The Rudy Gobert trade suddenly looks genius for the Timberwolves

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The Timberwolves vision for the Rudy Gobert trade is coming into focus, and making Minnesota a true contender.

It was hard to blame the Minnesota Timberwolves for operating out of a place of desperation. If any franchise in the NBA had reason to do so, it was them.

The Wolves were the team that owned the worst cumulative record in the NBA since 2007, when it traded Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics. It was the franchise that went 13 years without making the playoffs at all in a league where more than half its teams do so every year. It’s the organization that still has not won a playoff series since George W. Bush’s first term.

Perhaps nothing epitomized Wolves futility better than Patrick Beverley jumping on the scorer’s table and shedding real tears of joy for advancing out of the play-in tournament like Michael Jordan winning his sixth ring. Just qualifying for the playoffs really was a cause for celebration in Minnesota, but it also wasn’t enough for a new ownership group that wanted to dream bigger. As it entered the summer of 2022, the Wolves’ front office and coaching staff started the process to put that dream into motion.

Minnesota knew it had a solid foundation with two former No. 1 overall picks — Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns — as pillars in the backcourt and front court. Now they were ready to make a move to add a third elite player.

“We put up the 30 best players in the league on a board,” said Wolves coach Chris Finch told ESPN. “At any given time, like there’s maybe three or four of them available. Some aren’t even available if you gave 10 picks. And if you have one you can get and he fits and does a lot of the things that we like — the more that we looked at it and the deeper we went, like just the more we felt like we couldn’t not [trade for him].”

The player Minnesota settled on was Rudy Gobert. Gobert had helped lead the Utah Jazz to six straight playoff appearances, but the franchise was ready for a change after failing to ever make it out of the second round. Gobert already had a Hall of Fame resume with four All-NBA team selections and three Defensive Player of the Year awards on the mantle, but any sharp NBA fan could detail his issues in full. Mainly: when teams went small in the playoffs, Gobert’s historically good rim protection was minimized, and he wasn’t able to punish smaller defenders consistently on the other end.

Gobert would have been a controversial acquisition because of his age (30) and max contract even before the price tag was reported. When the terms of the deal were released, an F grade for the Wolves wasn’t just the consensus — it felt like it wasn’t low enough.

Minnesota traded unprotected first round picks in 2023, 2025, 2027, and 2029, a pick swap in 2026, and four players (Beverley, Malik Beasley, Jarred Beasley, and Leandro Balmaro) from the roster that had won 46 games a year earlier. It also traded Walker Kessler, the team’s recent first round pick, and a player many around the league would say was better than Gobert already as a rookie only eight-or-so months later.

This website called the trade “on the verge of being an all-time NBA disaster.” It was hard to find many people who would disagree even before the bizarre way Minnesota’s season unfolded.

Gobert was hampered by a back injury most of the year and just didn’t look like himself, failing to make All-Defensive Team honors after six-straight years of being First-Team. His twin-towers pairing with Towns was shaky from the start, and with KAT limited to just 29 games because of injuries, it never had a chance to form the chemistry it needed. Point guard D’Angelo Russell was pretty clearly an awful fit alongside the core pieces, and was traded in a package for Mike Conley at the trade deadline.

Things really got weird in the regular season finale, when Gobert threw a punch at teammate Kyle Anderson and was suspended for the first play-in game. It didn’t help that fellow starter Jaden McDaniels also took himself out of the lineup by punching a wall and breaking his hand.

The Wolves earned the No. 8 seed in the playoffs anyway, and despite losing to the eventual champion Denver Nuggets in five games, seemed to find something in their first round series. Bruce Brown said the Wolves were Denver’s toughest opponent on the way to a title. There was reasonable optimism this season could be better even without a major addition to the rotation over the offseason. The Wolves had no choice but to make it work with a massive payroll building as max extensions for Edwards and McDaniels were set to kick in. It was not an exaggeration to say this era of the Wolves was facing now-or-never pressure despite most of the picks from the Gobert trade not conveying for several more years.

Minnesota’s big dreams are becoming reality to start this year. The Wolves own the best record in the NBA at 16-4 with the league’s third-best point-differential. They’ve already beaten the championship favorites Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics, and earned a win over the other surprise team in the standings, the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Wolves are doing it with the league’s best defense. They’re doing it with size. Their success is the culmination of variety of factors throughout the roster, the coaching staff, and the organization, but none of them are more important the resurgence of Gobert, who is again playing like the NBA’s top defensive big man.

“I always tell people, great things take time,” Gobert told The Athletic. “Especially myself, the way my life is, I’m not a guy that just comes here on Day 1 and everything is wonderful. It takes time to build, to grind every day, build respect, build habits, build relationships with my teammates, the organization, the community.”

Something great is happening in Minnesota, at least for the first 20 games. This is what the Wolves’ vision for the Gobert trade was always supposed to look like.

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There is no team in the NBA that can matchup with the Wolves in terms of length. Towns is a 7-footer with a 7’4 wingspan starting and closing games at the four. McDaniels is a 6’9 small forward with nearly a 7-foot wingspan. Edwards is arguably the best athlete in the NBA at the two, a powerfully-built 6’5 wing with a 6’9 wingspan. It’s a team that brings the Naz Reid and Kyle Anderson, both with 7’3 wingspans, off the bench as their first two subs. Only Conley is tiny.

No one is bigger than Gobert this side of rookie sensation Victor Wembanyama. At 7’1 with a 7’9 wingspan, Gobert is one of the longest players in league history, and he’s deployed those tools to become one of the greatest rim protectors ever. At age-31, he looks healthy and energized this season. There’s a lot of basketball left to go, but he’s already the clear front-runner to add one more Defensive Player of the Year award to his collection.

Gobert’s rim protection will always be his bread-and-butter, and he’s again among the league leaders in blocks. He’s holding opponents to 46.2 percent shooting at the rim, per NBA.com, which is 15 percent lower than their average. Of players who have defended at least 100 shots at the rim this season, no one has reduced field goal percentages more than Gobert, per NBA.com.

For as fearsome as Gobert is at the rim, he’s also remarkably agile on the perimeter for his size. Sure, speedy guards with low centers of gravity will give him issues. But find another player who can close out to the corner, defend the dribble-drive to the rim, swallow up two drives on the perimeter, and force an airball with a contest the way Gobert did on this possession against Chet Holmgren and the Thunder.

With Gobert playing his best ball again, the Wolves have risen from No. 10 a year ago to No. 1 right now in the defensive efficiency rankings. It’s Gobert’s fit on the offensive end that seemed like more of an issue, but so far that’s ticking up in the right direction as well.

A year ago, D’Angelo Russell’s frequent shot-jacking, sloppy ball handling, and unrefined playmaking made him a terrible fit for a team starting two centers. Minnesota went back to Gobert’s old friend in Utah, Mike Conley Jr., for a better fit at lead guard, and the results have been tremendous.

One of the big weaknesses in Gobert’s skill set has always been his hands. The hard chest passes Gobert was receiving a year ago from the Minnesota guards have been replaced by bounce passes and soft lobs from Conley. When the ball is in the right spot, Gobert has no problem slamming it home for two points.

In addition to finding a better lead guard to play with, Gobert and Towns have also started to figure out their fit offensively. It was easy to think Towns’ sniper shooting and Gobert’s interior dominance would be a good pairing, but in reality both players often got in each other’s way last season. This year, head coach Chris Finch has deployed more 4-5 pick-and-rolls that put his 7-footers in the two-man game and dare opponents to stop it.

Towns has always been a good passer, but he’s historically been someone who finishes plays rather than creates them. Minnesota is giving him the chance to run offense this year, and he’s shown a comfort level dribbling around screens and finding Gobert for the alley-oop.

Defenses want to sag off Gobert as a non-shooter, but it opens up other possibilities on a spaced floor. Here’s Towns taking the dribble hand-off from Gobert and flowing into a mid-range pull-up:

Here’s Kyle Anderson initiating the pick-and-roll with Gobert while Towns patiently waits in the corner, darts baseline once Gobert sucks in the defense, and gets an easy lob dunk himself:

How many teams can run pick-and-roll this effectively with two 7-footers? It’s a wrinkle the Wolves have in their back pocket that teams can’t really prepare for.

The Wolves’ offensive innovation with Gobert and Towns is happening in the background while Edwards takes a superstar leap. A year ago, Edwards lamented that he wasn’t dunking the ball because the lane was clogged. He’s back to attacking the rim with force this year, all while improving dramatically as a mid-range shooter and playmaker.

Edwards made 35 percent of his shots between 16-feet and the three-point line a year ago. That number is nearly 49 percent now, per basketball-reference. His assist percentage has jumped from 19.3 to 24.4 percent while his turnover rate as dropped a bit. It feels like Edwards is more comfortable picking his spots with Gobert on the floor now. The Gobert screen assists we all clowned Utah for championing are now freeing Edwards as a movement shooter to take his half-court offense to the next level.

Gobert has never had perimeter defenders around him like this. Conley, Donvoan Mitchell, and Bojan Bogdanovic were all shaky defenders in Utah who put a ton of pressure on Gobert to clean up every mess. These Wolves defenders won’t be burned off the dribble the same way, and that makes the threat of Gobert’s eventual contests even more intimidating. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to say this team feels better suited for the playoffs than any squad of Gobert’s career.

Minnesota is still going to have to prove it. Yes, the pressure on the Wolves this year is real. It seems impossible this same group together can stay together next year as they stare down one of the league’s highest payrolls in one of its smallest markets. The odd man out feels like it’s going to be Towns. It would be easy for that tension to seep onto the court, but you’d never know it from how Minnesota is playing so far.

The Wolves’ smoother you on defense with their length. Offensively, they have two truly outlier talents with Towns’ shooting as a 7-footer and Edwards’ explosive rim attacking and pull-up shot-making. Gobert fills in all the cracks, but it’s also easy to see him as the player that makes it all possible. What originally felt like a shaky fit suddenly makes a lot of sense.

The Wolves’ vision for the Gobert trade is playing out in bold colors, one feisty defensive stand and 4-5 pick-and-roll lob at a time. Minnesota’s desperation has given way to a massive group with diverse skill sets all over the floor. Rudy Gobert, at long last, is making it all possible.