Rudy Gobert held firm against Luka Doncic | NBA

Tension, exchanges with a supporter, “clutch” baskets, but a bitter defeat on arrival: Luka Doncic had an eventful evening on the Jazz floor last night. Challenged one-on-one by Rudy Gobertthe Slovenian found himself trapped on a few key possessions in the final act.

At 107-107 in particular, less than two minutes from the end, when the Frenchman had just stuck a dunk and found himself again in defense on the prodigy of the Mavs whom he was able to contain and then push back with a counter . Dallas did not recover from it, Bogdan Bogdanovic aggravating the gap with a 3-point basket, followed in stride by Rudy Gobert on an alley-oop which sealed the fate of the match.

“I think there is a fault on me twice, but I know the referee. He wasn’t going to whistle the foul.”

Luka Doncic had trouble digesting the defeat, in particular because of this action, believing that there had been a fault.

“I really like this match-up. I think there is a fault on me twice, but I know the referee. He wasn’t going to whistle the foul. But I think there was fault on me, and that’s it. We had the match-ups we wanted., did he declare after the match, adding that he did not want to say more so as not to receive a fine.

For his part, Jason Kidd supported his player, author of some important baskets before flinching on this face-to-face. The Mavericks coach mentioned, also with skill, the possibility of a fault while also avoiding collecting a fine by criticizing the decision of the referees.

“They were going to switch and hope Gobert was going to hold on to him or get away with forcing Luka to take a hard shot or something. I think Luka made the right choice. He passed it to go towards the circle. Was there a fault or not? There was no whistle. But if we look at his choices, two of his three baskets at the end were open. He had good positions, but our defense has to be better, and our zone was not very good for us today.underlined Jason Kidd.

“Thank you for paying to come see me”

For Rudy Gobert, three-time best defenseman in the league, it is an achievement to have managed to contain one of the best attackers in the league while finishing at 14 points on 6/6 shooting and 17 rebounds. Especially since some teams target him, as we saw with the Clippers in the playoffs or with the Lakers before the All-Star Game.

“He knows I’m trying to take his step-back away from him. On his drives, I know he’s going to try to use my body and then stop, so I have to stay balanced and take the contact. He will also try to blow me up, so I have to stay on the ground”, he explained before discussing this decisive counter tainted by a fault for the Slovenian. “I am not a referee. It was a physical game. Luka always tends to push, so if they don’t whistle that, they shouldn’t whistle on anything else.”

To make matters worse, Luka Doncic also hung on with a Jazz fan but found a good parade to avoid leaving these matches in the face of this kind of provocation. “I just said, ‘Thank you for paying to come see me,’ and that was it, nothing else. This will be my phrase for every game now if someone talks to me.