The New Yorker:

The Minnesota Timberwolves’ center has been a perennial target for smack talk, but in the N.B.A. playoffs he delivers a masterclass in clapping back.

By Louisa Thomas

It was not enough to beat a man—not enough to bait Rudy Gobert in the closing seconds of a playoff game, while down by two, and step back into a game-winning three shot high over his long, outstretched arm. Luka Dončić had to humiliate him. “Motherfucker!” Dončić yelled, as the delirious crowd in Dallas celebrated the Mavericks’ Game Two victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference Finals last year. “You can’t fucking guard me!” Perhaps it wasn’t personal, but who would believe that? Dončić, like many people inside the N.B.A. and out, seemed to take special pleasure in taunting Gobert, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year. In an annual Athletic poll, his peers have repeatedly named him one of the most overrated players in the league. (He was voted first last year, and second this year, to the Indiana Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton, in something of an upset.) A media member and former player once said that voting for him for Defensive Player of the Year was a source of “embarrassment,” the “biggest regret in my media career.” But no one appears to take as much pleasure in insulting Gobert, or in hunting him on the floor, as Dončić.

It happened again during the first half of Game Two in the first round of the playoffs this year, at the end of April. Dončić, now a Los Angeles Laker, flowed and feinted around Gobert, faking a shot and then, off balance, finally lobbing the ball over Gobert, who just stood there like a stanchion. As he ran back up the floor, the camera caught Dončić shouting “Sub him out!” Dončić attacked the big man again and again, and had twenty-two points in the first half of the game alone. Dončić finished the game with thirty-one points, twelve rebounds, and nine assists, and the Lakers won, after dropping the first game of the series at home. Gobert, for his part, scored six points.

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