Jon Krawczynski

You not only have to go find someone that's really good, but you have to find someone that's really good that wants to stay here.

And I do think that was an element of the Rudy Gobert situation that set him apart because you can say, well, yeah, if they would have just held on to all their picks and all their players, they could have got someone else.

even better down the road.

But Kevin Durant didn't want to come here.

There's plenty of other stars that wouldn't want to come to Minnesota and play.

And so by virtue of that, Rudy is a win.

The other part is that my biggest argument for why Rudy has been a success is that I saw earlier on

Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio, Carl Anthony Towns, Zach LeVue, whoever, you know, a lot of the young stars that were supposed to be the guys that carried the Wolves forward were losing at such a level early in their careers that I think it damaged them.

And I think it damaged their perception of being here.

Maybe not Kat, but most of the other guys.

And so...

What Rudy did was raise the floor on this team to a degree that it showed that Anthony Edwards, hey, we can win here and win and you can get playoff experience and high leverage moments early on in your career.

And if Rudy wasn't here, they would not have had the same amount of success.

And there'd be immediate conversations right now.

Anthony Edwards can't win in Minnesota.

He's got to get out of here and go somewhere else.

And so

That's where the value of Rudy Gobert has come in.

Obviously, you look at what he did against Jokic in the first round of the Denver series, and that's incredible.

But then he was not good enough in San Antonio.