French basketball player Nicolas Batum deliberately punched Spanish guard Juan Carlos Navarro in the crotch during the last 23 seconds of their quarterfinal game in the Olympics. The French needed to foul, and Batum certainly delivered. When asked by Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski why he punched Navarro, Batum stated, "I wanted to make sure he had good reason to flop." Amazingly, Batum was not ejected. Instead the referee simply called an unsportsmanlike conduct call (the second one against France that night after Ronny Turiaf clocked Rudy Fernandez just a few minutes earlier), and Navarro hit one of the two free throws.
At the U.S.-Argentina game, Carmelo Anthony was also punched in the crotch by Facundo Campazzo, who stated later that he did it in retaliation for Chris Paul's hit earlier.. Campazzo was also not ejected.
Wojnarowski makes a good argument in this article that if a United States player had done the same thing, the outcry would be ten times worse. Even though Batum is an NBA player with the Portland Trailblazers, he is thought of as representing France at the Olympics, not the NBA. But the U.S. players are seen to represent both the country and the NBA. Four years ago in Beijing, the Spanish team came under fire for making slanty eyes. As Jason Kidd mentioned back then, if the U.S. team had done that, "We would've already been thrown out of the Olympics. At the least, we wouldn't have been able to come back to the U.S. There would be suspensions."
Batum did apologize later over Twitter - "I want to apologize for my stupid act at the end. I showed a bad image of France and myself. Congrats to team Spain."
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