No. 1 draft pick Andrew Wiggins and breakout French center Rudy Gobert had a fun back-and-forth in the Utah Jazz's 104-84 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday night.
Wiggins is the favorite for Rookie of the Year and he bolstered his case with two dunks over Gobert. At 7'2" with a 9'7" standing reach and a 7'9" wingspan, Gobert leads the NBA in opponents' field goal percentage at the rim. He's the best defender in the league at the basket.
In the first quarter, Wiggins drove to the rim and got fouled by the Jazz's Rodney Hood before finishing the dunk over the late-arriving Gobert:
In the second quarter, on a similar drive, Wiggins went right at Gobert, this time finishing right over the top of him:
Wiggins - who's no slouch at 6'8" with a 7'0" wingspan and a 44-inch vertical - may have pushed off a bit, but the distance from which he jumped and the height he got makes this one of the best dunks of the year:
Gobert got his revenge, though.
Later in the second quarter, Wiggins tried again to dunk on Gobert, and Gobert came up with, arguably, one of the best blocks of the year:
After the game, Gobert told Salt Lake Tribune reporters, "After you make a bad play you wanna get somebody back on the other end, or you wanna make sure they don't disrespect you no more. So, you gotta make yourself respected. If not, they're gonna try and dunk on me every time, that's what he tried to do the second time."
Wiggins said of his emotional display after the second dunk, "I haven't made a dunk like that all year, so that's the first time you've seen it."
Wiggins and Gobert are two of the youngest, most exciting players in the game, and we can only hope for more sequences like these in the future.