Being a fan of a sports team leads to a lot of contradictions. One spring you’re deriding a player like Patrick Beverly as dirty and what’s wrong with the NBA. The next spring you’re shouting at the top of your lungs when he jumps on top of the scorer’s table after a play-in win against the Los Angeles Clippers. Patrick Beverly went from one of my least favorite players in the NBA to one of my favorites.
I don’t think there’s another field where this happens except in sports. If there’s a politician that switches affiliations, they don’t instantly become a favorite in their new party, they’re usually viewed with suspicion. If there’s a co-worker you can’t stand that works in another part of the company, you’re not excited if they take a job where you have to interact with them more.
Sports fandom is a funny thing that way. Part of me wonders whether I’ll ever gin up the same animosity toward Pat Bev the way that I did before. I’m not sure. But I do know that my Timberwolves fandom has changed the way I feel about Rudy Gobert, and changed it on a dime.
On Friday, July 1, at 11:36 am I texted a friend about the Timberwolves, saying “Hopefully we don’t do anything like go all in on Rudy Gobert.” In case that wasn’t enough, I followed it up with this:
“Can’t finish games with both Towns and Gobert on the court in the playoffs. And Gobert makes $38 million. Not worth the risk, though it’d probably look good at times during the regular season.”
Just a few hours later the Woj bomb came through.
It was definitely jarring. A package of picks that rivaled what the Lakers sent to the Pelicans for Anthony Davis or what the Clippers sent the Thunder for Paul George. Of course, what separated what the Wolves sent out for Gobert is that they didn’t give up a blue chipper like Brandon Ingram or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander[1].
But I’m not here to assess whether the Wolves got equal value for Rudy Gobert[2]. What’s interesting is how quickly I turned around on the prospect of Gobert playing for the Timberwolves. And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.
I wish I could tell you that in the aftermath of the Gobert trade I delved into all the statistics and film and came away with a much better idea of his fit on the roster and that’s why I turned around on him. That’s not what happened. My assessment of Gobert as a player hasn’t changed much, if at all, since that text message I sent saying we’d be good in the regular season but that he can’t play with KAT at the end of games in the playoffs.
I did what most fans do in this situation. I went from focusing on the negatives to focusing on the positives. As a sports fan, it’s the most rational response. It happens all the time.
I chose not to worry about how both KAT and Gobert could stay on the court defensively in the fourth quarter against a team that goes five out on offense in order to capitalize on the two bigs who might struggle to keep up. The fact that Rudy Gobert will make $46.6 million during the 2025-2026 season doesn’t bother me as much. After all, I’m not going to be paying that salary. All those draft picks we gave up in the deal? The Wolves have gone through plenty of valleys when their first round picks played like second rounders anyhow.
It’s funny that in some ways the most difficult part of the trade for me was the players we gave up rather than the picks. My instant reaction was “Oh no, we had to include Pat Bev to make the salaries match! But we need him, for the culture!”
It was a human reaction. I’d grown attached to Pat Bev. He gave us an edge, a little swagger. I never would have said he had more value on the basketball court than Rudy Gobert, but he provided more value to my Wolves fandom. The same is true of Jarred Vanderbilt, a young guy that hustled on defense that truly appreciating felt like a secret among us Wolves fans.
It’s not that the picks, the salary commitment, and the playoff questions don’t matter. They do. But the trade has already happened. And fandom is infinitely more rewarding and entertaining if you choose to emotionally invest in your team and players. If you believe that things could go well for your team.
And guess what, things could go really well for the Timberwolves!
- We’re looking at a team that might be able to win 50 or more games, something our franchise has only ever accomplished when Kevin Garnett was in his prime from 2000-2004.
- Unlike the trades for Paul George and Anthony Davis, the Wolves didn’t have to give up one of our best young players. Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels are still on the roster. And there’s no reason to think they won’t be for the foreseeable future.
- We got an All NBA caliber player without giving up one of the top four most important players on our team.
- That All NBA player happens to probably be the best rebounder and rim protector in the NBA, which by the way happened to be our biggest weaknesses in the playoffs.
I’m not trying to say that the Gobert trade is a win for the Timberwolves. I don’t know one way or the other. What I am saying is that there are a lot of good reasons to be excited to cheer for this edition of the Timberwolves.
Whether or not we opened a “championship window” doesn’t really matter to me, and if that’s the curve you’re grading on, you’re doing it wrong. As I’ve written before, the championship or bust mentality is the wrong one, especially for the Wolves. I do know that we were a playoff team last year that was competitive in the first round and in all likelihood will be a better team this year.
Naturally as fans the hardest part of the trade, even a trade in which the players we gave up were from a big picture perspective were largely inconsequential, were the players. The picks are hardly even tangible at this point. The players, they were real. I’d watched them pour their hearts out for this plucky 46 win team.
As fans, we form bonds. If we don’t, then there’s not much point in watching the games to begin with. Sports wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it was a rotating cast of 12 different players on the roster each night. We come to know and understand the team we watch. Its strengths and weaknesses. The ever so human flaws. That’s part of what makes being a fan so much fun. It’s part of why I and so many others say “We” instead of “they” when referring to a team we’ve never played for.
But I’ve embraced the Gobert trade because I’m looking forward to getting to know Rudy Gobert better. To watch him help us win games. To understand when he thrives and when his shortcomings will rear their head. All in an environment where the Wolves are truly relevant, something they have been so rarely.
There will come a time when we better understand the nature of the draft picks we traded away and people will look back and judge this trade with better information. There will be those that say that if it doesn’t result in a championship it is a failure. And maybe the trade will be a failure, but not winning an NBA finals isn’t and shouldn’t be the barometer. The journey can matter just as much as the destination, even in sports. And having Rudy Gobert on the team will certainly make the journey more interesting and probably more enjoyable.
[1] No offense to Leandro Bolmaro, who I honestly regret not traveling to Des Moines to see him in his true element, playing for the Iowa Wolves. I only got to watch him in garbage time, which is a shame.
[2] Spoiler alert, we probably didn’t but we won’t know for sure for another seven years or more. Don’t count on me writing a follow up article in 2029.
Anything Was Possible 
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