NBA Playoffs: Thanks to Rudy Gobert, Minnesota eliminates Golden State and qualifies for the conference finals
The Wolves beat Stephen Curry's Golden State Warriors with an efficient Frenchman on offense. In the other game of the night, Boston earned a reprieve against New York.
By Vincent Pialat , our correspondent in New York (United States)Rudy Gobert was back. The Frenchman let out all his frustration to score a few dunks that marked his return to some offensive efficiency, after he had been rather discreet since the start of the NBA playoffs. At the perfect moment: his Minnesota Timberwolves team managed to beat a poor Golden State Warriors team (121-110) and thus opened the doors to the Western Conference finals (4-1).
The Wolves will face the winners of the Denver-Oklahoma City clash. This will be Minnesota's second consecutive appearance at this stage of the competition, a year after a loss to Dallas.
Minnesota can believe it. With such a balanced scoring system (6 players with more than 10 points) and such a solid defense, the Midwestern team offers some guarantees. Anthony Edwards (23 years old) held back (22 points), but still became the sixth player in NBA history to score at least 1,000 points in the playoffs before the age of 24, after Kobe Bryant, Tony Parker, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Jayson Tatum. In very good company... "What he's doing, at only 23 years old, is exceptional," said his teammate Julius Randle.
Rudy Gobert, for his part, was like Rudy Gobert: a constant physical presence in the paint, a control tower position that allowed him to protect access to the circle and take numerous rebounds (8), but also, therefore, an ability to make a difference on the other side of the court (17 points).
So much so that at half-time, when he had not missed a single one of his attempts (5/5) and already had 11 points, Shaquille O'Neal , on the set of the American channel TNT, continued to joke about the fate of the Frenchman: "It's Rudy Abdul-Gobert, we're going to change his name," said the former star, in reference to the legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. On the bench of the Golden State Warriors, Stephen Curry, on forced rest, grimaced: he understood that his team would not go any further.
In the other game of the night, the Boston Celtics got a bit of a break with a 127-102 home win over New York. The victory came in the second half, despite the absence of Jayson Tatum, who suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon in the previous game and will be out for several months. This victory allows Boston to close the gap to 3-2, and to continue hoping for this Eastern Conference semifinal, which will see the winner of the matchup face the Indiana Pacers in the final.
Next round Friday evening (2 a.m. on the night of Friday to Saturday in France) in the Madison Square Garden cauldron in New York.
Le Parisien
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