It was not enough to beat a man—not enough to bait Rudy Gobert in the closing seconds of a playoff game, while down by two, and step back into a game-winning three shot high over his long, outstretched arm. Luka Dončić had to humiliate him. “Motherfucker!” Dončić yelled, as the delirious crowd in Dallas celebrated the Mavericks’ Game Two victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference Finals last year. “You can’t fucking guard me!” Perhaps it wasn’t personal, but who would believe that? Dončić, like many people inside the N.B.A. and out, seemed to take special pleasure in taunting Gobert, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year. In an annual Athletic poll, his peers have repeatedly named him one of the most overrated players in the league. (He was voted first last year, and second this year, to the Indiana Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton, in something of an upset.) A media member and former player once said that voting for him for Defensive Player of the Year was a source of “embarrassment,” the “biggest regret in my media career.” But no one appears to take as much pleasure in insulting Gobert, or in hunting him on the floor, as Dončić.
It happened again during the first half of Game Two in the first round of the playoffs this year, at the end of April. Dončić, now a Los Angeles Laker, flowed and feinted around Gobert, faking a shot and then, off balance, finally lobbing the ball over Gobert, who just stood there like a stanchion. As he ran back up the floor, the camera caught Dončić shouting “Sub him out!” Dončić attacked the big man again and again, and had twenty-two points in the first half of the game alone. Dončić finished the game with thirty-one points, twelve rebounds, and nine assists, and the Lakers won, after dropping the first game of the series at home. Gobert, for his part, scored six points.
What is it about Gobert that makes him such a target? There have been treatises written and countless podcasts recorded about the apparent pleasure of piling on. And there is so much material. He was the first player in the N.B.A. to publicly come down with COVID—shortly after he touched reporters’ microphones at a media appearance. He’s made irresponsible insinuations about unscrupulous referees. When he needed to decompress, after the brutal end of the playoffs last year, he consulted, of all people, Aaron Rodgers. He famously cried when he didn’t make the All-Star team, in 2019, when a savvier player might have called it fuel for improvement or pretended not to care. He has always seemed to try so hard, in a goofy sort of way, in a sport where either ferocity or the ability to float are the standards. It’s as if he handles the ball with a catcher’s mitt. He falters most when the pressure is on, during the playoffs. He makes everything look difficult. On occasion, some commentator or fan will defend him, in the provocative style of a hot take, never mind that he is one of the greatest defensive players of his era and a decent scorer inside. And throughout his career, even when it looks like he’s struggling, his team is usually better when he is on the court than when he is off it, which is really all that matters in the end.
Then came Game Five, in Los Angeles, last Wednesday night. Almost single-handedly, Gobert demolished the Lakers, with twenty-seven points and twenty-four rebounds. At times it even looked easy, as though he were an overeager dad playing Nerf basketball with the kids. He slammed dunk after dunk, and reached rebounds that no Laker could get close to. He blocked and deflected and smothered shots, or deterred them altogether. On one cut to the rim, his defender lost him, and he ran, entirely alone, to the basket, where the ball met him for an automatic bucket. At one point he flipped the script and dunked on Dončić, who struggled badly on defense. “Gobert is just bigger than everyone,” the Lakers’ coach, J. J. Redick, said, helplessly, as if the Lakers were issued a handicap by the league office not to play a center, rather than having to play a smaller lineup as a consequence of their various roster choices. Gobert’s height is sometimes talked about like that, as if it were an excuse or explanation, as if he had nothing else going for him, as if there weren’t a few dozen other seven-footers in the league, albeit few of them with Gobert’s over-all impact. One player recently told the Athletic that Gobert doesn’t scare anyone, which might be true, but the games say otherwise: the fear tells in the hesitations before drives, the shots not taken. Besides, although consistency is a virtue in sports, it can be overrated. It’s better to be good enough often enough to win. What made Game Five so unusual was how legible his dominance was.
Afterward, he was given plenty of opportunities to trash-talk. It was his “revenge game,” he was reminded over and over again by reporters and analysts—a direct response to what happened last year, or any number of years before that, or even just earlier in this series. He didn’t take the bait this time. He talked about loving the challenge of competing against the best, how good it feels to prove people wrong, to win. He left the crowing to his charismatic teammate, Anthony Edwards, who could insult a saint without seeming a sinner, on account of his smile and the way his spirit shines.
Edwards shot horribly in Game Five, missing all eleven three-pointers he took. He was glad to have Gobert, and throughout the game he let Gobert, and the Lakers, know it. Gobert was a dragon, he said after the game—“a dragon from ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” he elaborated. The Timberwolves had struggled during part of the season, and it was not a secret that there were tensions in the locker room; the roster had been overhauled after the surprising trade of Minnesota’s other star center, Karl-Anthony Towns, in the off-season. At one point in the season, Edwards called the team “soft.” It was the kind of insult sometimes lobbed at Gobert, even if Edwards wasn’t intending it in that direction. “We go into our own shell and we’re just growing away from each other. It’s obvious. We can see it. I can see it, the team can see it, the coaches can see it,” Edwards said. What happened after that was a kind of knitting together. In place of rigidity, adaptability. In place of hubris, confidence. Gobert was unplayable for parts of the series against the Lakers, and was sometimes benched late in games. “This is the strength of our team,” Gobert told reporters after the team won Game Three, while Gobert sat for key minutes. “We are blessed with some really good bench players, guys that can come in and impact the game as good as anyone in this league. So it’s important for me to understand that it’s a long game.”
When the second round begins, Gobert may revert to form—whatever that is. What does redemption mean to a restless man? It is not easy to find the line between cruelty and confidence, pride and arrogance. It comes more easily to some people. Following Game Five, after the press briefings and the locker-room scrums, Edwards took a stroll around the hostile arena, revelling in victory, trolling Los Angeles, calling out his haters. When some Lakers fans who had been heckling him heard him make a “Boyz n the Hood” reference, one asked if it was his favorite movie. “Nah, that ain’t my favorite movie,” Edwards responded. “My favorite movie’s ‘Matilda.’ ” And that, Luka Dončić, is how real trash talk is done. ♦
