Denver Nuggets win over Celtics delayed after Bent Rim took minutes to be fixed as Denver won for the 10th time in 12 games.
Western Conference leader Denver Nuggets defeated Eastern conference Boston Celtics on Sunday despite delay in the game.
Nuggets win was overshadowed by a bent rim as it took about 30 minutes before it was fixed.
Boston’s Robert Williams III seemed to be the culprit, after he hung onto the rim following a thunderous dunk with 8:06 left in the fourth quarter. Soon after, the rim was leaning a bit to the left.
After a timeout with 6:43 left and the Nuggets leading 110-97, officials summoned the arena crew to level the rim. It took six workers, two ladders, a level, phone calls and eventually a crew member taking the rim off the backboard before it was fixed — which Celtics guard Jaylen Brown disputed.
“There was no communication. They spent all that time trying to fix it, but when we came back, it still looked like it wasn’t even level, in my opinion. So we just wasted all that time,” Brown said after Boston’s 123-111 loss.
“That has an effect on the game. That’s how injuries and stuff happen. Luckily, that didn’t [happen], but that wasn’t good. That whole process was handled poorly, in my opinion, and that had an effect as well. But luckily nobody got hurt.”
Denver won for the 10th time in 12 games, snapped a six-game skid against Boston and opened a one-game lead in the West.
Jaylen Brown scored 30 points and Tatum shook off a slow start to add 25 for Boston, which shot just 9-of-33 from 3-point range in the opener of a four-game trip. The loss snapped a four-game winning streak for the Celtics, whose lead in the East was sliced to 1½ games.
A large number of Celtics fans started chanting, “MVP! MVP!” when Tatum went to the foul line late in the second quarter. Nuggets fans loudly returned the favor moments later with their own MVP chant for Jokic when he went to the line.
