Draymond Green’s Blunt Reaction To France Benching Rudy Gobert
Draymond Green’s Blunt Reaction To France Benching Rudy Gobert
Rudy Gobert has shown a certain propensity for rubbing people the wrong way throughout his time in the NBA, and the pattern seemed to hold true this week
Despite being the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in the NBA, Gobert was benched on Tuesday by French national team coach Vincent Collet.
Gobert played less than five minutes his team’s big victory over Canada.
Afterward, Gobert tried to make the case that he was benched for health reasons, but Collet directly contradicted that account. He said he benched Gobert for match-up reasons.
On Wednesday, Gobert’s longtime rival Draymond Green weighed in on the situation.
“France’s coach said he thought the matchups was an issue,” Green said.
“And so Rudy didn’t start because of the matchups. We don’t know what’s true. I don’t think we have any reason to believe Rudy’s lying, except for the coach saying it was for matchups. And in the three minutes that Rudy checked in, Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) started getting off. Wemby had a rough night.
“But coach said, ‘I can’t have both of my bigs not playing great.’ Well, you decide who got to go. I know who I’d pick, but I’ll leave it to you to pick. But, like, to be taken out of the lineup on any other team in the Olympics as an NBA player, not named Team USA is kind of crazy.”
“To be taken out of the lineup on any other team in the Olympics as an NBA player, not named Team USA is kind of crazy”
—@Money23Green reacts to Rudy Gobert getting benched for France pic.twitter.com/YqhOwmuwBd
— The Volume (@TheVolumeSports) August 7, 2024
Clearly Green loved to see Gobert benched, given his history with the Minnesota Timberwolves big man.
Will Gobert be able to redeem himself and prove Green wrong as the Olympics chug along over the next few weeks? An answer one way or the other is coming soon enough.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
