It was not enough to beat a man – not enough to bait Rudy Gobert in the last seconds of an eliminatory match, while two years, and retreat in a winning shot above his long tense and tense arm. Luka Dončić had to humiliate him. “Connard!” Dončić shouted, when Dallas' delicious crowd celebrated the victory of the Mavericks second game on the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference final last year. “You can't keep me!” Maybe it wasn’t personal, but who would believe that? Dončić, like many people inside the NBA and the outside, seemed to take pleasure in taunting Gobert, a quadruple defensive player of the year. In a Athletic Survey, his peers have repeatedly appointed him one of the most surfaces in the league. (He was elected First last yearAnd second this yearAt Tyrese Haliburton of Indiana Pacers, in something upset.) A member of the media and a former player said that voting for him for the defensive player of the year was a source of “embarrassment”, the “greater regret of my media career”. But no one seems to take as much pleasure in insulting Gobert, or to hunt him on the ground, as Dončić.
This happened during the first half of the second match in the first round of the playoffs this year, at the end of April. Dončić, now a Los Angeles laker, has flowed and pretended around Gobert, simulating a shot, then, unbalanced, which would ultimately lobed the ball on Gobert, who was held there like a stanchion. While climbing on the ground, the camera caught Dončić, shouting “subbs!” Dončić attacked the great man again and again, and collected twenty-two points in the first half of the match alone. Dončić ended the match with thirty -one points, twelve rebounds and nine assists, and the Lakers won, after abandoning the first game of the series at home. Gobert, for his part, scored six points.
What does Gobert make him such a target? There have been written treaties and countless podcasts recorded on the apparent pleasure of accumulating. And there are so much material. He was the first NBA player to descend publicly Covid—Shortly after touching the journalists' microphones during a media appearance. He made irresponsible innuendo on unscrupulous referees. When he needed to decompress, after the brutal end of the playoffs last year, he consulted, of all people, Aaron Rodgers. He cried when he did not do the star team in 2019, when a saver player could have called him fuel to improve or pretended not to worry about it. He always seemed to try so hard, in an clumsy way, in a sport where ferocity or the ability to float are the standards. It is as if he manages the ball with a receiver glove. It flickering the most when the pressure is lit during the playoffs. It makes everything difficult. On occasion, a commentator or fan will defend him, in the provocative style of a hot socket, it does not matter that he is one of the biggest defensive players of his time and a top scorer inside. And throughout his career, even when he seems to be hard, his team is generally better when he is on the field than when he is outside, which is really all that matters at the end.
Then came the fifth game to Los Angeles last Wednesday evening. Almost alone, Gobert demolished the Lakers, with twenty-seven points and twenty-four rebounds. Sometimes it even looked easy, as if he were an exaggerated father playing basketball nerve with children. He slammed Dunk after Dunk and reached rebounds that no laker could get closer. He blocked and deflected and suffocated shots, or completely dissuaded them. On a cut on the rim, his defender lost him, and he ran, entirely alone, in the basket, where the ball met him for an automatic bucket. At one point, he overthrew the script and dipped over Dončić, who misunderstood in defense. “Gobert is just bigger than everyone else,” said Lakers coach, JJ Redick, helpless, as if the Lakers had received a handicap by the League office not to play a center, rather than having to play a smaller range as a result of their various alignment choices. Gobert's height is sometimes spoken like that, as if it was an excuse or an explanation, as if he had nothing else for him, as if there were not a few tens of other seven feet of the league, although with few with Gobert's overall impact. A player recently said to Athletic That Gobert does not scare anyone, which could be true, but the games say the opposite: fear tells the hesitations before the pipes, the shots not taken. In addition, although consistency is a virtue of sport, it can be overestimated. It is better to be good enough often to win. What made the match five so unusual is how readable his domination was.
Subsequently, he had many discourse opportunities in the trash. It was his “revenge game”, he was still called and again by journalists and analysts-a direct response to what happened last year, or a certain number of years before that, or even earlier in this series. He did not take the bait this time. He spoke of loving the challenge of competing with the best, how much he feels to prove people, to win. He left the song to his charismatic teammate, Anthony Edwards, who could insult a saint without seeing a sinner, because of his smile and the way in which his mind shines.
Edwards horribly pulled in the fifth game, missing the eleven three points that he took. He was happy to have Gobert, and throughout the match, he left Gobert, and the Lakers, know it. Gobert was a dragon, he said after the match-“a dragon of” Game of Thrones “,” he said. The Timberwolves had struggled for part of the season, and it was not a secret that there were tensions in the locker room; The list had been revised after the surprising trade in the other star center of Minnesota, Karl-Anthony Towns, during the Demonstra. At one point of the season, Edwards qualified the “sweet” team. It was the kind of insult sometimes launched on Gobert, even if Edwards does not intend in that direction. “We are going to our own shell and we move 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. Instead of rigidity, adaptability. Instead of pride, confidence. Gobert was unplayable for some parts of the series against the Lakers, and was sometimes put on the bench late in the games. “This is the strength of our team,” Gobert told journalists after the team won the third match, while Gobert sat for key minutes. “We are fortunate to have very good bench players, guys who can come and an impact on the game as good as anyone in this league. It is therefore important for me to understand that it is a long match.”
When the second round begins, Gobert can come back in shape – anything. What does redemption mean for 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. After the fifth match, after the press points and the scrums of the locker room, Edwards walked into the hostile arena, reveling from victory, dragging Los Angeles, calling his enemies. When some fans of Lakers who had heckled him heard him make a reference “Boyz N The Hood”, he was asked if it was his favorite film. “No, it's not my favorite film,” replied Edwards. “My favorite film” Matilda “. “And it's, Luka Dončić, that's how real The trash speeches are made. ♦
