BAYAMON, Puerto Rico – The first mistake John Mobley Jr. felt his opponents made was to assume that he didn’t know what they were saying. The second might have been to try and talk with him at all.
The Ohio State junior guard had never been the Puerto Rico before, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand the language. With several family members hailing from the island, Mobley understands enough Spanish to know when he’s being insulted. So when one of the members of Los Boris 2 decided to drop what Mobley said was an expletive near the midpoint of the second quarter of an August 3 exhibition game at Coliseo Ruben Rodriguez, the Buckeye knew what was said and how to respond.
Just in case, he could let his play do some of the talking for him as well,
and it was that combination that helped the Buckeyes fend off their hosts during a competitive, physical half of play.
“I just let him know I’m just competing, bro,” Mobley said after Ohio State’s 111-73 win that closed its two-game exhibition trip. “That’s what I do. I talk (smack). At the end of the day, I’m not scared of none of y’all. I don’t care how old you are. When we’re on the court, it’s whatever.”
It all started with Ohio State ahead 38-34 after a Mobley 3-pointer taken with Jared Ruiz guarding him. The two had a few words back and forth with each other, and after Amare Bynum’s steal led to an LJ Smith dunk, play was stopped for a media timeout as Mobley stood near the Los Boris 2 bench.
With the players in white Puerto Rico jerseys nearby, Mobley held his ground while the rest of his teammates headed to the bench. From somewhere in the bench area, Mobley said he heard some more talking directed at him that he did not appreciate, including one swear word in Spanish, so he stood his ground.
“I hit a 3 on (Ruiz) and I said, ‘I can shoot, too,’ ” Mobley said. “I said, ‘Actually I’m a better shooter.’ We kept chirping and then some guy on the side who I was not talking to took it the wrong way and I was telling him, ‘I don’t care about what you’re talking about, I’m just competing.’ ”
With play stopped, one of the Los Boris 2 coaches put his hands on Mobley’s shoulders and spoke briefly with him before, with the home team’s players growing more agitated, the Ohio State junior finally made his way toward his team’s bench. As he recalled that conversation with the opposing coach, Mobley smiled.
“He found out I was Puerto Rican, so he was asking me, ‘Oh, so now I know where you get it from,’ ” Mobley said. “Then they understood.”
Los Boris 2 held possession after the timeout, and what transpired next was classic: the home team got the ball to Ruiz, who drew a one-on-one matchup with Mobley about 15 feet from the basket along the left baseline. It was mano-a-mano, and neither was prepared to back down.
With Smith digging down from the wing to offer some defensive assistance, Mobley absorbed the contact, reached past Ruiz and knocked the ball loose. Seconds later, with the Buckeyes pushing the ball in transition, Amare Bynum threw down a powerful dunk to make it 42-34 and force a Los Boris 2 timeout.
“I know that’s how Juni is,” Bynum said of that interaction. “That’s our guy. That’s my guy. That was amazing to see. They were being like we’re all buddy-buddy but we weren’t all buddy-buddy because we whooped their butts.”
Plenty of players talk smack back and forth in the sport, and Mobley said what happened during that sequence was something he would’ve tried to do even as a freshman. That he was able to channel it into a positive play for the Buckeyes and help spark them after a slow-ish start to the game was something coach Jake Diebler said speaks to the maturation process they are continuing to see from the junior.
“Great to see him embrace the temperature of the game in that moment,” he said of Mobley, who finished with a team-high 17 points. “High-level games should have that, and that game was going back and forth and then there was some back-and-forth between the players and everybody did it with the right amount of respect and then went out and backed it up.”
That latter part was what Mobley was most proud of when the game was over.
“I like to back up what I’m talking,” he said. “That’s also getting respect. At the end of the day I was just trying to get the team going. We had a little slow start and I know when we get a little rah-rah in practice, everybody starts going.
“That was the whole point of that, trying to get the team going, and it worked.”
And after the final whistle, Mobley and Ruiz embraced during the postgame handshake.
Ohio State men's basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How John Mobley Jr. turned a little smack talk into an Ohio State win
