The Oklahoma City Thunder had two unlikely defenders back in transition during their game against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night.
During the third quarter of the Thunder-Timberwolves contest, Minnesota guard Jordan McLaughlin got a steal and had an opportunity for a wide-open layup the other way … or so he thought.
As McLaughlin rumbled down the lane, he ran right into a Thunder floor sweeper, who was cleaning the free-throw line area. The floor sweeper, one of two on the court at the time, continued to get in McLaughlin’s way as he moved forward, a comedy of errors that looked like it was straight out of a Marx Brothers movie. That forced McLaughlin to put up an off-balance shot, which he missed. Wolves teammate D’Angelo Russell botched a putback try as well, and Oklahoma City came away with the rebound, giving the floor sweeper an unexpected boost to his advanced defensive metrics.
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Inexplicably, no whistle was blown in that entire sequence, as the officials simply let play continue like nothing even happened. The Wolves were up 99-83 at the time, so maybe the referees had just stopped caring. Minnesota also went on to win by a 138-101 final score, so the floor sweeper probably played better defense than any of the actual Thunder players did that night.
While it wasn’t enough to win their team the game on Friday, Oklahoma City has long had one of the best homecourt advantages in all of basketball. Even their arena employees make things tough for the opposition.
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