Since arriving in Minnesota, Rudy Gobert chain of ups and downs. His transfer was heavily criticized and his first season with Wolves was disappointing, as he tried to learn to play for a new manager and alongside an oft-injured Karl-Anthony Towns.
Its second season, however, was a resounding success. He was back at his best, won his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award, and helped his team reach the conference finals for the first time since 2004. And after all the work he did to make his cohabitation a success with KAT, the Wolves sent the interior to New York in exchange for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo just before the start of the season…
The Frenchman is therefore starting from scratch with a new interior, with a different profile, at his side. With a quarter of the season behind the Wolves and four victories in the last five games, we came back with Rudy Gobert on the KAT/Randle transfer, on how he experienced it, and on his first months with the former Knick .
Rudy, let's go back to the Karl-Anthony Towns transfer just before the start of the season. Even though you know better than anyone that the NBA is a business, and there were rumors surrounding it given your payroll, how did you experience it? How did you learn it?
How I found out… Look, I was in my bed. I believe at that time that I was not on the networks, so it seems to me that it was either Bouna (N'Diaye, his agent) who wrote to me, or… I don't even know anymore. No, no, actually, it was my partner who told me because I didn't have my phone with me on the nightstand, and in fact she found out about it from someone else's wife and so she told me: 'a priori, KAT was traded' and I replied: 'But no, it's not true, it's not possible'. So, I went to get my phone to see and that's when I saw that it was really the case. And then I saw that KAT had tried to call me, tried to FaceTime me and that's when I was like, 'Damn, this is real!' And it's true that at the time it was surprising, well surprising in the sense that it really happened out of nowhere. Afterwards, yes, there had been rumors several times but at that point, there was no longer any real noise around all that, so yes it was surprising for the whole team. Even though we know that it's part of the NBA business, and you tell yourself that anything can happen at any time.
And the timing of the transfer, which happened just before the start of training camp…
Yeah, it was crazy.
On a purely basketball level, seeing him leave is even more difficult to swallow because you worked so hard to make your pair a success despite the criticism and despite a complicated first season. And now you have to start from scratch before Julius Randle?
When it happened, I was more focused on people before thinking about basketball. He came to the house the next day, we spoke well, we exchanged our impressions. And then on the basketball side, of course I was proud of what we managed to achieve given what was being said at the time of the trade. Given the season we had last year, we really showed that it could work and that we could do great things. Afterwards, unfortunately, there are things that we will never know about what we could have done but that's how it is. But the most important thing in all of this for me was really the human side.
“For example, it's being well placed depending on where he is so that both of our spacing is good. You have to be attentive, learn each other's tendencies, understand how they like to play, where they like to be on the pitch. But it’s taking shape.”
So with Julius Randle, how are these first months going? Can what you experienced and went through with KAT help you approach this new experience with him and shorten the adaptation and learning time?
Of course, of course. They are two different players and we have to keep in mind that the chemistry between him and me will take time, it cannot be done in one day. You have to go through experiences, complicated moments… you have to want it, too. Wanting it to work, wanting it to go well, wanting to make the other person better, and above all wanting to do everything to help the team win. And if you look since the start of the season, we have really made progress already in all these aspects.
When you mention the tough times, there was a lot of noise about what happened in Toronto when you're open under the rim and they don't pass to you. Are these kinds of moments even more important than others to allow you to evolve in the right direction?
Yes, yes, it happens but I mainly talk about defeats. Moments when we feel that we still have to work on our understanding, on our chemistry. And then also the mistakes we make and from which we can learn. For example, it's being well placed depending on where he is so that our spacing for both of us is good. You have to be attentive, learn each other's tendencies, understand how they like to play, where they like to be on the pitch. But it is taking shape. In the last matches, we were pretty good, well this evening however in the fourth quarter it's not the best example, but overall it's getting better and better. And you have to keep in mind that we've only played 22, 23 matches so it's still quite new.
In this transfer, you also recovered Donte DiVincenzo. When he was here in Golden State, he quickly became a crowd and team favorite. Same in New York. Now that you're teammates, do you understand even more why everyone loves him, no matter the team?
He is a player who plays 100% every night. He's a competitor. He's a player who can really make an impact wherever he goes because he brings everything every coach wants. Hardness, skill, altruism, so he can really bring us a lot.
Comments collected in San Francisco.
