https://youtu.be/djA7YsGXfMM
Official relations between the countries of Austria and Montenegro have worsened significantly in the aftermath of this game, where Jakob Poeltl (the official representative of Austria) completely ruined the Bulls debut of Nikola Vucevic (the official representative of Montenegro). After spending most of the first half converting on barely-contested layups, Poeltl pulled out the trump card that would subject Vucevic, and, by extension, the entire country of Montenegro, to the most humiliation possible: he missed three free throws in a row, thus causing the Bulls to enter their “hack-a-Poeltl” protocol. Poeltl than revealed his missed free throws to be nothing but a ruse, as he went one-of-two on all three trips to the line that were caused by intentional fouls.
This is an incident with major geopolitical ramifications. Luckily, neither of these two countries have nuclear arsenals, but they do have sizable land armies. Those land armies are currently marching towards each other with an expected meeting point somewhere in Bosnia, flanked by tanks and backed up by bomber planes whose holds are stuffed to the gills with explosives. The only person with the power to call this off is Vucevic himself, but his feeling are so hurt by Poeltl that there’s no way he recalls his country’s military. He’s out for blood. He wants to see Austria made to suffer in a way that he was completely unable to personally make Poeltl suffer in this game.
Austria’s military is roughly ten times the size of Montenegro’s, so this isn’t going to go well for them, but Poeltl’s disrespectful actions cannot go unpunished. He could have gone for his typical statline of six points, 15% free throw shooting, and ten rebounds, but instead he had to embarrass Vucevic in front of everybody. What a douche. Now we’re entering World War III thanks to him.