The only worse thing than losing to a team can be the expression of ridicule from the opponents. In a similar instance, France’s men’s basketball team lost to Team USA in the finals at the Paris Olympics. Meanwhile, Rudy Gobert took some personal hit to his reputation. The camera caught 4x NBA Defensive Player of the Year trying to get a foul on Joel Embiid. To worsen the situation for Gobert, the incident caught Shaquille O’Neal‘s attention as well.

Shaq shared the clip to his Instagram account, where Gobert was clearly seen grabbing the 76ers star by the legs and intentionally going under to portray it as a charging of sorts. The clip already showed Embiid and LeBron James giving weirded-out expressions on Rudy’s attempt. Post game, Shaquille O’Neal joined the two stars through his IG post, giving a similar expression. “What this move called” read the caption to the post.

It is worth mentioning things have already been hard for the Minnesota Timberwolves star recently. Despite having over a decade of NBA experience, Gobert is among the rarest of stars from the league to be snubbed to an extent on his national team.

Notably, the 4x DPOY was coming off the bench for his team since the quarterfinals at the Paris Olympics. And apart from the attempt to get a foul on Embiid, Gobert lacked any highlight moments from his final game. He scored just 2 points in his 12 minutes, 28 seconds of gameplay, failing to contribute to the defensive end as well.

“He is getting older”: Is Rudy Gobert nearing the end of his basketball career?

Having averaged 14 points, 12.9 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks last season, the Wolves star seems to be doing just fine on paper. He even won his 4th DPOY award, joining Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace in the club of 4 time winners. However, Gobert’s defensive skills and proficiency were put into question after Luca Doncic & Co.’s domination against the Wolves. The team fell 1-4 after reaching the conference finals.

And now Team France recently benching the 3x All Star has further raised questions on his performance. Although Rudy stated the reason for the move to be his injury, the French head coach clarified the move to be purely based on matchups.

What about the opinion from the players from the NBA community? While some like DeMarcus Cousins have already objected to his DPOY awards, Gilbert Arenas recently termed him as a “liability”. Meanwhile, in the most recent instance, Rashad McCants on Gil’s Arena stated his belief about Rudy Gobert’s present and future. “He is getting older and his time is up.” And the Wolves star’s actions, like the recent one with Joel Embiid, are not doing him any favors.

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