When Tim Connelly traded for Rudy Gobert just six weeks after taking over as president of basketball operations for the Minnesota Timberwolves in the summer of 2022, he was roundly mocked for what, without exaggeration, many considered one of the worst trades . in NBA history.
I disagreed with the masses and wrote the following evaluation of the agreement:
Gobert is a one-man defense, and notions that he loses defensive viability in the playoffs have been greatly exaggerated. Given the Wolves’ ability to score the ball with Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards, this suddenly looks like a really good team. It will have to be to justify this high price, but it’s worth the risk. It’s been years since the Wolves were really a team that took this seriously, and furthermore, I don’t subscribe to the theory that teams have to compete for a championship to justify these types of bets.
In fact, the Wolves will not win the title (in 2023). It’s probably a good bet that they won’t win any during the Gobert era, however long it lasts. You know why? Because only one team wins everything. That doesn’t mean the other 29 did it wrong.
For the Wolves, this is a huge jolt of franchise energy, building on the momentum they’ve already built with the selection of Edwards and (the 2022 appearance) in the playoffs. You can talk about how much the Wolves gave up, but the reality is that teams like the Wolves almost always have to overpay to get elite players. Gobert all but locks Minnesota into a 50-win team, and potentially closer to 55.
In retrospect, I would obviously go even further in my praise of the Gobert trade. In fact, the Wolves won 56 games this year thanks to one of the best defenses in recent memory, anchored by Gobert, who claimed his fourth Defensive Player of the Year trophy, but it’s more than that. The Wolves are not only candidates to win it all this season. You could argue that they are the favorites.
That’s not all, or even most of it, thanks to Gobert. Edwards, who is trying to end comparisons to Michael Jordan but continues to play, smile and talk, and simply exist in such a charismatic way that it almost forces comparison, has proven to be excluded from the group. The rarest superstar fabric.
Minnesota’s perimeter defenders are even better than we all thought. Mike Conley’s stabilizing impact cannot be underestimated. Karl-Anthony Towns, who we’ll get to in a minute, has emerged as a great defender and perfectly suited and willing secondary scorer. The work that Chris Finch has done to put it all together, as well as Connelly for the moves he has made around the edges of the roster with an eye focused on accumulating big men almost specifically for the matchup with Jokic, looks better every day.
But this all started with the deal with Gobert. That’s what made the Wolves a serious team, even if there were legitimate basketball reasons to be skeptical about the pairing. That is, would Gobert obstruct Edwards’ driving space? Would the Twin Towers’ partnership with Towns make Minnesota too vulnerable defensively on the perimeter?
None of those concerns have materialized, but they were granular concerns nonetheless. Generally speaking, there is nothing more valuable to a young scoring superstar than a good defense to lean on. Same for a young quarterback. He is there in every game. It is a built-in margin of error and that changes everything from a psychological point of view. Minnesota put together a top-notch defense at the time it acquired Gobert, and it’s from that seed that all of this has been able to blossom.
Still, for some reason, Gobert will always be a target. When things didn’t go so well in Year 1, there were people who tried to claim that Walker Kessler was absolutely better than Gobert, not to mention the four first-round picks they sent over. After Nikola Jokic had his way with Gobert in Game 5 of the second round last week, critics lined up to malign his all-time excellent defensive resume. I called it ridiculous then, and it seems even more so now that Jokic and the Nuggets are on summer break.
But even Gobert’s critics have to acknowledge his contribution to all of this. He backed up a Utah defense that couldn’t contain the penetration. By pairing him with elite perimeter defenders and multiple big men who can, when appropriate, absorb Jokic-style one-on-one matchups to allow him to roam in his most natural protective state, Minnesota has created a monster to devour that defense. champions and could end up winning what would be one of the most unexpected championships in NBA history.
Keynote USA
For the Latest Sports News, Follow @Keynote USA Sports on Twitter.