Deep Dive: How Karl-Anthony Towns And Rudy Gobert Have Developed Immediate Chemistry
Despite synergy escaping the Timberwolves for much of the season, Karl-Anthony Towns has found joy in his big-to-big passing with his new teammate.
In theory, playing alongside Rudy Gobert shouldn’t be a steep learning curve. The three-time All-Star and three-time Defensive Player of the Year leads a fairly simple on-court life: he protects the rim fiercely, he sets the league’s hardest-hitting screens, he catches lobs out of pick-and-roll or when creeping along the baseline, and he cleans up missed shots.
In theory, that’s a malleable player. The kind of player that could be dropped into the Minnesota Timberwolves’ system in place of the outgoing Jarred Vanderbilt and immediately resume that simple life. The kind of player who would wallpaper all of the cracks that started to grow in size and urgency as Minnesota was bundled out of the playoffs last season.
However, basketball isn’t played in theory. The reality of this game is a warped and weird world where a million variables swirl and coalesce on a nightly basis. That’s enough reason to turn one player’s assumed malleability into an enormous chemistry problem. The Wolves, even after two straight wins, are still feeling their way through that problem, and it’s logical and understandable if they continue to feel their way through it for a while yet.
One player who hasn’t seemed to stumble on the shaky ground has been Karl-Anthony Towns. Minnesota’s best and most expensive player has been the driving force in helping Gobert find his offensive rhythm and, in turn, helping the Wolves find the tiniest morsels of chemistry with the towering Frenchman on the floor.
In short, Towns looks for Gobert. It’s something so simple, but it’s also something that has eluded Gobert for much of his career. During his nine seasons with the Utah Jazz, the 30-year-old oscillated from afterthought to outright invisible. He would still get his lobs after laying waste to an on-ball defender with a screen and he will always have the overbearing height to snaffle offensive rebounds and turn them into second-chance points, but he was never prioritized. He was never looked for.
And maybe that was for a reason. As Wolves fans, we probably didn’t watch Utah on a night-to-night basis and learn the idiosyncrasies of Gobert like we now have. We knew what he was, in theory, but basketball isn’t played in theory. We probably didn’t realize how often he can fumble passes or how his size doesn’t always help him to finish through contact at the rim. Those are very real issues and they seemed to become very real deterrents for Minnesota’s guards.
After D’Angelo Russell, Anthony Edwards, Jordan McLaughlin and Jaylen Nowell (among others) spent the first few games of the season trying manically to feed the beast, coming up empty more often than not, they largely stopped attempting it. His court-filling size will get him a clean look every now and again, but the early days of spoon-feeding him post-ups and looks around the basket in the halfcourt feel long gone. Once again, to those players at least, Gobert was pigeonholed into afterthought again.
But Towns has been a constant. A constant playmaker. A constant source of offense for the big bumbling giant. Gobert has been assisted on 52 of the 66 field goals (78.8%) he has made this season, 25 of those assists have come from his fellow big man. Even with Russell touted as a pick-and-roll savant and Edwards drawing one of the league’s best gravitational pulls on drives, 48 percent of Gobert’s field goals have lasered from the hand of Towns.
Towns just looks for Gobert. In any situation. To Minnesota’s long-time franchise pillar, Gobert is a weapon and never an afterthought.
A Post-Up Relief Valve
Towns has always been a volatile playmaker, capable of dropping a dime or airmailing the pumpkin at any given time, but that was especially true in post-up situations over the past few seasons. With Minnesota often lacking scoring punch alongside Towns, defenses were emboldened to hound him in the high post and cut off any supply lines he did have. And, when that post-up harassment ensued, Towns would be far too frenzied to consistently make the right reads and deliver the right passes.
Now, with Gobert’s mountainous presence alongside him, Towns has a relief valve. When those doubles come — and they certainly still come — Gobert has a knack for hunting out a pocket of space under the rim with a direct line of sight to Towns. Additionally, Towns doesn’t have to be as precise with his passing — hurling it into Gobert’s general direction is enough to create the high probability of a catch and score.
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