Standing at 7-foot-1, there are not many jump balls Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert doesn’t win. Unfortunately for him, however, one of them happened to come in the final seconds of Wednesday’s game against the Boston Celtics.
And it sparked some controversy before Boston pulled out a physical victory by a 104-102 verdict.
“He stole the ball,” Gobert told reporters in reference to Boston’s 6-foot-6 forward Grant Williams, per MassLive’s Souichi Terada.
Gobert seemingly was under the same impression as many others immediately after the toss with two seconds left in a one-possession game. It seemed Williams tapped the ball before it reached its peak, as the NBA defines it, which isn’t allowed. It resulted in Jayson Tatum securing possession and both Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards and Kyle Anderson being ejected due to their reactions.
“I would never lose a ball to Grant Williams, with all due respect,” Gobert told reporters. “If I do, it’s really on me. Yeah, he completely stole the ball. Then I don’t know what happened with the situation. Just an unfortunate turning of events.”
Celtics fans, however, might point to the well-known term of “ball don’t lie.” After all, Joe Mazzulla sprinted to the other end of the court in an attempt to call a timeout once Williams came down with the offensive rebound with seven seconds left. The Green were not granted that timeout, and it resulted in the jump between Williams and Gobert.
“Technically, you gotta let it get to its peak,” Williams told reporters, per MassLive. “But I’ve rarely ever seen that ever happen, like the ball gets to its peak and the guys tip it. For me, once the ball came out and it got up a little bit — I let it get up in the air a little bit — I was like, ‘I’m just going to go get it.’ If it came up higher, I was trying to jump inside hand and try to smack it towards the corner because no one was there.”
It wasn’t the only time Gobert was involved in some controversy, though, as he also was assessed a technical foul on Derrick White and flagrant foul after hitting Tatum in the face on a dunk. Celtics star Jaylen Brown referred to Gobert as being “reckless” for a separate incident involving Brown in the second quarter.
