Rudy Gobert knocks empty stats, starts silly back-and-forth
It’s usually considered poor form for a professional athlete to call out any of his peers in public, especially without provocation. Players share a bond apart from paying the same union dues, and it’s expected that they’ll do what they can to make sure that any arguments don’t affect reputations. It’s an unwritten rule.
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So it came as something of a surprise to see Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert post this tweet on Tuesday night:
It was naturally assumed that Gobert was subtweeting a particular player. Nikola Vucevic, one of the league’s top rebounders and the leading scorer for the Orlando Magic in both this season and the last, apparently wanted a more direct take from the Stifle Tower:
Well, that sure escalated things quickly. Vucevic and Gobert do not have a longstanding beef or any apparent basis for a new feud, but the Magic big man still found the comment terrible enough to question the Frenchman’s manhood. It’s not clear why — perhaps Vucevic feels a sense of kinship with his fellow NBA players or even holds some personal discomfort (conscious or not) over his history of putting up good numbers for a lottery team. I don’t mention the latter to suggest that Vucevic is weak-willed — frankly, it doesn’t even make much sense given that the Magic sit at 20-20 and only one game behind the Boston Celtics in a tight race for eighth place in the East.
It doesn’t seem like Gobert had Vucevic in mind. Evan Fournier, a teammate of Vucevic with the Magic and Gobert with the French national team, targeted another name:
“Blancoté” is a rough French translation of “Whiteside,” an apparent reference to Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside. Gobert’s tweet came shortly after Whiteside had posted 23 points (8-of-9 FG) and 18 rebounds in a one-sided loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, which jibes with longrunning questions regarding his impact on the Miami defense outside of box-score stats.
But Gobert still didn’t want to name any names. In fact, he didn’t even have any single player in mind to begin with:
He did clear any lingering issue with Vucevic with a joke, though:
Hey, at least everyone can rally around Fournier’s history of bad hair decisions. Even Whiteside should get a laugh over that one.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens the next time the Magic and Heat face each other. Or, who knows, maybe everyone will forget this even happened by March 25.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
