Kyle Anderson Tried To Fight Christian Braun While The Timberwolves Were Getting Crushed, So Maybe Rudy Gobert Had A Point?

Matthew Stockman. Getty Images.

The Wolves have had quite the week. They ended the season on a 3 game winning streak and entered the Play In tournament with some momentum. Things turned quickly when Jaden McDaniels punched a wall and broke his hand and Rudy Gobert decided to punch a teammate

and for the first time in a long time, the collective basketball world joined forces and agreed that Rudy Gobert was a gigantic loser for acting this way, all because Kyle Anderson called him a bitch or something along those lines.

Gobert missed the next game, the Wolves won, and things sort of died down. The focus instead shifted to their first round matchup with the Nuggets and how they might be able to pull off an upset.

Fast forward to Game 1 last night, and now I'm wondering if we had this Anderson/Gobert situation all wrong. I know, anything that has you on the same side of Rudy Gobert instinctively feels wrong, but hear me out.

The Nuggets whooped that Wolves ass last night. They looked every bit the #1 seed who had clearly just gotten bored with the end of the regular season while waiting for the playoffs. The team we saw last night was the Nuggets team that ran the West all year long. Well, at the end of the 3rd quarter with the Wolves down 25 points, Kyle Anderson decided to get in his feelings

What is Kyle Anderson doing? Talk about embarrassing. Players prevent a guy from shooting after the whistle all the time. It's no big deal at all, so what is Anderson doing? He's the one that threw that elbow to the face. Why, because Braun was trying to get the ball after a turnover? Grow up. Don't be down by 25 and don't turn the ball over if you wanted a chance to shoot. 

Then, after the contact you can see Braun sort of grab him to brace his fall. That felt like a pretty normal reaction to a guy falling into someone. He made sure he didn't fall and injure himself or someone else. So what does Anderson do? He tries to throw him down or something only he fails miserably.

This had to be embarrassing. For starters, you're the guy who started this "dust up" by throwing that elbow. Then you tried to escalate it only for the other guy to be completely unbothered. That's tough. Anderson wanted some sort of fight and Christian Braun just sort of stood there laughing. Talk about humiliating. 

Then watch Rudy Gobert in those clips. He's running over to break up the fight, but it kind of looks like he's on Braun's side, doesn't it? You know deep down he wanted to swing again given what just happened between those two guys. This whole sequence made me think, did we have that April 9th dust up all wrong? Did we collectively rag on Rudy Gobert because that's the default reaction whenever he does anything? Is Kyle Anderson really the asshole here?

I'm sorry, but trying to fight someone in that situation while you are getting your ass kicked is very embarrassing. Just take your ass beating and focus on Game 2. Maybe Anderson was actually mad at himself for being a -15 (3rd worst on MIN) in his 26 minutes off the bench or something because that was your textbook overreaction. That's some shit that Dillon Brooks or Draymond Green would try, so is it maybe time to start lumping in Kyle Anderson in that villain group? 

In the end, it was a 109-80 Nuggets beatdown to take Game 1, so the Wolves might have bigger problems on their hands than Kyle Anderson being a dickhead. Their double big size did absolutely nothing in this game, and that's a problem. The Nuggets still won the rebounding battle 54-38, the Nuggets had 48 of their 109 points in the paint, and KAT was nowhere to be found (5-15, 1-7) offensively. He had nearly the same amount of TOs (4) as FGM (5). Something tells me if the Nuggets are locked in, this series won't last long.