Since he came into the league, Los Angeles Lakers forward Pau Gasol has been called soft. I’m definitely not going to disagree. The guy is a 7-footer who’s afraid to take it strong to the rim and will settle for a baby hook when he should be taking some contact instead.
The comments have never really seemed to bother Pau, he continues to play the same way year after year. He did a radio interview with Dan Le Batard earlier this week where he talked about what he thought about Kendrick Perkins and Amar’e Stoudemire calling him “soft.”
“Sometimes I believe it is guys just talking for the heck of talking,” Gasol said. “They got nothing better to say and other times I believe there is a little bit of jealousy at times, but I can’t really control what other people say. I can control what I do and what I have been doing throughout my career, which has been very successful and help my team beat better teams. That is as much as I can control and that’s what I focus 100% on, so the rest of the stuff is a couple of guys talking here or there. It does not affect me or interfere with my life.”
Typical diplomatic answer from the big guy. Aside from saying that other post players might be jealous of him, that’s pretty much a standard BS response.
I think the only reason other players might be jealous of him is because he gets to play with Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum, players that take the pressure off him. Any big man would love to have the attention focused somewhere else so they can benefit.
But honestly, we all know Pau is soft, just watch a Lakers game and you’ll see it in 5 minutes. I’m sure Pau knows it too, but no one is going to own up to that. No one wants to admit that any other big guy in the league can push him around. Until the end of his career, people are going to be calling Gasol a pushover, and Gasol will continue to deny it and hang his hat on the fact that he’s won 2 NBA championships. I guess we can’t ever take that away from him, so we’ll all just agree to disagree.
