Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert is certainly at the center of a lot of talk lately, and two more notable instances have come in the last day or so.
First, on Sunday, Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd offered a rather significant diss of Gobert and fellow Jazz center Hassan Whiteside, and then on Monday, Gobert clapped back at trade talk surrounding him and Donovan Mitchell.
On Sunday, Kidd was speaking to reporters about his team’s upcoming playoff series against the Phoenix Suns (the series starts Monday night), and he said that defending Suns big men Deandre Ayton and JaVale McGee was going to be more challenging than guarding Gobert and Whiteside was during the Mavericks’ first-round win over Utah.
“...(the Suns) can hurt you in the paint with JaVale and Ayton,” Kidd said. “This isn’t Gobert or Whiteside. These guys can put the ball in the basket, and so our bigs are going to be tested.”
There’s certainly been criticism of Gobert’s lack of versatility inside over the years beyond rim running, and he averaged just 12 points per game in the series against Dallas, while Whiteside averaged just 1.8 coming off the bench.
Then on Monday morning after Kidd’s remarks, radio host Sean O’Connell reported that Gobert is at the point that he wants the Jazz to decide if they will keep him or Donovan Mitchell, and that he will demand within the next few days that the team trades one of them this offseason.
While Gobert didn’t reference O’Connell’s tweet specifically, a few hours later he did take to Twitter and wrote “Everyday has it’s own new ‘rumor’” and added an eye roll emoji.