Minnesota beat Toronto on Sunday at the Target Center, and Rudy Gobert gave the press the best announcer’s script of the week. Here it is, from Eurohoops: “My role is the same. My role is to be who I am, be the best in the world at what I do. And then offensively just dominate, dominate, dominate in my own way, with my running, with my screening, my offensive rebound.”
Dominate, dominate, dominate. Hear that? That’s not a press-conference answer. That’s a jingle building. Me, on Saturday, I do it like this. Lights out. Well, half of lights out, the caretaker keeps the other half. The two school fête spotlights. [jingle] “Mesdames et messieurs, dames en heren, four-time Defensive Player of the Year, three-time All-Star, one thousand and four NBA games, the number who runs, who sets the screen, who takes the offensive rebound…” Two seconds of silence. “Rudy!” And the hall shouts “dominate” three times, in rhythm. Make some noise.
He also talked about his locker room, which does a lot of trash talk. “Ant and a few more guys, without naming them, they get going by talking a little bit, so I think that’s a good thing as long as we back it up,” he said. Without naming them, after naming one. That’s craft. Me too, I say “our guests tonight” and everyone knows who it is.
He added that the team “just got to talk enough”. Talking enough is my definition of a time-out. Thirty seconds of me, not one more.
Thirty seconds. I’m timing it, Dimitri.
The Timberwolves are unbeaten and play at Cleveland on Monday, at the Rocket Arena. I don’t know what sound system they have over there. Mine has an opinion. It refused the third “dominate”. Just saying.
It’s true, we checked: Eurohoops.
