Soft Gasol?

I only caught the last 5 minutes or so of the Gold Medal basketball game.  But I was watching Gasol and I could tell the team USA was worried when he touched the ball.  And he wanted the ball.  He lead his team to a respectable performance against an absurdly good USA squad.  It simply does not fit the narrative of Gasol-as-soft.

Imagine if Spain had one player of Durant-Carmelo-Kobe-LeBron abilities on the wing in addition to Rubio and the Gasol brothers instead of Rudy Fernandez.  Does that shift the outcome?  24 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists against all stars in the gold medal game.

Yeah, real soft.  Gasol suffers bias/racism because he's European and because he has to play in a situation not designed around his skills.  He was actually more effective when Bynum wasn't demanding 10-15 shots a game in addition to Kobe's 25-30.