When the Minnesota Timberwolves made their decision to trade for Mike Conley at the February 2023 trade deadline, they did it with several thoughts in mind. Of course, one of those thoughts was that he is a veteran, playoff-tested leader who does all the little things and has a track record as a winner.
But another was his previous experience playing with Rudy Gobert. Mike and Rudy spent three seasons together with the Utah Jazz, and the two developed some fantastic on-court chemistry together during that time. When Conley made his way to Minnesota, he was instantly able to make certain things work with Gobert in ways that D'Angelo Russell had fallen short of achieving.
Suffice to say, Mike has been exactly what the Timberwolves needed from the moment he arrived in the Twin Cities. He has unlocked Rudy's game in a way that helped him put up one of the best seasons of his career in 2023-24. But despite Gobert's notable achievements like taking home the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year award, he has still received plenty of criticism and outright hate from certain members of the media as well as former and current NBA players.
Rudy lashed out at Shaq for his distasteful comments, but other than that he has generally stayed away from addressing these types of things. Recently, Mike Conley appeared on Minnesota sports radio with Dan Barreiro and discussed this whole situation.
Mike Conley broke down why Rudy Gobert is so hated
Mike noted that Rudy has gone through a lot, especially since the COVID year where Gobert was essentially blamed for the spread of the virus at the time, which we later found out to not necessarily be true. Conley stated that Gobert's resiliency to go through all that and still come out with his head high says a lot about him.
"A lot of people attack for different reasons in different parts of the season or different things," said Conley. Barreiro then states that he believes some of the reasons Gobert gets attacked in the way that he does is because of his nationality. Dan says that he can not prove this, and stated that it is "just odd to me."
Conley agreed that the widely accepted hate for Gobert is a strange development. "It is unusual, and it's it's getting old in a sense," Mike said. "It's like, we can just move on? We get you know, everybody's strengths and weaknesses are different, alright, but we can move on to somebody else."
Looking deeper into the anti-Gobert rhetoric, Conley explained that some of it may have to do with the fact that Rudy has a big price tag for his services. "The same thing happens to every player at some good point," Mike said. "I think he's just he's one of those guys making a bunch of money. There's a ton of guys like that in the league, and everybody's there to criticize why they shouldn't have that."
It seems that Conley hits the nail on the head with all these points. There are plenty of controversial players in the NBA for different legitimate reasons, but there are no true red flags with Rudy Gobert. Much of this fabricated hate coming against him is not rooted in anything but jealousy from his peers, and Mike is right to suggest we should all just put it in the rearview for now.