Christian Braun is maybe the most interesting player on the Denver Nuggets not named Nikola Jokic. Braun, the third-year wing out of Kansas, has been a nice player up to this point in his NBA career, but has to step into a much bigger role after the team decided to not bring back Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency.
While he’s still young and a work in progress, the flashes Braun has shown have been awfully fun. Our latest glimpse of that came on Friday night in the Western Conference Semifinals rematch between Denver and the Minnesota Timberwolves, as Braun got met at the rim by Rudy Gobert and just did not care, as he went over and through the linchpin of the Timberwolves defense for a ridiculous dunk.
As you can see https://twitter.com/cjzero/status/1852559760421249308 that the NBA unsurprisingly did not want to put on its social media channels, Gobert was not exactly a fan of how Braun celebrated — it did not look like he was trying to scream in Gobert’s face, more that he was fired up in the exact wrong spot. It led to some pretty aggressive pushing and shoving, but ultimately, Braun and Gobert were the only players to receive any sort of reprimand from the referees, as they were each hit with technical fouls.
Unfortunately for Braun and the Nuggets, Gobert and co. would get the last laugh, as Minnesota picked up a 119-116 win.