Listen, guy. If you’re the first reporter to ask Timofey Mozgov a question after he worked his tail off in an NBA Finals game, scoring a career-high 28 points in the process, maybe don’t try to recite the entirety of Melville’s whale classification chapter in Moby Dick, slap a question mark on the end, and expect him to understand or respond. Just listen to Ray Jovanovich of Radio Television Hong Kong’s verbal diarrhea right at the start of this video:
Mozgov may not be a native-English speaker, but even native speakers would struggle to follow Jovanovich’s line of questioning here. Amin Elhassan of ESPN was kind enough to share the transcript, and it doesn’t look any better on the page (and it makes Mozgov’s response way funnier):
These postgame quotes from Mozgov are just priceless. #NBAFinals pic.twitter.com/RyE1jLT0I3
— Chillin in my Bacta (@DarthAmin) June 12, 2015
On some level, it’s understandable to be nervous and ramble when you’re at an NBA Finals press conference; it’s a big room and he had to start off. But Jovanovich is a grown man who (though I don’t want to assume) seems like he’s been to press conferences before. And even though Timofey begs him to clarify, his follow-up is just as long! Don’t you know he’s Russian? If you don’t, he told Jimmy Kimmel’s reporter Guillermo just the other day:
On a related note, Timofey Mozgov not knowing what a dinosaur is warms the cockles of my heart. But seriously, Ray, get to the point.
(Via Amin Elhassan, YouTube and Twitter)
