"The goal is the title" of NBA champion, assured the French pivot Rudy Gobert during his first press conference as a player of the Minnesota Timberwolves who formalized his recruitment on Wednesday.

"I didn't come here to just be on a good team, I came here to go to the finals with this team, I'm going to do everything to help this team go higher," continued the three-time NBA best defender.

Gobert, 30, was traded from Minnesota to Utah that received five players (Patrick Beverley, Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt, Leandro Bolmaro, Walker Kessler) and four first-round draft picks in the years to come (2023, 2025, 2027 and 2029).

The transaction was announced by the ESPN television channel on July 1, then confirmed by Gobert himself on his social networks the next day, without the French pivot, however, specifying the name of his new team.

😉 pic.twitter.com/jFt1LFlZtx

— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) July 7, 2022


Access to this content has been blocked to respect your choice of consent

By clicking on "

I ACCEPT

", you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners

I ACCEPT

And to better remunerate 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our "I accept for today" button in the banner below.

More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.


Gobert has spent his entire NBA career, which began in 2013, at Utah, averaging 12.4 points, 11.7 rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game.

With the Salt Lake City franchise, he never made it past the Western Conference semi-finals (2017, 2018 and 2021).

The Jazz was eliminated this season in the first round of the play-offs.

His new team also bit the dust from the first round.

It has never won the NBA title since its inception in 1989.

His association with fellow Minnesota star Karl-Anthony Towns, nicknamed “KAT,” who also plays at center, is raising a lot of questions even before the 2022-23 season kicks off in October.

“We complement each other, I think, we can make each other better, in defense and in attack.

If you had told me a year ago that what happened this summer was going to happen, I wouldn't have believed it, but now that it happened, I'm super happy,” the player insisted.

" Even better "

“We will each share our experience and that can only be positive for this team (
) There will be a learning period but, with the passes, the shots and the unique qualities of a player the size of “ KAT", I am sure that I will allow him to be even better", predicted the Olympic vice-champion of Tokyo.

Gobert, one of the highest paid French athletes, is entering the second year of his mega-contract signed in December 2020 (205 million dollars over 5 years) which guarantees him in his new jersey, an annual salary of more than 38 millions of dollars.

Sport

NBA: Nikola Jokic signs the biggest contract in history with the Denver Nuggets

Sport

NBA: What trace will the "revolutionary" Stephen Curry leave in history?

  • Sport

  • Basketball

  • NBA

  • Rudy Gobert