Rudy Gobert Is Not the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Problem

All corners of the sports media ecosystem are attacking Rudy Gobert as the Minnesota Timberwolves face elimination in the Western Conference finals. On ESPN, Kendrick Perkins called his vote for Gobert for Defensive Player of the Year an “embarrassment” and the “biggest regret in [his] media career.” On his podcast, Gilbert Arenas said that Gobert should give his joint-record four DPOY trophies back. On TNT, guest panelist Draymond Green—an unbiased Gobert observer, surely—shouted, “Rudy sucks” on live TV.

The disdain for Gobert extends between the lines, as well. The four-time All-NBA honoree was voted the most overrated player in this year’s Athletic player survey. And Luka Doncic appeared to take particular delight in trash-talking the flailing 7-foot Frenchman after beating him in isolation to sink a 3-pointer that won Game 2 of the conference finals.

Yet, despite all the Sturm und Drang, despite all the memes and mockery, Gobert is an incredibly valuable member of the Minnesota squad, which is making its first conference finals appearance in 20 years. The subject of a much-derided trade is now the linchpin of the league’s best defense and a central component of its winning formula. He checks off the most important box for an athlete: He makes his team better, all the time.

Among Wolves rotation players, Gobert had the best on/off differential in the regular season. He also had the best on/off differential in the first round against the Suns. And he had the second-best differential in the second round against the Nuggets (behind Mike Conley), even though he missed Minnesota’s 26-point win in Game 2 of that series. In the other six games against the defending champs, the Wolves had a raw point differential of plus-49 with Gobert on the court and minus-39 with Gobert off.

That trend has even held firm as Minnesota has fallen behind 3-1 in the conference finals. The Timberwolves are still winning his minutes against the Mavericks; in fact, Gobert is the only Wolves starter with a positive point differential in the series, as Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns have struggled to match Dallas’s star production.

These aren’t obscure statistics cherry-picked to paint a rosy picture of Gobert’s impact. They are foundational concepts that apply to basketball players at any level: Did your team play better with you on or off the court? Should you play or ride the bench?

In Gobert’s case, the on/off data is clear: Minnesota isn’t trailing the Mavericks because of Gobert, but rather because its league-best defense has cratered without the DPOY in the middle. Dallas is scoring 109.9 points per 100 possessions when Gobert is on the court in this series; that’s the rough equivalent of the Wizards’ 25th-ranked output in the regular season. But when Gobert is off the court, the Mavericks’ offensive rating rockets up to 127.4—five points better than the Celtics’ record-setting regular-season mark.

In theory, Gobert should be a replaceable member of Minnesota’s rotation, especially because Tim Connelly built a roster with three starting-quality centers. But in practice, neither Towns nor Naz Reid has capably defended the rim without Gobert as a security blanket. The Mavericks are shooting a blistering 83 percent at the rim when Gobert is off the court, per PBP Stats.

Against the narrative headwinds that have assailed Gobert for years, he has a long track record of improving his team’s performance in the postseason. In the playoffs in the 2020s, Gobert’s teams have been 14.6 points better with him on the floor versus off, based on an analysis of Cleaning the Glass data. That’s the sixth-best mark out of 56 players with at least 1,000 playoff minutes in the past half decade. Here’s a chart showing every All-NBA player on that list and how well Gobert stacks up against his celebrated peers.

Raw on/off data, unadjusted for opponent or teammate quality, is far from perfect. For instance, your takeaway from this chart should not be that Kyrie Irving is the best player in the NBA. (His playoff on/off numbers were much worse in his career before 2020, for one thing; he also missed the playoffs entirely in two of the five seasons under review.) But this data reveals with clarity that across two teams, five seasons, and many opponents, Gobert has consistently provided a major playoff boost. Almost every star makes his team better, but Gobert makes his team a lot better when he takes the court.

That might not cohere with the image of Gobert as awkward, gangly, and out of sorts against certain opponents, like Nikola Jokic in a one-on-one duel in the post or the five-out Clippers unit that ran Gobert’s top-seeded Jazz off the floor in 2020-21. That series will always be remembered for Terance Mann’s 39-point outburst in the clincher, though that was much more the fault of Utah’s subpar perimeter defenders than of Gobert, who was essentially playing one-on-five on defense.

But many of Gobert’s advantages don’t show up in the eye test, which is why numbers are crucial for analysis. For instance, Gobert’s opponents always take far fewer shots at the rim and many more shots in the midrange, which offers at least one data point that other players fear his rim defense, even if their words and mannerisms suggest they don’t.

Or consider a sequence from crunch time of Game 4 of the conference finals, as Minnesota sought to stay alive on the road. With a five-point lead, Gobert missed two free throws—a very visible reminder of his limitations as an all-around star. But on the very next play on the other end, Gobert dropped to corral a Doncic pick-and-roll, rotated to cut off P.J. Washington’s path to a dunk, and rose with perfect verticality. Washington missed the contested layup, and Minnesota retained its five-point advantage. These forgotten plays won’t show up on highlight reels, but they add up over the course of a game and series and season.

The eye test fails Gobert most when he’s matched up against an elite opposing guard on the perimeter, as was the case against Doncic late in Game 2. This scenario has produced many a lowlight throughout Gobert’s career; when he’s trapped in a mismatch on an island, he looks horribly mismatched.

But it shouldn’t be a damning indictment of Gobert’s defensive capabilities that he faltered against the toughest iso test in the league. Luka has led the NBA in isolation points in each of the past two seasons. (Were NBA peers and analysts mocking Anthony Davis when he allowed a Jamal Murray buzzer-beater in the first round this spring?)

Gobert is a solid iso defender against sub-Luka opponents. In the regular season, he allowed only 0.73 points per isolation possession, according to Synergy data. That’s the second-best mark in the league among players who defended at least one iso per game—and the best among big men, just ahead of Evan Mobley, Bam Adebayo, and Davis, who are all celebrated for their mobility. Across his career, Gobert has often ranked as an elite iso defender, even if it doesn’t always look smooth.

(For a cross-sport comparison, I’m reminded of Clayton Kershaw on the Los Angeles Dodgers: another historically great regular-season performer with a less pristine playoff track record. One of Kershaw’s postseason problems was that he was so dominant that his managers pushed him into situations—pitching on short rest or going deeper into games—that other starting pitchers wouldn’t face, which set him up for failure. The same idea applies to Gobert on the perimeter because most coaches wouldn’t even think to switch their center onto Luka with the game on the line. But Gobert is solid enough against most opponents that Wolves coach Chris Finch could entertain the possibility.)

Excessive focus on Gobert’s isolation missteps against Doncic obscures the fact that the Wolves have won the minutes the two stars have shared the court in the conference finals. Dallas has a Wizards-esque offensive rating of just 110.6 in those minutes, per analysis of PBP Stats data.

The Mavericks lead the conference finals because they’ve won the clutch minutes. But they’ve been in those late-and-close situations only because they’ve taken advantage when Gobert goes to the bench earlier in the game—not because they’ve dominated the star-laden minutes when Luka torches Gobert with pick-and-rolls.

Even Gobert’s offensive woes in the postseason are somewhat overstated. Admittedly, his lack of shooting range, advanced passing chops, and ball skills limits the Wolves’ versatility on that end—so much so that some analysts have argued that Finch should bench Gobert in an effort to jump-start his other stars’ struggling offense. Leaning on a Towns-Reid frontcourt, the reasoning goes, would clear out the paint and give Edwards, in particular, much more space to operate.

But Edwards has produced at a similar clip this postseason regardless of Gobert’s presence. He has scored 35 points per 100 possessions on 59 percent true shooting with Gobert in the playoffs, versus 36 points per 100 on 57 percent true shooting without him.

One reason Edwards still produces despite the presence of a paintbound big man is that Gobert generally compensates for his weaknesses by setting the best screens on the team. Look at how he flips the direction of his pick to free Edwards for a dagger midrange jumper late in Game 4.

Minnesota also grabs more offensive rebounds and draws many more fouls with Gobert on the court—two more hidden advantages that are reflected best by the on/off data. Those attributes aren’t sexy, but they show up on the scoreboard all the same.

Even at his best, of course, Gobert is not the most aesthetically compelling NBA star. He probably wasn’t worth the sheer number of picks Minnesota surrendered to acquire him. He lobs excessive complaints at officials. (He was fined a combined $175,000 this season for directing a pair of money-sign gestures at referees.) He didn’t take COVID-19 seriously at first—a landmark moment that may well be the first line in his basketball obituary, regardless of his on-court accomplishments.

But he doesn’t deserve the opprobrium offered his way anytime his team stumbles or he looks out of place on the perimeter. Who else deserved the DPOY award this season, if a better postseason than Gobert’s is apparently a requirement for the regular-season award? Second-place finisher Victor Wembanyama had a legitimate case to win, but he’s never had to deal with elite guards in the playoff spotlight. And third-place Adebayo, fourth-place Davis, and fifth-place Herb Jones all bowed out early in the playoffs while struggling to corral opposing MVP candidates—like Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander—in their own matchups.

“In [critics’] eyes, I’m more like the odd guy from France that’s winning a lot of awards, and it can bother people,” Gobert told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon last month. “I impact the games in a very unique way. It’s maybe not as cool or not as flashy as some other guys, so it’s sometimes harder for them to respect that.”

The seesaw in this postseason proves the merit of that perspective. Gobert’s impact isn’t cool or flashy, but it’s an impact nonetheless—and he’s unique because he’s the only player on his team who consistently wins his minutes every time he takes the floor.