ESPN might not have know it but it captured an Olympic Gold Medalist and Penn State wrestling legend’s reaction to a big-time NBA Playoff moment.
After Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic hit a game-tying three pointer in the final two minutes of Tuesday’s Western Conference Semifinals Game 4 between the Nuggets and Thunder, plenty of people in Oklahoma City’s Paycom Center were shocked.
One of them was David Taylor, whose hands-on-head, jaw-dropped expression made it to ESPN’s Twitter post.
Now, it’s hard to say whether or not the account knew that it had captured Taylor. On the one hand, he’s one of the biggest names in wrestling and ESPN does carry the NCAA Championships every season.
On the other hand, it doesn’t mention Taylor in the post, so who knows.
One thing that’s a pretty safe bet is that Taylor enjoyed the outcome of the game he attended.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Taylor, now the head coach at Oklahoma State, probably loved seeing the Thunder push their series lead to 3-1 despite Jokic’s heroics on the other side. Unfortunately for the St. Paris, Ohio, native, things didn’t go as well for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference bowed out to Indiana in five games.
When combining folkstyle and freestyle success, it’s hard to argue that Taylor isn’t the greatest in Penn State wrestling history (not counting Coach Cael Sanderson, who didn’t wrestle at Penn State).
At Penn State, Taylor won two Dan Hodge trophies (wrestling’s Heisman). After Penn State, he won three World Championships and, most notably, an Olympic Gold Medal at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
Now, he’s running the show at Oklahoma State, and fans want to see a PSU-OSU dual meet. Whether or not they ever will remains to be seen.
