You’d think Rudy Gobert would have learned his lesson about boundaries after triggering an entire league shutdown three years ago. And yet, there he was using that extended wingspan to take a jab at teammate Kyle Anderson during the 82nd game on Minnesota’s schedule His tenure in Utah was buffeted by his fractured working relationship with Donovan Mitchell, and his only year in Minnesota has been an unmitigated disaster.

Gobert is held in lower esteem among players than any Defensive Player of the Year the NBA has ever seen. He’s won the award three times and yet, his value in a seven-game series is perpetually debated. Maybe it’s because he’s French, but players feel comfortable belittling him. Before they became teammates, Anthony Edwards said of Gobert, “He don’t put no fear in my heart, I don’t know why.”

In Utah, his personality rubbed teammates the wrong way. Gobert claimed that the catalyst for his Draymond moment was Anderson calling him a “bitch.” Being called out of his name by a reserve nicknamed Slow-Mo was probably the last straw, but getting his revenge during the regular season finale was emblematic of the poor decision-making that he’s become synonymous with.

Teammates fighting behind closed doors happens occasionally, but Gobert throwing haymakers mid-game, in front of company, earned him a one-game suspension, lowered his trade value another tick, and nearly cost Minnesota in the play-in tournament. Minnesota hamstrung its future and linked it to Gobert’s sinking anchor. Not only has he proven to be an albatross, but he’s a chemistry killer.

A person does not need to be an expert to speak against an objective wrong. There are too many man-made shades of gray in this world. Right is right, and wrong is wrong.

Keith Olbermann was wrong.

He thought Angel Reese was in the wrong for taunting Caitlin Clark as her LSU Tigers defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes for the National Championship. Reese was actually just giving Clark a taste of her own medicine. And even if Clark hadn’t been hitting previous opponents with the “You can’t see me,” children’s eyes would not begin to bleed because Reese decided to rub in the victory.

Who was out of line, though, was Olbermann — for tweeting out that Reese “is a fucking idiot.” Barstool’s Dave Portnoy called her a “classless piece of shit,” and both deserve those vulgar insults thrown back at them. Olbermann later apologized for being “uninformed” that Clark also engages in trash talk, and said that both were wrong. He also said that he doesn’t follow basketball in any way.

If that’s the case, then bro, why you all up in the Kool-Aid and don’t know the flavor? You mozied into the sporting event of the day and were so offended by a competitor reveling in victory while on the field of play, you felt the need to belch out your disgust at a college student.

If Reese had clocked Clark in the head with a chair Balls Mahoney style, that would have deserved to be called out as wrong by anyone regardless of their basketball expertise. Being a hype after knocking off arguably the best player in her sport though, doesn’t deserve anything close to being called a fucking idiot. Even “too much dip on your chip,” is a bit much.

The person that day who deserved to be cursed out was not anywhere near American Airlines Arena in Dallas with the initials KO.

Phil Jackson had some things to say, and it put him on this list.

“It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game,” he said about the NBA having Black Lives Matter on the court in the bubble, and how it’s the reason he hasn’t watched the NBA since. “And they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political. Politics stays out of the game; it doesn’t need to be there,” he whined on the Tetragrammaton podcast.

It feels like Jackson wants Black people to be quiet and Black athletes to shut up and dribble, despite the fact that his entire claim to fame as an NBA player and the greatest coach in league history is all due to the talents, and intellect of Black people.

And then some had the audacity to be “shocked” by his words as if he hadn’t been showing us who he was for decades.

“You can’t make this up … The same Phil Jackson that won championships with some of the greatest Black athletes in the history of the game: Michael Jordan. Scottie Pippen. Shaquille O’Neal. Kobe Bryant,” said Jalen Rose. “Made millions on their backs. And off their sweat equity.”

Google will remind you that Jackson speaks his mind.

There was the time that he said that players had “been dressing in prison garb” when the dress code was mandated. Scottie Pippen called him a racist. Isaiah Rider warned people about him. Lebron did, too.

The evidence was always there. Especially when you remember that Jackson is a hypocrite. Check this out from a 2010 story from when J.A. Adande was at ESPN.

“That was surprising to hear coming from a man who not only supported Bill Bradley for the Democratic presidential nomination, he wore a Bradley campaign pin on his suit during games. Jackson reminded me that the NBA made him stop wearing it. And apparently, that was the end of his political proclamations…although he did take one parting shot.

“I kind of wish [Bradley] would have been the president,” Jackson said. “After all was said and done, that [George W. Bush] situation.”