It’s been just a little over a month since the Timberwolves traded Robert Covington to the Houston Rockets in a 12-player, four-team trade, and Tuesday will be the first time Covington faces off against his former team.
In some ways, it feels as though the Timberwolves parted with Covington at least a season ago. And in others, it’s still incomprehensible to see Covington playing in anything but a Timberwolves jersey.
We’re talking about a guy who only played 70 games with the Wolves. How could a player who’s never been named an All-Star impact a franchise and its fans in such a short amount of time? Covington found a way.
The Timberwolves went 8-3 in Covington’s first 11 games with the team and saw their defensive rating improve from 113.9 to 101.5 from mid-November to early December. Fans quickly jumped on the Covington bandwagon as he awed them with his explicit love for playing defense and doing the nitty-gritty work that often gets glossed over. He lived up to his 3-And-D label by shooting 39.2% from 3-point range and averaging 2.7 steals and 1.1 blocks per game in his first 11-game stint with the team.
Unfortunately, his 2018-19 season was cut short when he suffered a knee injury in the Timberwolves’ Dec. 31 game against the New Orleans Pelicans. Covington planned to make a return to the Timberwolves’ lineup before the end of the season and even spent some time recovering in the G League with the Iowa Wolves. He was recalled from Iowa on March 2 but complications with his injury forced Minnesota to shut him down for the remainder of the season 19 days later.
At the time, those outside of the franchise didn’t know the extent of the toll Covington’s season-ending injury had on him, but he shared a glimpse of his struggles during the 2019-20 season’s Media Day — a day our respect for him grew tenfold, at least.
“Last year was very tough for me,” Covington said, candidly. “I was frustrated because I can’t go out, I can’t be battling with my teammates.
“Me being the competitive person that I am, I didn’t understand it, and then it was affecting me at home, it was affecting me in the workplace like I wasn’t myself because there was so much cloudiness up here not knowing why. I didn’t know how to figure it out. I was just in a state of frustration, a state of stress.”
That’s when he turned to Ryan Saunders, the coach he had yet to play a game for at the time.
“Ryan came to me, and I opened up to him about what I was actually going through because they were noticing it in the workplace,” Covington said.
Saunders noticed a stark change in the player who once brought so much life to his team and suggested he see a therapist, which he himself did after the passing of his father, Flip Saunders.Covington leaned on Saunders during one of the most challenging times of his career then had enough courage to open up about his mental health struggles after he got the help he needed. That will always be my favorite Robert Covington memory.
That day, Covington also made it clear that he had no doubts about his ability to serve as the Wolves’ starting power forward as they entered the season without Taj Gibson and Dario Šarić. The transition worked somewhat. Covington played a large part in earning Minnesota the second-best defensive rating from mid-December to mid-January and was viewed as one of the few players keeping the Timberwolves’ defense afloat as they tried to implement their new defensive system.
But when the trade deadline came, Covington’s impact wasn’t enough for the Timberwolves’ front office to ignore the trade suitors who’d been buzzing about his potential on a Finals-contending team all season long.
The Timberwolves dealt Covington and forward Jordan Bell (who has since been waived by the Grizzlies) to Houston and sent Keita Bates-Diop, Shabazz Napier (who was later traded to the Wizards) and Noah Vonleh to Denver in exchange for the Nuggets’ Malik Beasley, Juancho Hernangomez and Jarred Vanderbilt and Atlanta’s 2020 first-round draft pick, which was originally Brooklyn’s.
Just think, it took the largest trade since the 2000 four-team trade that sent Knicks Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing to the Sonics to pry Covington from the Timberwolves. That’s how much he meant to this franchise.
I’ll admit I was initially disappointed to see Covington go, but it’s hard to deny the value of the Timberwolves’ trade returns when you watch Beasley and Hernangomez make immediate impacts in Minnesota and see the way Vanderbilt is dominating in Iowa. Twenty-three-year-old Beasley has already become a fan favorite and has averaged 21.9 points per game in a Timberwolves jersey, 24-year-old Hernangomez is shooting a career-high 41% from deep and 20-year-old Vanderbilt is averaging 15.3 points and 14.2 rebounds per game in the G League.
As enjoyable as Covington’s time in Minnesota was, his departure has so far been a win-win for both parties. The Timberwolves have added younger pieces who better fit Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell’s timelines, and 29-year-old Covington gets to compete with a team that has a clearer path to the Finals as he enters the back half of his career. But wherever the remainder of his career takes him, he’ll always have the backing of the Timberwolves — just as he did for them in his short yet memorable time in Minnesota.