Rob Williams lived up to his Timelord nickname Sunday night, using his power to stop time in Denver.
With just over eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter of a New Year’s Day matchup between the Celtics and Nuggets, Boston’s veteran center caught an alley-oop lob from Jaylen Brown and slammed it through the iron with authority.
By his high-flying standards, there was nothing unusual about Williams’ dunk. However, during a timeout at the 6:43 mark, officials discovered that Boston’s rim was askew, leading to one of the more bizarre in-game situations in recent memory.
In an attempt to fix the issue, onto the court came a technician with a ladder and a level. But after several minutes of readjusting to no avail, it became clear that this was not a one-man job.
One technician and one ladder became two technicians and two ladders. Eventually, the efforts doubled to four workers standing on two ladders puzzling over one crooked rim. Even Denver’s mascot, Rocky the Mountain Lion, tried to lend a paw, but his lack of opposable thumbs made him totally useless. (It was the thought that mattered.)
Five minutes turned to 10 minutes turned to 20 minutes turned to 30 minutes, and so on. Joe Mazzulla chewed through eight packs of gum, Al Horford reached his 30th season, and Jayson Tatum finally turned 20 years old.
OK, maybe those last three points were exaggerated, but the delay was still long enough to cause a collective restlessness inside Ball Arena.
Nuggets players passed the time by competing in Rock Paper Scissors matches with fans on their sideline. Grant Williams passed the time by having a dance battle with himself on the Celtics’ sideline. Marcus Smart left the sideline altogether and sat down right in the middle of the court where he remained motionless, deep in his own thoughts, for roughly the length of an NBA quarter.
New Year’s Day was starting to feel more like April Fool’s Day.
At some point along the way, someone broke the news to Rob that his Timelord superpowers were the cause of the delay.
“I didn’t know I did it until my teammates started blaming me, to be honest,” he said with a guilty grin after the game.
Obviously, it was just an accident on his part. Those types of dunks happen every night in the NBA without issue. But on this occasion, it nearly turned into a 40-minute issue.
Until finally a solution was made.
At long last, an arena employee brought out a straight rim to replace the bent rim. After swapping iron, the players were given a few minutes to warm back up, and play was resumed.
Unfortunately for the Celtics, the delay came just as they were starting to build some momentum in an attempt to battle back from an 18-point deficit. The Western Conference-leading Nuggets, who shot an absurd 56.7 percent from 3-point range – the highest by a Celtics opponent in more than five years – stayed hot despite the holdup and rolled to a 123-111 win.
“The delay was longer than I thought it’d be and that definitely kind of kicked our momentum a little bit,” said Jaylen Brown, who led the Celtics in scoring and rebounding with 30 points and eight boards. “We were trying to get it going, but you’ve got to give credit to Denver. They came out, they played well, their second unit played well. They just played well throughout the whole game. So you have to give credit to Denver, but definitely one of the more weird games I’ve been a part of in my whole career.”
Williams also produced one of the weirder stat lines of his career. With eight points, six rebounds, one assist, one bent rim, and nearly 40 minutes of time stoppage, he took his Timelord nickname to a whole new… level.