I believe I said the Minnesota Timberwolves defending Nikola Jokić was “impossible” recently. Well … uh, Rudy Gobert may have printed it out, pinned it to a dart board and then hit three triple 20s and a bullseye. I don’t think I’ve ever been more impressed by someone who scored two total points.

The Timberwolves hijacked the series Monday night by grabbing Game 2 in Denver after going down big, and Gobert’s defense on Jokić had everything to do with it. He was all over the place, clamping down in the post and knifing into passing lanes. He moved with ferocity and drive, especially impressive since he picked up four fouls midway through the third quarter. Head coach Chris Finch trusted him (or perhaps had no choice not to) and kept him out there, and the dividends have made the difference in the series so far. 

Rudy Gobert salvaged what looked like a lost game for the Timberwolves

Full disclosure: I thought the game was gone in the first quarter. The Timberwolves helped Denver convert back-to-back-to-back four-point plays, which is something the Big Book of Basketball Strategy says never to do. But Anthony Edwards had other ideas; he looked injured again at the jump, but either forgot or decided not to care by the second quarter and began scoring his team’s way back to a tie by half. 

But Edwards and Julius Randle, who also had an effective scoring game, couldn’t hold the line alone. Gobert rightly realized he was the only thing standing between Jokić and his team’s imminent destruction, so he put on his flak jacket and hopped in the trenches.

You simply have to watch the above fourth-quarter tape to get a sense of how effective Gobert was, but you could also see it in real time in the plays that didn’t make the play-by-play. Gobert was a maniac all night, never once slacking in transition or allowing Jokić easy catches or paint entries. He also brought it in the highest-leverage spots on the offensive glass, and threw down this menacing board-man-gets-paid second-chance slam — those were his only points all night!

You could so easily trick yourself into thinking Gobert was middling-to-bad by looking at the box score: he had two points, only played 28 minutes, grabbed only seven rebounds and didn’t block a shot. Jokić, meanwhile, had his usual near-triple-double and looked (on paper) like himself, if a bit inefficient. But we are smarter than that.

Advanced stats show the Gobert-Jokić matchup has flipped in the Playoffs

Much of my argument to show just how much Gobert had struggled with Jokić in my previous piece relied on tracking data of the two’s regular-season matchups, in which Jokić shot 65 percent against Gobert, who guarded the Nuggets’ big man more than anyone else in the league. Well, that same tracking data for Games 1 and 2 of this series shows an almost inverted story: Jokić is only shooting 35 percent from the field against Gobert, who has defended him for almost three times as many possessions as any other Timberwolves player.

Gobert has forced Jokić into tough shots all night and had him bagged at the end of the game, with him and Jamal Murray combining for only four points in the fourth quarter. Jokić’s only bucket was an emphatic dunk over Gobert, but winning that single skirmish did not win him the battle. The overall war is still to be decided, but I’d be feeling great if I were a Timberwolves fan right now. Headed back to Minneapolis with encouraging signs all around? Someone put the hotdish in the oven!

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