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^{In the US sitcom Friends, Ross has a pet capuchin monkey called 'Marcel'! Clearly a pop-fiction nod from the OP there to an ape/monkey connection :)}

<sup>In the US sitcom Friends, Ross has a pet capuchin monkey called 'Marcel'! Clearly a pop-fiction nod from the OP there to an ape/monkey connection :)

(In response to this observation the OP pointed out that their true inspiration behind the name was Marcel Delgado, the stop-motion model-maker behind the most iconic of all screen apes, the original unexpected gorilla, King Kong. I wouldn't be surprised if the same man proved to be the inspiration behind naming Marcel the capuchin monkey from Friends as well...)</sup>

The seven-letter answer is:

But did you see the GORILLA ?

^{Post-script: I also note the OP's choice of name for the character in this puzzle:}

Brace yourself to realise that this puzzle is even cleverer than you first think... This is a special one...

The seven-letter answer is:

But did you see the GORILLA ?

HOWEVER - HOLD THE PHONE... So far this is little more than a glorified educated guess. But there is more - and it is worth looking into. You see, there is more that we can do with these data than merely counting the number of passes. We can also:

Count the number of passes between each pair of players and tabulate the results. This can be achieved in something simple like Excel (see the post-script if interested in the method).

If we do this in Excel and then shade all cells (using conditional formatting) that are non-zero, we see the following:

IT'S ONLY AN ACTUAL GORILLA!! Which we didn't originally see while we just counted the passes!!

Mind. Blown.

^{Post-script 1: Excel methodology:}

<sup>- Import the CSV file, so each number occupies its own cell in row 1, starting with cell A1.
- In row 2, use the formula =CONCATENATE(B1,"-",A1) to form pairs of passed-to-dash-passed-from.
- Write the numbers 1-29 in cells C4 to AE4 and again in cells B5 to B33 - these form your labels.
- In each cell within the grid formed by these two label axes, enter the formula =COUNTIF(\$A\$2:\$CRO\$2,CONCATENATE(\$B5,"-",C\$4)). This then counts the number of times each pairing occurs among the concatenated numbers in row 2.

There may be a simpler way to achieve this, but this was my way!</sup>

^{Post-script 2: I also note the OP's choice of name for the character in this puzzle:}

The seven-letter answer is:

GORILLA!

Why? Firstly:

Count up the number of times each numbered player receives the ball to get the following 29-number sequence:

66, 117, 116, 32, 100, 105, 100, 32, 121, 111, 117, 32, 115, 101, 101, 32, 116, 104, 101, 32, 95, 95, 95, 95, 95, 95, 95, 32, 63.

^{Note that if you rely on the CSV file rather than counting the passes in the GIF (which would take a very long time!) you need to discount the initial occurrence of '1', as this is the player just being in possession of the ball, not the result of a completed pass - thus there are 67 1's in the file, but only 66 of these are completed passes.}

Next, notice:

That the number 32 crops up a disproportionate amount of times here. Since the number 32 is the ASCII encoding for a space, this suggests we should convert each number into its ASCII equivalent. This yields (ordering the players numerically from 1 to 29 by their shirt numbers):

But did you see the _______ ?

To replace the underscores with a seven-letter word, note that:

This puzzle is an adaptation of a very famous 'selective attention' test by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, which @F1Krazy inadvertently linked to in the comments! In this, a group of white-vested players and a group of black-vested players pass a basketball between each other and the viewer is asked to count the number of passes by white-vested players. The catch is that at the end of the exercise the assessors reveal that while the viewer was so focused on counting the passes, somebody dressed in a gorilla suit walked right through the middle of the players, turned to face the camera and beat their chest before walking off again - and a large number of people do not notice this while their attention is focused on the counting!

For this reason, I believe the final sentence the OP is looking for is:

But did you see the GORILLA ?

The seven-letter answer is:

GORILLA!

Why? Firstly:

Count up the number of times each numbered player receives the ball to get the following 29-number sequence:

66, 117, 116, 32, 100, 105, 100, 32, 121, 111, 117, 32, 115, 101, 101, 32, 116, 104, 101, 32, 95, 95, 95, 95, 95, 95, 95, 32, 63.

^{Note that if you rely on the CSV file rather than counting the passes in the GIF (which would take a very long time!) you need to discount the initial occurrence of '1', as this is the player just being in possession of the ball, not the result of a completed pass - thus there are 67 1's in the file, but only 66 of these are completed passes.}

Next, notice:

That the number 32 crops up a disproportionate amount of times here. Since the number 32 is the ASCII encoding for a space, this suggests we should convert each number into its ASCII equivalent. This yields (ordering the players numerically from 1 to 29 by their shirt numbers):

But did you see the _______ ?

To replace the underscores with a seven-letter word, note that:

This puzzle is an adaptation of a very famous 'selective attention' test by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, which @F1Krazy inadvertently linked to in the comments! In this, a group of white-vested players and a group of black-vested players pass a basketball between each other and the viewer is asked to count the number of passes by white-vested players. The catch is that at the end of the exercise the assessors reveal that while the viewer was so focused on counting the passes, somebody dressed in a gorilla suit walked right through the middle of the players, turned to face the camera and beat their chest before walking off again - and a large number of people do not notice this while their attention is focused on the counting!

For this reason, I believe the final sentence the OP is looking for is:

But did you see the GORILLA ?

^{Post-script: I also note the OP's choice of name for the character in this puzzle:}

^{In the US sitcom Friends, Ross has a pet capuchin monkey called 'Marcel'! Clearly a pop-fiction nod from the OP there to an ape/monkey connection :)}