The French national team appears to be entering the Olympics with a rather Wolves-esque conundrum. They have an established four-time defensive player of the year in Rudy Gobert and up-and-coming phenom center Victor Wembanyama.
That means that arguably, their two best players are centers in the Olympics, where they play by FIBA rules, which means guard play typically dominates the games. However, the 7’4” Wembanyama ran a pick-and-roll and found a cutting 7’1” Gobert for a thunderous alley-oop, setting social media ablaze late Monday. Their dynamic connection suggested that Team France may unveil new ways for the Wolves to use Gobert in 2024-25.
Gobert is no stranger to playing next to an elite center. After the Utah Jazz traded him to Minnesota in Summer 2022, the Wolves paired Gobert with Karl-Anthony Towns. While the trade went against the small ball mentality the NBA had begun to form, the Wolves hoped that the Gobert and Towns due would be a great match of offense from Towns and defense from Gobert.
However, in the 2022-23 season, Towns suffered a right calf strain that sidelined him for 53 games in their first season together. Gobert also entered the season with hip, ankle, and back injuries. Therefore, the first season of Minnesota’s two-big experiment could have been considered a wash, as neither big was healthy enough to gain chemistry with each other in their first season.
However, things were different last year. Towns and Gobert played the eighth-most minutes together among all two-man pairings on the Wolves at 1,279 minutes or 26.65 total 48-minute games. Together, they had a +8.6 net rating, which would have ranked second only behind the Boston Celtics as a team net rating.
Their 109.4 defensive rating was only 0.8 worse than Minnesota’s league-best 108.6 and would have still ranked first in the NBA ahead of the Celtics at 110.6. Offensively, the Gobert-Towns pairing had a 118.0 offensive rating, which would have ranked fourth in the NBA and a full 3.4 points better than the Wolves’ 17th-ranked 114.6 rating.
While offensive and defensive ratings can be flawed statistics based on teammate performance, the sample size of over 1,200 minutes means that the ratings account for various teammates and rotations around the two players. Therefore, the statistics are unlikely to be influenced by a teammate having an outburst of efficiency for one game or the ratings being over-influenced by team performance during a small stretch. With Towns and most of the roster likely to return to the Wolves in 2024-25, France’s national team could provide meaningful insight into how Gobert could develop further.
Aside from their two centers, France’s starting five is ideologically similar to Minnesota’s, assuming they use the same starters they used in FIBA last summer. Expected starting point guard Nando De Colo is a 37-year-old pass-first point guard who played 119 games in two NBA seasons and sixteen professional seasons in Europe. He has also played for the French national team since 2010 in FIBA. De Colo is effectively the French team’s Mike Conley, guiding the ball and setting up the French’s offense.
Evan Fournier lines up as France’s starting two-guard. Comparing him to Anthony Edwards from a talent standpoint would be ludicrous. Still, he does provide a similar offensive pop, averaging 12 or more points in his NBA career eight times in his 12-year NBA career. He’s still an elite scorer internationally, averaging 21.7 points per game in last summer’s FIBA tournament and scoring 17.3 in France’s 2020 Olympic appearance.
Fournier specializes in pull-up threes and creating off of pick-and-rolls, as evidenced by his 10.0 three-point attempts per game in FIBA, which he converts at 36.7%. From a talent standpoint, Fournier is nowhere near Edwards. However, from a scoring perspective, he fits Edwards’ role for France well.
Lastly, Guerschon Yabusele, or Dancing Bear (according to basketball-reference’s nicknames), rounds out the French national team. Yasbusele played two seasons as a power forward with Celtics from 2017 to 2019 before joining Real Madrid in the EuroLeague. He has played eight professional seasons in Europe and China. Yabusele rounds out as a 6’6” Jaden McDaniels fill-in offensively. He’s a decent three-point shooter who can drive off the catch. Defensively, he often gets to guard the opponent’s best wind defender.
France’s starting five mirrors the Wolves. Or, rather, Minnesota’s starting five mirrors the French. Their national team is largely intact from the 2020 Olympics sans Wembanyama, who was not old enough to compete. With the FIBA rules in the Olympics, it will be interesting to see how France uses their two-big core. Wembanyama also plays with “stray voltage” like Towns, meaning you never fully know what to expect. It should be an opportunity for the Wolves staff to learn how another set of coaches can manage a two-big system.
If the Wembanyama-Gobert alley-oop becomes a regular occurrence, the Wolves would likely start running some Towns pick-and-rolls with Gobert being the dunker. Likewise, if Yabusele, who traditionally has played power forward, meshes well and can provide those screens for Wembanyama, it could lead to more super big Wolves lineups with Naz Reid as the three, screening for Towns and Gobert as a lob threat.
While all of this is hypothetical, the opportunity to see Gobert playing alongside another generational center will be interesting to watch in the Olympics. If they succeed, it will be another proof positive that the two-big experiment will continue in Minnesota.