obvious vices.) Practice that day, according to everyone involved, had been “chippy” — Durant’s team had lost a couple of early scrimmages to a team full of rookies and backups, and this had sent everyone, especially Durant and Westbrook, into competitive overdrive. Sitting with Durant a few minutes later, though, I could detect none of that aggressive energy. He was placid, polite, obliging. He said pretty much everything you would expect him to say, in exactly the way you would expect him to say it. He took every opportunity to gush about his teammates, singling out Westbrook and Harden — the team’s two other big scorers — as “killers” and insisting that, despite the media’s constant attempts to create controversy among them, there was no tension on the team about sharing the ball. It would be ridiculous, he said, to “put those guys on a leash just so I can get two or three more shots up a game.” He praised his teammates’ unselfishness and said he had learned to play the same way. He said that, although he’d known almost nothing about Oklahoma City before the team moved there, now he couldn’t imagine playing anywhere else. I told Durant that, all over town, people were giving me spontaneous speeches about what a nice guy he was. His response was, naturally, impeccably nice. “ I’m just being me, man,” he said. “I’m just enjoying this all. I can’t complain. I mean, I wasn’t raised to be a jerk to anybody. You know what I mean? My mama wouldn’t like that, so that’s just all I know. Just being nice to people and enjoying what I do.” But how is it possible, I asked, to be as competitive as he must be while also being so nice? Don’t those impulses conflict? He answered with a story. 如今这支雷霆队创造着一个又一个奇蹟，其中之一便是——他们让人们很快将建队初始时 （从西雅图到雷霆时）的污点抛诸脑後。雷霆的重建之路迅捷而高效：它被广泛认为是一 支原则性强，运营良好，还有，最重要的是，彻底融入了俄克拉荷马。最近ESPN将其评选 为全美各大体育运动队之首（译注1）。今年秋天，西雅图市议会批准了兴建一座崭新的 篮球馆（据说西雅图有意引入一支新球队），此举也预示着事情（超音速搬迁到俄城并改 名雷霆）往最终尘埃落定的方向跨出了一大步。就在几个星期之前，Bill Simmons宣布， 他正式收回安在雷霆身上的“超音速殭屍”之名= =。就这样，雷霆并未耗费多少时间， 就成功摆脱了囹圄。 雷霆之所以能够扭转困局，总经理Sam Presti功不可没。在球队离开西雅图的前一年， Sam Presti开始接手球队。他当时年仅29岁，是联盟历史上最年轻的球队总经理。Sam上 任後第一件事就是在选秀大会中摘得Durant —— 一位是谁都会选择的球员（拓荒者泪流 满面。。。）。 而Sam的第二步棋，是做出了一个没有先前那麽明显（却相当重要）的决定——即将所 有可能妨碍球队推倒重建的老将及其沉重的大合同，都一一清理掉。当雷霆从西雅图市迁 入俄克拉荷马城，Presti发觉自己掌管着一支不但目前处於联盟垫底；而且是职业篮球有 史以来，战绩最差劲的球队之一 。在赛季开头的32场比赛中，俄克拉荷马雷霆只赢了仅 仅3场 。这个记录，29负3胜，现在似乎成了球队的一块试金石——几乎每一个和我谈论 雷霆的人，在某一时刻都会提到它，许多人甚至将它夸大为30负3胜- -。 面对如此窘境，联盟里大多数经理可能已经方寸大乱，但Presti依旧从容：他沉着耐心， 有条不紊地展开工作。在他的努力下，雷霆不但球员名单焕然一新，而且球队文化得以重 塑。 从开会的次数到应对媒体的策略再到练习场馆墙壁上的装饰物，Presti对於一切都 是反复考虑，事无钜细。所有人很快就对Presti的几个习惯用词耳熟能详：过程，系统， 耐心，坚持。他在球队内部建立起一套擢拔人才的惯性机制，对上至顶尖球星下到饮水机 守护者莫不适用。也正因如此，雷霆队才能变得如此年纪轻轻而又紧密团结。Presti投入 了大量的额外资源，用以悉心培养年轻球员。从市场方面来讲，他不会关注任何脱离於队 友之外的球员。哪怕是迅速成长为国际巨星的Durant，也非例外。 与此同时，Presti运用手中高顺位的选秀签，为Durant物色到其他前途光明的新人们作为 得力战友—— Westbrook，Ibaka，Harden ——他们相比其他同年级的新秀们，表现均是 远远好过预期。 Presti对雷霆的重建规划，显得是那麽一丝不苟合情合理。如今回头审视，更颇有几分 童话般的色彩。雷霆的战绩逐年提升，而且彷佛按时间表似的恰好每年迈上一个台阶：他 们在第二个赛季就打入季後赛，第三个赛季闯进西决，今年这第四个赛季又站上了总决赛 的舞台。如果雷霆无法在明年一举夺冠的话，似乎会让人产生一种违和感——这违背了故 事发展叙述的基本规律。 在广大球迷眼中，Presti被视为一位作风神秘才智超群的传奇人物，他就等同於联盟管理 层面上的Durant：年轻，专注，极具统治力却又出奇地平和谦逊。 雷霆赛季集训营开启两个星期前，我和Presti在俄克拉荷马城国家纪念馆碰了面。这座建 筑物，是为纪念发生在这座城市的一桩标志性惨剧：1995年的时候，俄克拉荷马城市政— 府一幢名叫Alfred P. Murra的建筑发生爆—炸（译注1）。 （俄城国家纪念馆外景） 当我在纪念馆的大厅见到Presti的时候，他迅速而有力地同我握了手，然後就在接下来的 数分钟里沉默不语。场馆的一位负责人带领我们参观了纪念馆，而Presti似乎也乐得由这 位女士来主导进程。他穿着一件polo衫（译注2），下身搭配休闲裤，佩戴一副时尚眼镜 ，脚上则是一双运动鞋。他身形修长，又不会过分显瘦。Presti看起来有些烦躁不安，两 膝关节在有节奏地来回摆动。 Presti在稍後的谈话中告诉我，之所以将会面地点定在纪念馆，是因为“这个地方是我们 自身存在的一部分。”Presti是纪念馆董事会的成员之一。每每有新球员加盟雷霆，在正 式上场比赛之前，都会被Presti要求先行参观纪念馆。这个举动旨在让他们了解自己所加 入城市的市民秉性，正如Tom Brokaw（译注3）在爆炸惨案当晚所形容的，俄克拉荷马人 民“本质上的善良天性，团结互助，恻隐之心”。 结束参观之後，我同Presti在馆外交谈了一会儿。他是我生平所遇最谨言慎行的人之 一。他在谈话间不时停下，对自己所说的话重新措辞，并且反复思量，再三斟酌。生怕我 曲解他的本意，误会雷霆队和纪念馆之间存在公关上强行攫取的关系；或者担心我在落笔 写稿之时，会把焦点放在他的身上，从而忽略了其他人。对於雷霆的成功，Presti大都归 结在幸运之神的眷顾和一众同仁的辛苦之上。 那一天，Presti对我提及的最具有启迪意义的一件事，和纪念馆那被收拾打理得异常整洁 的地面不无联系。尽管时下已是夏末，天气酷热得让人窒息，但是纪念馆的草坪依然显得 茂盛葱茏，青翠欲滴，并且被精心地修剪过，形成完美地圆圈环绕着本已完美的树木。 Presti指出，想要让诸般事物皆达到如此状态，需要付出何其艰钜的努力，形成何其周密 的团队，不过这麽做所包含的意义又是何其重要。（sam真哲人。。。） 10月初的雷霆训练中心，在一次练习结束以後， Durant随同我坐在体育馆一隅的折叠椅 上谈天交流。他上身着一件黑色背心，下身是同色短裤，脚上则搭配了一双看着滑稽的彩 色鞋- -（对鞋子的选择偏於花哨，大概是Durant身上为数不多的明显瑕疵之一） 。当天 全队都参与了练习，普遍兴致高昂，其间还出现了一幕小插曲——分组对抗之时，Durant 所在一方被对面满是新秀和替补的小组给打败了。而这激发了每个人，尤其是Durant和威 少的求胜心和斗志力。 然而，此刻坐在Durant旁边半晌，我从他身上却几乎感觉不到任何咄咄逼人的气息。他温 和沈静，彬彬有礼，平易近人。他言谈举止间总是恰到好处，所讲的种种全都符合你的事 前预料或者心理期望。 Durant抓住一切机会，滔滔不绝地谈论着自己的队友们，尤其是Westbrook和Harden—— 队中另外两大得分手（10月初，当时胡子还没去火箭TT）——Durant把他们称为“杀手” ，并且坚持认为，尽管媒体总是无中生有，企图刻意营造出雷霆三少间互有矛盾的样子， 但事实上在球队中并不存在球权分配的纷争。那种事情简直是荒谬的，Durant强调说：“ 限制其他人的出手，以便让我每场比赛可以多两到三个投篮的机会！？”他盛赞自己队友 们的慷慨无私，并且自己也耳濡目染学习到同样的打球方式。他还表示，尽管在球队搬迁 过来以前，自己基本对俄克拉荷马城这个地方一无所知，但如今他几乎难以想像再去为另 外一支球队效力。（如果可以亮，真是想亮书包这段话一百遍也不厌倦啊。。。也让某些 自以为是的懂球帝们好好看看） 我告诉Durant，他是被俄城人民众所公认的五好青年。他自然而然又无可挑剔地加以回 应：“我只是做好了我自己，哥们儿，”他解释说：“我只是单纯享受眼前所有的一切。 我不能有所抱怨。我的意思是，爸妈把我抚养成人，可不是要我以一种粗暴愚蠢的方式去 对待别人。你该了解我的意思吧？我的母亲可不会喜欢（看到）那个，因此这就是我所认 知的一切。对他人友善相待，同时享受自己的做为。” 但是这怎麽可能呢，我询问Durant，他是如何在保持求胜心切的同时，又做到和善待人 的？难道两者之间不会产生冲突，不会相互矛盾麽？ 对於这个问题，Durant则用了一个故事加以回答。 （part 2 完） 翻译: http://bbs.hupu.com/4716056.html --

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