The 34-year-old guard is a shell of the player he was in Memphis and never regained the defensive form that made him such a lethal two-way player with the Grizzlies. The 2019 trade that brought Mike Conley to Utah has been an unmitigated disaster. Danny Ainge and the Utah front office have surrounded Gobert with a bunch of aging perimeter players who can’t defend.
The tension between the two goes all the way to pre-pandemic times. It was no secret that their two superstars, Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, don’t care for one another. Before the Utah Jazz even began their first-round playoff series against the Dallas Mavericks, there were significant questions about their chemistry, viability as a winner, and ceiling.
