Clooney calls out DiCaprio on bad basketball skills

There are many things that Leonardo DiCaprio does well - star in movies directed by Martin Scorsese; wear a suit; protect endangered species; date models - but according to George Clooney, basketball is just not one of them.

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It seems the 52-year-old star indulged the younger actor in a game of hoops not too long ago, and in the end, as he tells Esquire magazine in its December issue, he arrived at two conclusions: one, DiCaprio's team talks a lot of trash; and two, they can't back it up.

The story goes that the two A-listers are both basketball fans with homes down in Cabo - as one would have, naturally - and after running into each other there thought they should get around to hitting the court.

DiCaprio, Clooney says, agreed to a game, but assured him that his team is "pretty serious."

To which Clooney responded, "you know, I can play. I’m not great, by any means, but I played high school basketball, and I know I can play. I also know that you don’t talk s*** unless you can play. And the thing about playing Leo (DiCaprio) is you have all these guys talking s***."

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Clooney didn't specify how long ago this game occurred, but it couldn't have been too far in the past - he's now 52, and he tells the magazine that he and his teammates were around 50 at the time. Even with their advanced age - DiCaprio is 13 years Clooney's junior - Clooney claims his team still beat the pants off DiCaprio's boys.

"We get there, and there’s this guy, Danny A I think his name is. Danny A is this club kid from New York," Clooney recalls. "And he comes up to me and says, ‘We played once at Chelsea Piers. I kicked your a**.’ I said, ‘I’ve only played at Chelsea Piers once in my life and ran the table. So if we played, you didn’t kick anybody’s a**.’ And so then we’re watching them warm up, and they’re doing this weave around the court, and one of the guys I play with says, ‘You know we’re going to kill these guys, right?’ Because they can’t play at all. We’re all like fifty years old, and we beat them three straight: 11–0, 11–0, 11–0. And the discrepancy between their game and how they talked about their game made me think of how important it is to have someone in your life to tell you what’s what. I’m not sure if Leo has someone like that.”

With details like that, it's not really a surprise that Clooney hasn't taken to Twitter (can you imagine his subtweets?).

As the "Monuments Men" director and star explains, he just doesn't feel comfortable with the potential for 140 characters to completely undo his career.

“If you’re famous, I don’t—for the life of me—I don’t understand why any famous person would ever be on Twitter," Clooney says. "So one drunken night, you come home and you’ve had two too many drinks and you’re watching TV and somebody pisses you off, and you go ‘Ehhhhh’ and fight back. And you go to sleep, and you wake up in the morning and your career is over. Or you’re an a***ole. Or all the things you might think in the quiet of your drunken evening are suddenly blasted around the entire world before you wake up."

Like, for example, how much better he is at basketball than Leonardo DiCaprio.