A Brief Oral History Of The Best Jump Ball Of All Time

On Tuesday night, Matt Bonner and Zach Randolph combined to create the above piece of comedic gold. I caught up with Bonner, who claimed he still hasn't seen the replay of the play, although he plans to now. "I have a sense of humor," he said. "Someone told me that Jeff Van Gundy was joking about it being the lowest jump ball ever or something." The Red Rocket, whose Spurs face the Grizzlies in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals on Saturday, happily took five minutes to relive the best jump ball of all time:

I didn't think anything of it at the time. I just remember being thankful that the ref threw it high enough so that neither of us could get it and so I could get it on the way down. It's funny, I had a jump ball with Mike Conley in the first half and I was joking with one of our assistants at halftime. That was I think the second jump ball I had the entire season. And then sure enough, I got another one. [Tim Duncan] said I tipped it about 90 miles an hour at him. He managed to corral it. I knew where I was trying to go with it. It's just when [the official] threw it, I jumped and didn't get to where the ball went. I tried to get it on the way down. It's not a team policy or anything, but we don't really pay much attention to the media. I've kind of been in the dark. I did a radio interview yesterday and they were saying that Jeff Van Gundy was joking about it. Which makes sense. If I was the announcer, I would've been joking about it, too. I don't know if you could say I won the jump ball. But I didn't lose the jump ball.

Alan Siegel is a writer in Washington, D.C. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @alansiegeldc.