Rudy Gobert of the Minnesota Timberwolves has been suspended for Tuesday's NBA Western Conference play-in tournament game against the Los Angeles Lakers for punching his teammate Kyle Anderson in their previous game, the team announced on Monday.

The Timberwolves overcame a 14-point deficit to defeat the New Orleans Pelicans at home on April 9 to rise to eighth in the West and earn the chance of affording to lose one game in the play-in tournament. However, that game began tough for the Timberwolves as they already trailed by 12 points (30-18) after the first quarter.

Then during timeout in the second period, Anderson and Gobert began to argue. "Hey, why don't you block some shots?" Anderson asked Gobert. "Why don't you grab a rebound," Gobert retorted. The argument escalated as harsh words were exchanged before Gobert threw a sucker punch at Anderson. The two were immediately separated by their teammates. The Timberwolves told Gobert to go home instead of appearing on the court again.

"We made the decision to send Rudy Gobert home after the incident in the second quarter. His behavior on the bench was unacceptable and we will continue handling the situation internally," Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said.The irony for Gobert was that the Timberwolves came back to win after he was gone; when he asked Anderson to "grab a rebound," he only had three rebounds, but Anderson got four in the second quarter alone. If one looks at the the bigger picture, the 2022-23 season, the Timberwolves had a winning percentage of .486 (34-36) when Gobert played and did better at .667 (8-4) when he didn't play.

We are not trying to belittle the role of Gobert, who is a three-time Defensive Player of the Year, in the Timberwolves. However, the Timberwolves traded five players, four first-round draft picks and a swap for him last summer, but hasn't seen much improvement of their performances during the 2022-23 campaign so far. Besides, when Gobert was on the court, he occupied a lot of the offensive space of Karl-Anthony Towns under the hoop and made the paint too crowded for Anthony Edwards to penetrate.

Moreover, 58 of the field goals (FGs) Gobert has made this season were assisted by Anderson, the most on the Timberwolves' roster. That made his behavior look even uglier and gave Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors a chance to retaliate against him for his sarcasm against Green for punching his teammate Jordan Poole during team practice last year.

Green tweeted the same thing as Gobert did: "Insecurity is always loud."

The Timberwolves will visit Crypto.com Arena to for their first play-in tournament game against the Lakers on Tuesday, without Gobert, Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reed. Simply speaking, they have lost nearly all of their best trustworthy defenders. The winner of this game will enter the playoffs to face the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round. The losing side will play the winner between the Pelicans and the Oklahoma City Thunder for the final playoff berth in the West to face the Denver Nuggets.