What are the pros and cons of extending Rudy Gobert?

Should the Timberwolves look to extend the reigning Defensive Player of the Year?

Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert (27) controls the ball as Dallas Mavericks center Dwight Powell (7) defends during the first quarter of Game 4 of the Western Conference finals at American Airlines Center in Dallas on May 28, 2024. / Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

The Timberwolves will have some contract decisions to make sooner or later, among them whether to extend center and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert. 

It’s no secret the Timberwolves are in a difficult position with the salary cap this season, currently $17 million above the second apron, according to spotrac.com. While there's no fixing that problem this year, restructuring Gobert's contract could help the Wolves avoid a the second apron next season.

Gobert, 32, is due $44 million this season and has a player option — one he’d almost certainly accept — worth north of $46 million for 2025-26. While the Wolves will be stuck above the second apron this season and will have to pay the luxury tax, extending Gobert could be their most elegant solution to getting back under the second apron and begin the process of getting under the luxury tax.

If the Wolves were to offer Gobert an extension, it could restructure his deal in a way that would significantly bring down his $46 million price tag in 2025-26, with Gobert in exchange getting the security of several more years on his contract. KSTP's Darren Wolfson reiterated on SKOR North Thursday "there's definite mutual interest" in working out an extension to keep Gobert in Minneapolis.

Reducing Gobert's cap number next season could behoove the Timberwolves as Karl-Anthony Towns is due $53 million in 2025-26; Anthony Edwards will make north of $45 million that season; and Jaden McDaniels has a $25 million cap number on his contract. Add in Gobert's $46 million player option, and those four contracts alone are already above the projected salary cap next season.

And that doesn't include the decisions the Wolves will have to make elsewhere on the roster. Naz Reid has a $15 million player option for 2025-26, but Minnesota might want to look at extending him this season as Reid could make significantly more by declining that option and signing elsewhere. Along with Reid, Nickeil Alexander-Walker will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season.

But in hypotheticals, if Gobert and Reid both accepted their player options for next season and the Wolves let Alexander-Walker walk, they'd still be nearly $6 million above the projected second apron.

That brings us to the Gobert extension. While Gobert is eligible for the max, The Athletic projected in July that the Wolves could look to inject about $100 million for a Gobert extension that could drop his salary-cap number in 2025-26 to $32.5 million. That would bring them below the second apron.

If Reid declined his option and the Wolves let him walk, that would bring them below the first apron. But if the Wolves weren't willing to part with the Sixth Man of the Year, the question would be whether they could extend both him and Gobert and stay under the second apron, which could be significant as the new CBA has extensive penalties for teams that stay above it for multiple seasons.

Another approach could be for the Wolves to bite the bullet and let Gobert accept his player option for 2025-26, putting them above the second apron for the second year in a row. It would depend on how severe they view the new penalties to be, including their first-round pick seven years out being automatically moved to the end of the first round. But it would leave few commitments beyond 25-26.

The Wolves could ride it out above the second apron for another year, extending their key reserves like Reid and Alexander-Walker. As it stands now, they only have six contracts that will extend into the 2026-27 season, three of them the big-money deals for Towns, Edwards and McDaniels and the other three being rookie deals for Rob Dillingham, Terrence Shannon Jr. and Leonard Miller.

That would leave a lot of flexibility in the future. But they would also have to weigh that with the penalties they'd receive in the meantime and the prospect of being without Gobert, who averaged 14 points, 12.9 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game last season while winning his fourth DPOY. And Gobert has proved a crucial piece of a team that's knocking on the door of an NBA championship.