ABOUT TWO HOURS after a vicious Victor Wembanyama right elbow clipped Naz Reid‘s jaw and completely altered the complexion of this second-round series between the San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Timberwolves, a reporter asked Rudy Gobert for his perspective.
Did Gobert believe, the question went, Minnesota’s series-long physicality had frustrated Wembanyama into the flagrant?
“I don’t know,” Gobert smirked. “Ask him.”
There’s perhaps nobody better in the world to deliver a facsimile of Wembanyama’s viewpoint than Gobert. At a sturdy 7-foot-1, the 13-year pro has long been frustrated about the level of contact allowed against him in the paint due to what he believes is his size advantage.
Gobert also happens to have Wembanyama’s ear and admiration. Gobert is one of the greatest French basketball players ever and, considering their shared position and similar stature, served as an exemplar for Wembanyama, who appears on track to become the greatest hooper in French history.
“He’s played a huge role in my journey,” Wembanyama said before the series. “[He] has been a role model, has inspired me in so many ways that should actually inspire more people.”
But this two-week stretch is the most inconvenient time in history to prod Gobert for some Wembanyama sympathy. The two are midway through a playoff clash that is tied at 2-2 as the series shifts back to San Antonio for Tuesday’s Game 5 (8 p.m. ET, NBC).
Gobert, 33, is trying to break through the playoff ceiling before it’s too late and win his first title, coming off a career-defining performance against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. But the 22-year-old he once guided as a teenager is in the way, swatting everything in sight.
Wembanyama is trying to fast-forward his stampede to greatness, obsessed with piling up hardware as rapidly as possible. But his mentor is the lanky roadblock between him and that third-season dream.
Gobert agreed to take ESPN inside his history with Wembanyama the morning of Game 3, pulling back the curtain on their lines of communication. The French big men share almost a decade of friendship, but their text message thread has been quiet for the past week.
“Not right now,” Gobert said. “[We talk] in regular times. We say ‘hi’ [on the court]. Our families see each other. But we are focused.”
THEY FIRST MET in summer 2017, as Gobert remembers it. He was at a youth tournament in France when Jérémy Medjana, their shared agent, walked in with a 13-year-old who was already creeping past 6-foot tall.
“But, I mean, you see a lot of tall kids around,” Gobert said. “I actually remember thinking his mom was really tall.”
Wembanyama’s mother, Elodie, is 6-3. His father, Felix, is 6-7. Over the next few years, from age 13 to 16, Victor blew past both, growing to 7-3.
That’s when video of a 2020 training session in Nanterre, France, surfaced. It included some 2-on-2 work — Gobert and Vincent Poirier, the midprime French basketball legends, facing a pair of rising local teenagers: Wembanyama and Maxime Raynaud, who was drafted by the Sacramento Kings in 2025 and just finished a promising rookie season starting at center for them.
“When I was 16, I would’ve loved to work out with some NBA players,” Gobert said. “Especially the guys that play in my position.”
After the 2-on-2, which included skill flashes from Wembanyama but a stark difference in strength between an adult and teenager separated by 11 years in age, Gobert took Wembanyama and Raynaud to the weight room. He gave them a glimpse inside the fitness program that has allowed him to be so durable.
“In terms of taking care of your body, he should be a model for all big men,” Wembanyama said.
Gobert calls Wembanyama a “little bit of a nerd,” which makes them kindred spirits. Gobert said he grew up playing video games and exploring random hobbies. Wembanyama often reaches out to pick his brain. They share book recommendations. They play chess.
But it’s clear what Wembanyama takes most from Gobert is the ability to protect and preserve a gigantic body in a minefield of a profession. Gobert has played at least 70 games in eight separate seasons, averaging more than 30 minutes in his 905 career games.
“It’s everything,” Gobert said. “You can be as talented as you want, but if you’re not able to be on the floor, what’s the point? You need the discipline to take care of your body. And when you’re 7-feet and higher, you have more pressure on your joints, you’re heavier. There’s a lot more risk. So it requires a lot more invisible work that the average fan doesn’t see.”
Gobert is proud of a growing basketball legacy that, at times, he believes has been disrespected, with his four Defensive Player of the Year awards and the consistent work required for them marginalized.
In Wembanyama, he found a rising talent who not only recognized Gobert’s regimen but showed a great level of interest in emulating it. That meant a constant peppering of questions about nutrition, fitness and the secrets of injury avoidance. Gobert even said before the series that Wembanyama recently texted him to ask which kind of water filters he had in his house.
“It’s all the hours spent getting stronger, getting more flexible,” Gobert said. “Your recovery, your balance. These are essential to the game that is such a high pace. There’s a lot of contact, a lot of games, a lot of traveling. So if you don’t become, I would say, obsessed with that, you’re not putting the best chances on your side to be out there.”
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Rudy Gobert drops in an early and-1 for Minnesota
Rudy Gobert drops in an early and-1 for Minnesota
WEMBANYAMA WAS THE favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year in his second season when it ended prematurely because of deep vein thrombosis in his right shoulder, a diagnosis that spooked him and, Gobert felt, increased his focus.
“Very scary thing,” Gobert said. “At some point he wasn’t sure if he was going to play basketball again.”
Wembanyama sought out the proper treatment, recovered and exploded in his third season.
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon recently relayed a story of a Spurs assistant coach showing Wembanyama some Gobert film in the summer as part of a growth plan and Wembanyama retorting back that he was already better than Gobert defensively.
The assistant reminded Wembanyama that Gobert had four DPOYs and the Spurs had just finished the previous season 25th in defense, a point Wembanyama acknowledged as valid and necessary in his quest to turn potential into reality.
This season, as the Spurs rumbled to 62 wins, they finished with the league’s third-best defense, and Wembanyama won his first DPOY unanimously, sparking conversation about whether he is about to string together an unstoppable run in that award category. Gobert believes he will be heard from again.
“As long as I breathe,” Gobert said, “I’m always going to try to be the best in the world in what I do.”
Gobert and Wembanyama were teammates during the 2024 Olympics. French national team coach Vincent Collet used them on the court together at times early in their run but split them up more regularly as the tournament progressed, often keeping Gobert on the bench. He was limited to 12 minutes in the gold medal loss to the United States.
“For some reason we stopped [going double big],” Gobert said. “I thought that was very unique for us to be on the court together and very tough for the other team, but we stopped doing it. It was fine.”
Gobert expressed a level of excitement about pairing up again in the 2028 Olympics and seeking revenge in Los Angeles, believing that could be his last chance at a gold medal.
But, for now, it’s competition between the countrymen in the Western Conference playoffs. Gobert held Jokic to 34-of-82 shooting (41.5%) in the first-round series win over the Nuggets and has held up decently well in isolation against the younger All-Star.
According to ESPN tracking, Gobert has held Wembanyama to 8-of-20 shooting (40%) as the primary defender in this series. Wembanyama has beaten Gobert using the drive, but Gobert has found plenty of success when he’s able to keep Wembanyama away from the basket as a jump shooter.
That will again be a key battleground in a pivotal Game 5 on Tuesday night, when the Timberwolves expect a motivated Wembanyama to return to the series aggressively, intent on dominating a center he once idolized.
“I hope that the French people are proud,” Gobert said. “France, we have very unique type of fans. A lot of times, sometimes there is this thing where they’re harder on the French people than on others and they rather be fans of others.
“What I truly care about is for the young kids in France that they have people to look up to and can see what is possible.”
