The Suns' Gorilla mascot just dove onto the court in the middle of a game

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The Phoenix Suns Gorilla, with drumstick firmly in hand. (AP) Tuesday night’s game between the Washington Wizards and Phoenix Suns was pretty weird.
It featured gigantic back-and-forth swings, and multiple highlight reel plays by a generally very bad Suns team. It featured recent Wiz addition Bojan Bogdanovic continuing the blistering start to his Washington career with 29 points on nine shots with a franchise-record 16-for-16 mark at the free-throw line, and Ian Mahinmi, a center, logging seven steals.
It featured Jared Dudley and Brandon Jennings both getting ejected in the second quarter, Dudley for head-butting and chest-bumping Jason Smith after a stiff screen on diminutive Phoenix guard Tyler Ulis, and Jennings for appearing to get his Agent Zero on with some finger-guns pointed in the direction of Dudley in the kerfuffle.
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None of that, though, was as weird as seeing a freaking gorilla dive headfirst onto the court in the middle of a fourth-quarter possession.

Hey there, Suns Gorilla! Nice to see you. Except, y’know: what the hell are you doing on the court?
As it turns out: picking up after himself.

@cjzero Dropped his drumstick from banging the “DE-FENSE!” drum
— Gerald Bourguet (@GeraldBourguet) March 8, 2017
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Mystery solved. @SunsGorilla lost his drumstick and slid on the court to get it. https://t.co/4j6S9wrNYH
— Greg Esposito ???? (@Espo) March 8, 2017
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I have seen much talk in these Internet streets about the Gorilla being a hero for risking life and limb by diving onto the court to save the players from possibly stepping on the drumstick and hurting themselves. I would submit that it perhaps would have been more heroic not to throw your drumstick on the court in the middle of the game, but fair enough. No harm, no foul, no statistical imprint.

Mahinmi is a plus-36, Gortat is a minus-33 & the Suns' Gorilla is a plus-0.
— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) March 8, 2017
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Suns' 6-man lineup data: Ulis, Barbosa, Jones, Chriss, Williams & Gorilla…
OffRtg: 0.0
DefRtg: undefined
— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) March 8, 2017
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That does not, however, mean the Gorilla is free from some light roasting at the hands of his fellow mascots and other league figures:

.@SunsGorilla you good?? ????
— G-Wiz (@the_real_Gwiz) March 8, 2017
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Bojan Bogdanovic on this play: "That's probably going to be on Shaqtin'-A-Fool. He scared me a little bit." https://t.co/igbWaST11w
— Candace Buckner (@CandaceDBuckner) March 8, 2017
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Let them laugh, Gorilla. You managed to make it onto the floor during an NBA game and get back off it without getting dunked on, back-picked, crossed over or escorted out of the arena by security. A perfectly fine, and quite weird, way to cap an odd game. (Which, by the way and in case you’re interested, the Wizards won.)
“I’ve played many strange games in Europe, but this was a strange game,” Bogdanovic said.
Well, yeah. EuroLeague can be weird, but it’s typically not “gorilla on the floor during live action” weird. You’ve got to go to the desert for that kind of action.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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