DALLAS — This past February, Rudy Gobert was the butt of countless posterization jokes after Damian Lillard soared above his outstretched arm and dunked on him.
“Getting dunked on, I really don’t care. It’s just a play. I like to block shots,” Gobert said at the time. “Sometimes it can happen. If you don’t block shots, you don’t get dunked on.”
Fast forward to Wednesday night and hoops history repeated itself once again.
High-flying DeMar DeRozan was given a clear path thanks to some porous Utah defense, and the Toronto shooting guard climbed to the top of the Stifle Tower for an amazing dunk.
The Internet, as the cool kids say, blew up.
DeRozan’s incredible dunk was an easy pick for the No. 1 spot in Top 10 highlight segments. Vines and videos of the slam — in which the 6-foot-7 athlete somehow got high enough to aggressively dunk on top of the 7-foot-1 Gobert — were also widely circulated around social media.
Even Gobert, the second-leading shot blocker in the NBA, was impressed.
“Great win tonight,” Gobert wrote on his Twitter account after the Jazz’s 93-89 win over Toronto. “Way to grind and get stops down the stretch. Except one… (Laughing with tears emoji.) #thatboyusedthatcallofdutydoublejump.”
While he probably doesn’t really have a “Call of Duty” double jump option, DeRozan did craftily use his knee against Gobert’s body to gain a bit more lift on his leap. The most impressive part of the dunk was how he seemed to hesitate mid-air to allow himself to hammer the ball past the Jazz center’s reach.
Gobert’s mentions went wild after that tweet, as they often do thanks to the Frenchman’s feisty and funny personality.
Some people admired Gobert for his humorous and honest approach to the poster moment.
“Good sport buddy,” one tweeter wrote. “Good win from a Raptors fan.”
“I love you’re able to have fun with it,” another tweeted. “I respect you so much.”
And then there was the trash-talking crowd, which included a guy calling Gobert a “bum” and telling him to do his push-ups, another one taunting him for ruining his fantasy basketball score and, surprisingly, some en francais ribbing from another NBA big man.
“Tu peux m’enovery un poster signer stp (s’il te plait)???” Swiss-born Nikola Pekovic of the Orlando Magic tweeted to Gobert. “Ca serait tres gentil…merci.”
Translation: “Can you send me a signed poster, please? It would be very nice. Thanks."
Zut alors!
Gobert didn’t respond to Pekovic, but he did throw the Twitter version of a knockout punch to a lesser-known troll.
“Fam u got murdered by DeMar DeRozan,” Raptors fan @_ampuller470 wrote to Gobert. “Don’t act like it didn’t happen G.”
Gobert, never one to back down from someone trying to slam him on or off the court, responded with this crushing blow: “And you got murdered by Goku, Majin buu.”
If that humorous comeback went over your head, you’re not alone. But those who got the Japanese anime reference from Dragon Ball Z know that it was a solid, insulting retort, perhaps like saying "And you got murdered by Donkey Kong, Luigi."
The fan even changed his name on his Twitter profile from kd to Majin buu, who is apparently a portly character.
“(I’m) waiting for @rudygobert27 to come out to Toronto so we can hang out,” the new Majin buu wrote after being dogpiled on after Gobert’s tweet.
Gobert also avenged himself against DeRozan and the Raptors in the win. In the final minute, he forced DeRozan into shooting an airball on a potential go-ahead jumper, harassed Toronto into using its final timeout on an inbounds pass and knocked the ball off the guard’s leg for a late turnover.
“Yeah. I was expecting a little bit more,” Gobert said of his alert play in which he tapped the ball off DeRozan’s knee and out of bounds. “I was coming a little earlier this time.”
By the way, there was one person who wasn’t about to give Gobert any grief over getting dunked on — his coach.
“Rudy has pride. He doesn’t like those kinds of things to happen,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “But he’s also X inches away from blocking that. That’s why it’s such a spectacular play, because he’s there. If no one’s there, it doesn’t look like it’s as big of a deal.”
If you rewind a second or two before the dunk develops, you notice that Gordon Hayward was left in DeRozan’s dust and that Derrick Favors made an unsuccessful swipe at the ball and backed away.
That left Gobert at the end of the tarmac with DeRozan at full speed and having received clearance for liftoff.
Snyder called it “a straight blow by” and pointed out that the Jazz can’t expect Gobert to defend that play with a talented athlete on the charge like that.
“That’s on the other guys. … To his credit, he’s tough mentally and he challenged the shot and he got dunked on, but our team got dunked on,” Snyder said, emphatically. “The other four guys, they were dunked on. Rudy just happened to be under the rim. That’s on us. We’ve got to stay in front.”
JAZZ NOTES: This will be the first time Utah has played Dallas since the Mavericks acquired three former Jazz players — Deron Williams, Wesley Matthews and Jeremy Evans — this past offseason. Ex-Jazz guard Devin Harris is also on the team. … The Jazz ended an eight-game losing streak to Dallas with a 109-92 win at the end of last season, but they haven’t won at American Airlines Center in nine consecutive tries. … Mavs star Dirk Nowitzki and Jazz center Tibor Pleiss were teammates on the German national team during the EuroBasket 2015 competition.
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