The Milwaukee Bucks got a real one with Bobby Portis.
He’s the kind of team-first type of guy who’ll take a pay cut, put his body on the line, and do all the dirty work to help his team win games, even if he’s not putting up big numbers.
And he took that very same mentality with him to Team USA.
That’s evident in the answer he gave Tim Reynolds when asked about whether it was difficult to adapt to FIBA basketball.
Bobby Portis is awesome. Asked if adjusting to FIBA rules is hard, he says: “Hard is not for me, man. Hard is for the single mom with four kids. This is what I do. … Single mom, struggling to provide for her kids, that’s hard.”
— Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) August 10, 2023
Per Portis, basketball is just the game he gets paid to do, while single moms and other people actually have a hard time.
That puts life into perspective, and he couldn’t be more on point.
Throughout the course of the years, NBA players have come across as kind of spoiled, often complaining about FIBA rules, the court, the refs, the physicality, and even the basketball.
Needless to say, they still manage to flip the switch and make the adjustment sooner rather than later, but that adaption has always been a bit of a talking point around the league.
Some fans believe the NBA should adopt some of the FIBA rules, such as the unsportsmanlike foul and getting rid of goaltending.
Truth be told, it sometimes feels like there are two completely different sports.
But at the end of the day, it’s just basketball, and those guys are getting paid big bucks to play it, so maybe the narrative about how hard it is to make the transition from one set of rules to the other should end once and for all.
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