Two of the teams with aspirations of knocking off the United States and winning a gold medal in the men’s competition at the Paris Olympics are Canada and France. They’re both teams that are jam packed with NBA talent, and both have managed to knock off the Americans in a high-profile competition recently — Canada took them down in the third-place game at the World Cup last year, while France beat them in group play at the 2020 Olympics, although the U.S. got their revenge by winning the gold medal game.
The two teams squared off in France on Friday in an exhibition ahead of the Olympics, and at one point, Rudy Gobert wasn’t especially happy with Dwight Powell for some reason. So he did what anyone would do in this situation: He threw the basketball at Powell’s face.
Rudy Gobert threw the ball at Dwight Powell’s face 😬 pic.twitter.com/HcXqkz4Zs6
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) July 19, 2024
It did not look like anything out of the ordinary happened here, just two guys bumping into one another and Gobert falling out of bounds. Perhaps Gobert is still upset about Powell and the Mavericks beating the Timberwolves in the Western Conference Finals this year or something. As for the result of the game, Canada was able to pick up an 85-73 win behind a 23-point performance from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.