How will Rudy Gobert Fit on the Timberwolves?
On July 1st, the start of NBA free agency was where we saw many impactful players change teams. On that same day, we also had a couple of trades take place and the biggest one was the trade that sent all-star center and three-time KIA Defensive Player Of The Year winner Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves on a max contract. The Timberwolves sent over 4 first-round picks, Patrick Beverley, Malik Beasley, Leandro Bolmaro, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Walker Kessler in the deal to acquire the former defensive anchor for the Utah Jazz. Let's see how adding Gobert to the Timberwolves benefits them and why it hurts them.
Positives:
As mentioned before, Rudy Gobert is a three-time defensive player of the year recipient and was the defensive anchor to a Utah Jazz team that lacked so much perimeter dept. Adding Rudy Gobert to a team with Karl Anthony Towns, who made strides this year on defense but still isn’t that elite on that side of the ball. One could easily argue that for years he has been that bad on the defensive side of the ball because of the load he has to carry offensively, but now adding Gobert to the team solves that problem. Gobert will allow Karl Anthony Towns to improve on the defensive side of the ball while also providing the team with outstanding interior defense. Although on the perimeter Gobert still needs to improve in that area on defense he is a massive upgrade on the defensive side of the ball as a whole. In addition, offensively he will allow Karl Anthony Towns to play more in the post and on the perimeter as he does not need the ball in his hands to be efficient on the offensive end. He averaged a league-high 71% from the field while also grabbing 15 rebounds a game and 4 of those were offensive rebounds. Having an interior presence like Gobert will be essential to a team that has the best shooting big man in the league as well as young stars in D'Angelo Russel and Anthony Edwards who is great offensively but need improvement defensively as a whole.
Negatives:
While Rudy Gobert provides a lot of value to the Timberwolves, there are some downsides to adding him to this team. Financially the Timberwolves have placed themselves in a situation where they have two centers on 200 million dollar plus deals. Gobert signed a 5 year 205 million dollar contract in 2021 and Karl Anthony Towns just signed a 4 year $224,000,000 supermax extension. This puts the Timberwolves over the league salary cap which means they will have a hard time finding other players to surround the core group of Russell, Edwards, Gobert and Towns. Not to mention that offensively Rudy Gobert can not create his own shot and he can not space the floor. These weakenesses may not affect the team two much since they have another big man who is the complete opposite offesnsively, but it is worth noting that tey could be problems.