Nikola Jokic credits Tim Connelly for Rudy Gobert trade 2 years later: 'Everybody was laughing at him'

DENVER — Before taking on Tim Connelly’s Timberwolves in the playoffs for the second time in as many years, Nikola Jokic tipped his cap to the general manager who drafted him.

The Nuggets center pointed out how dramatically the perception of Connelly’s 2022 blockbuster trade has changed since last year, when Minnesota was the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference facing top-seeded Denver in the first round.

This season, the Nuggets and Timberwolves were only separated by one regular-season win.

“I think they’re built really well,” Jokic said when asked about Minnesota’s first-round sweep of the Phoenix Suns. “Hopefully we are not going to get swept. I think Tim Connelly, when he made that trade, everybody was laughing at him and what he was doing. But he made a great team. And I think he deserves great credit for doing that.”

Connelly was Denver’s general manager from 2013 until May 2022, when he was hired as Minnesota’s president of basketball operations. The trade in question occurred two months later: The Timberwolves sent five players and five draft picks to the Utah Jazz in exchange for center Rudy Gobert, a three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year.

The deal was widely panned as an overpay, and Gobert’s fit next to longtime Timberwolves big man Karl-Anthony Towns was scrutinized. But Connelly continued to fill out the roster with complementary pieces. Before the 2023 trade deadline, he made another deal with the Jazz, acquiring current starting point guard Mike Conley and bench wing Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Last week, the NBA announced Conley as the winner of the 2023-24 award for Teammate of the Year.

Gobert is expected to win his fourth DPOY trophy in the coming days, by which point the second-round series against Denver will be well underway.

“I think they’re a really dangerous team,” Jokic said. “They can have an answer for everything. Playing small, playing big, they can do it all. So they’re a really dangerous team.”