Andrew Wiggins caught a body. But it wasn’t just anybody.
In the fourth quarter of the Warriors’ 109-100 win over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, Wiggins grabbed the basketball at the perimeter, took two dribbles and unleashed a vicious hammer dunk.
Mavericks superstar Luka Dončić, the global basketball icon from Slovenia with two All-NBA honors already at the age of 23, happened to be in the way.
Print the posters.
“It was absolutely incredible,” forward Draymond Green told the “Warriors Live: Playoff Edition” crew on NBC Sports Bay Area. “When you dunk on a guy, it’s absolutely amazing. When you dunk on a superstar, it’s even better.
“For Wiggs to go dunk on a superstar in Luka like that, it’s obviously a huge momentum booster for us.”
The dunk put the Warriors up by 10 points with just over six minutes to play, seemingly putting the game (and the series?) out of reach for Dallas. The Mavericks never cut the deficit to any closer than five the rest of the game.
The viral moment continued a remarkable series for Wiggins. The 27-year-old was given high praise in Game 1 for his defensive efforts on Dončić. In Game 2, Wiggins posted the best plus/minus rating of any Warriors starter with plus-16. And on Sunday night, he tallied 27 points — second only to Steph Curry’s 31 — of course, highlighted by a dunk so impressive teammate Klay Thompson compared Wiggins to Hall of Fame forward Dominique Wilkins.
“That’s what we always asking Wiggs to do,” Green said. “We’re always ask him to go to the rim, attack and be aggressive. Go dunk the ball. Forget going to lay the ball up. No one can jump with him. That’s how we feel.
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“He’s been attacking the rim like that, and he got a good one tonight.”
Green, Wiggins and the Warriors will have a chance to close out the series and advance to the NBA Finals in Game 4 on Tuesday night.
