This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
John Wall gave Rudy Gobert high five below the belt on Friday night, but the Washington Wizards and their star point guard thought the technical foul that followed was the real low blow.
"I don't know. They said it was a 'hostile act,'" Wizards coach Scott Brooks said afterward. "I've been around a lot of fights back when I played, and come on. Really? It's ridiculous."
Wall was chasing Jazz forward Joe Ingles over a screen Gobert had set when he fought around Gobert's right side and then put his right hand out, with his palm open.
"He just tapped me somewhere," Gobert said.
John Wall says hello to Gobert. pic.twitter.com/37pHwYFQzq
— Scott Charlton (@Scott_Charlton) April 1, 2017
Wall said the contact was unintentional.
"It happens throughout the whole course of the basketball game," Wall said. "Guys were fighting over screens. It wasn't like I ran into him and hit him on purpose and just stop. I didn't know what happened. I kept playing. The ref said it was a technical foul. There wasn't nothing exchanged between us, so I was just fighting over the screen and I didn't know I hit him in any area. I just kept playing basketball."
Brooks, meanwhile, suggested that Gobert was the one who should have been called for a foul.
"The guy set a great screen," the coach said. "We can talk about maybe it was an illegal screen, but we played through the defense."
— Aaron Falk