Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert is out for Game 2 of a second-round NBA playoff series against the Nuggets due to personal reasons, coach Chris Finch said Monday night.
According to The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Gobert said earlier this season that he would miss a potential playoff game to be present for the birth of his child. He posted a photo on social media Feb. 21 announcing he and his girlfriend were expecting a child.
The Timberwolves held shootaround Monday morning with the assumption that Gobert would not be able to play, Finch said, but there was an attempt to get him to Denver.
“There was definitely consideration, and looking at the timing of it all,” Finch said in his pregame news conference. “I think just the timing of his circumstances plus some weather made it really tough. And didn’t feel like he was gonna be able to kind of get here and be prepared to play.”
As of around 5 p.m., airborne inbound flights to Denver International Airport were delayed for an average of one hour and 18 minutes due to heavy wind gusts across the state. More than 1,100 flights were delayed or canceled Monday at DIA.
The focal point of Minnesota’s league-leading defense, Gobert is widely expected to win his fourth career NBA Defensive Player of the Year crown this season. The award will be announced Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. MT.
Gobert has been instrumental in the Timberwolves’ defensive scheme against Nuggets center Nikola Jokic despite not being the primary one-on-one matchup for Jokic. Minnesota puts Karl-Anthony Towns on the two-time MVP while Gobert roams as a free safety of sorts, converging on Jokic when necessary but also monitoring the lethal alley-oop connection to Aaron Gordon, who lurks on the baseline for easy buckets in Denver’s offense.
Without Gobert, the Timberwolves can still use two centers in their starting lineup. NBA Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid filled in while Towns was injured late in the regular season, keeping the Timberwolves steady near the top of the Western Conference standings. And in their Game 1 win against the Nuggets, Reid scored 14 points in the fourth quarter, including 10 in the last six minutes.
Peyton Watson registered four blocks against Reid while matched up against the backup center April 10 when Denver won its final regular-season meeting with Minnesota. The 21-year-old Watson played only 5:30 in Game 1 of the playoff series, as coach Michael Malone opted for a bench lineup that prioritized offense after the Nuggets scored only four points in the first seven minutes of the series. But if Reid becomes a bigger factor in the second game and Denver requires more defensive versatility, the matchup may call for more of Watson, a shot-blocking wing who has studied Minnesota’s Jaden McDaniels as a comparable player.
