On the basketball court, Rudy Gobert’s size is his superpower. He is one of the biggest men in a big man’s game, lording over the paint on defense and setting cinder block screens to open up the Minnesota Timberwolves’ offense.
In an airplane, that superpower becomes his kryptonite. Even under the best circumstances, in full health and on the spacious private plane the Timberwolves provide, Gobert still struggles to fold his 7-foot-1 frame into his seat for the flight to the next NBA city. Now imagine how it felt for Gobert to squeeze himself into that seat for nine flights over the last three weeks while he was dealing with back spasms that caused him to miss 10 games.
In the earliest days of his injury, Gobert walked like a man more than twice his age. The pain radiated through his back and down his legs. It just so happens that his spasms coincided with a road-heavy portion of the Timberwolves schedule, with seven of the 10 he missed coming away from Target Center.
Gobert could have been forgiven for skipping a few of the trips. He could have remained in Minnesota to rest and rehab his back, watching on television as his teammates tried to keep pace in the jam-packed Western Conference. As much pain as Gobert was in, he couldn’t bear the thought of being away from his teammates while they played without him.
“I really try to stay present with the guys,” Gobert said after making his return to the court on Sunday night against the San Antonio Spurs. “So, every road trip and every flight, everything to try to stay around the team.”
Gobert is big on connection, on the importance of being around his coaches and teammates as much as possible. This season has been challenging, with the roster changes just before training camp upending team chemistry before injuries to Gobert, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo put coach Chris Finch into scramble mode with his rotations.
All of the uncertainty only made it more critical for Gobert to be with the team while he was recovering. He needed to be in the meetings, to be watching from the bench as the remaining Wolves tried to figure things out. He knew time was running short. He wanted to make sure that he was as in sync with the team as he could be when he came back. As much as it pained him to walk across the tarmac, up the stairs and onto the plane, it would have hurt him more to stay back and watch from afar.
The Timberwolves’ training staff took extra care to make Gobert’s travels as painless as possible. His presence on the road also allowed them to be hands-on with his rehab. All of the effort from the team and Gobert paid off in his first game back in the lineup, a 141-124 win over the Spurs.
Gobert had 16 points, eight rebounds and two steals and was a team-best plus-18. He only played 20 minutes in the game because of foul trouble, but everything else went better than anyone could have expected. He was 7 of 8 from the field, hit both of his free throws and also picked up a couple of assists to help the Wolves (37-29) win their fifth straight game. They remain percentage points behind Golden State (36-28) for sixth in the West.
WELCOME BACK, RU 💪 pic.twitter.com/bM25aa101e
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) March 10, 2025
“It’s great. It’s really hard for me to not be out there,” Gobert said. “I had to make sure I came back and be able to come back strong and don’t just come back too early and get out again. So I’m happy that today was great, great timing.”
There was considerable intrigue about how his return to the lineup would affect a Timberwolves offense that seemed to be finding a rhythm with Naz Reid as the starting center. In the 10 games that Gobert missed, the Wolves had the 11th-ranked offense in the league, scoring 117.0 points per 100 possessions. Their offense before that was ranked 14th at 113.5.
The Wolves faced the Charlotte Hornets, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz during that stretch, which certainly helped inflate the offensive numbers. But putting the smaller and quicker Reid at center and letting youngsters Terrence Shannon Jr., Jaylen Clark and Rob Dillingham get some burn while DiVincenzo and Randle recovered from their injuries helped to breathe more energy and movement into the offense.
Would Gobert’s return weigh the offense down? He is not a floor spacer, has trouble catching the ball in traffic and rarely takes more than two dribbles per possession. He is also one of the best screeners in the NBA and is proving to be a solid passer when given the ball in the middle of the floor.
LET IT FLY, NAW 🏹 pic.twitter.com/vvtZnJGsWA
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) March 10, 2025
Playing against San Antonio’s 22nd-rated defense without Victor Wembanyama was a nice chance for the Timberwolves to ease him back in. Finch kept Mike Conley in the starting lineup with Gobert, a way to make sure that the pick-and-roll combination they both use to find a comfort zone was there in the early going.
‘Uncle Mike’ Conley validates Chris Finch’s decision to start him: ‘He was huge’
Conley played very well for the third game in a row, finishing with 13 points, five rebounds and five assists. The Timberwolves had eight players in double figures, shot 56 percent from the field and 50 percent (21 of 42) from 3-point range, scored a season-high in points and had 38 assists. It wasn’t just the ball that was moving; it was the players. On an offense that has been, on occasion, very stagnant this season, the off-ball cutting and relocating was an encouraging sign.
“It might’ve been, from an aesthetics point of view, our best offensive game of the season,” Finch said. “We’ve just got to try to maintain this. We’ve been building. We’ve been playing really good offense for a long time. Today, everybody kind of pitched in and did their thing well.”
“Do you believe in coincidences?” Gobert said with a wry grin.
One of the most important elements of the victory was Anthony Edwards scoring 25 points but only taking five 3s. With Gobert back in the middle, it figured to be more difficult for Edwards to find driving lanes, but he got to the basket easily against the Spurs’ soft interior defense.
Randle had 14 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds (six of them on offense), Jaden McDaniels had 16 points and seven assists, DiVincenzo hit four 3s and Reid had 20 points, seven rebounds and four assists in his first game off the bench since Jan. 30.
“There’s just a chemistry, a rhythm and a pace to how we’re playing,” Randle said. “Everybody’s buying in. It’s just making it easy for all of us.”
RUUUUUUUUUUUU pic.twitter.com/ouai3irlSL
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) March 10, 2025
In a twist, it took Gobert a little more time to find his defensive legs than the offensive rhythm. He picked up three fouls in 6 1/2 minutes in the first quarter, which prompted Finch to sit him for the rest of the half. When he got back into the game to start the second half, the offense was humming with great looks and buckets on buckets, but all they did was trade baskets with the Spurs, who scored at will on the other end.
He looked more like his defensive-minded self in the fourth quarter, particularly when DiVincenzo made a sloppy turnover and Devin Vassell streaked up court toward the rim. Gobert ran Vassell down, elevated and challenged the layup attempt to force a miss. He ran the floor back to the offensive end, where he assisted on a 3 from Alexander-Walker for a 117-101 lead that essentially ended any drama.
“Defensively, I thought he was good at just the right time,” Finch said. “They’re a hard team. They’ve got a lot of guys that are able to put their head down and drive it and we were able to get enough stops right there at the beginning of the fourth with him on the floor. He was a presence there.”
It was a good tuneup for Gobert before a heavyweight matchup in Denver on Wednesday, the first time the Wolves will play at Ball Arena since erasing a 20-point deficit to eliminate the Nuggets in Game 7 of their conference semifinal series last season. Nikola Jokić will provide a much bigger test than Bismack Biyombo did on Sunday night, but Gobert and the Wolves will walk in with a great deal of confidence.
“I feel like I’m strong,” Gobert said. “I feel like I’m balanced and I can move almost how I need to move to be myself. So it was a good time for me to come back, and I’m happy that today went great.”
That should make for a much easier flight on Tuesday afternoon.
Sign up to get The Bounce, the essential NBA newsletter from Zach Harper and The Athletic staff, delivered free to your inbox.
(Photo: Jesse Johnson / Imagn Images)