What Should the Utah Jazz Do With Enes Kanter?

The Utah Jazz have a bit of a problem on their hands.

Power forward Derrick Favors and centers Enes Kanter and Rudy Gobert all play in the interior and take minutes away from each other. Thankfully all three of them are talented enough to play in the interior for long intervals of time.

With Favors virtually locked into the power forward position, the true problem is which of the two, Kanter or Gobert, should get the lion’s share of the minutes?

Which player on the team will coach Quin Snyder decide to start? Which end of the court does his coaching philosophy rely more upon, offense or defense?

Faire le cas pour Gobert
Recently the youngest center in the Jazz rotation, Gobert, has been forcing the hand of Snyder because of the way he’s consistently beginning to play.

Gobert is on a complete tear, and when he was thrown into the starting lineup after an ankle injury to Kanter, he gave us evidence of his arrival. Over the four games in January that Gobert started when Kanter was injured he averaged 9.8 points on 68 percent shooting from the floor, 9.0 rebounds, 1.0 assist, 1.5 steals, and 5.3 blocks per game.

Anyone is hard pressed to find another center who can find another center in the league that can average five blocks a game in a course of four games. Let alone finding someone who has more than 20 games of having multiple blocks. Gobert is one of the best defensive centers in the league and the Jazz have to get him more playing time.

In spite of only playing 20.7 minutes per game, on the year Gobert’s PER is 21.27.

The editor-in-chief of SLCDunk, Amar Smith also noticed Gobert’s impact to the Jazz lineup and, said this about his defensive prowess:

"Rudy is only 22. He’s in his second year. He could end up being the best defensive finisher in franchise history. If you compound that with the fact that with the eyeball test he is already our best defender . . . . sheesh."

We could shove advanced analytics down your throat all day until you get blue in the face. Trust us on this, watch Gobert play and see for yourself.

Let’s just end with this. In Gobert’s last game he almost finished with a five by five game with a stat line of 16 points, 11 rebounds, four assists, two steals and three blocks in 31 minutes against the Golden State Warriors.

Making the case for Kanter
In the other corner the Jazz also have a gem at center with their 22-year-old offensive wizard, Kanter. The 6’11”, 245-pound center knows how to take almost any big man in the league off the dribble and because of his skill he’s having his best season as a professional.

Currently Kanter is averaging 14.0 points and 7.3 rebounds, and has a PER of 17.97. It’s his best season and Kanter is starting to play like the third pick in the 2011 draft that many expected him to become.

Kanter’s game has expanded, and he’s become a go to player within the offense for the Jazz. Offensively Kanter has the ability to stretch the floor up to the three-point line. On the year he’s shooting 34 percent from the three-point line. However what’s impressive to see Kanter do is get the basketball on the block and make great moves.

Often times in games when Kanter gets the basketball on the block, he’ll give his opponents a quick spin move that free’s him up on the baseline. Kanter makes the move in one dribble and gets to the rim as soon as he picks the basketball up.

Defensively he’s not as bad people think he is. Kanter is getting better when it comes to playing defense off the pick and roll and on the ball. However he’s still a work in progress and at 22-years-old what player in the league isn’t?

What to do with Kanter?
It’s tough to bench Gobert with the type of impact that he brings defensively, so the only other option is to bench Kanter.

Kanter’s too good to get traded and it’s not the worst idea to bring him off of the bench. Coming off of the bench for a team that desperately needs a scorer from the pine is a great role to have. The way that Gobert changes the game defensively when he comes off the bench is similar to the way that Kanter could impact the game with his offense.

We got to see a very small sample size recently. When Kanter came back from his four game absence he played well coming off the bench. Kanter finished with 16 points on 6-for-10 shooting, six rebounds, one assist and one steal against the Houston Rockets.

It’s starting to look like a better option for Kanter to substitute into the game for Favors as coach Snyder has started to do more.

Think about it. What two frontcourt players that were teammates shared similar basketball games?

When the Los Angeles Lakers had Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol, one person (Gasol) could play on the high post and the other (Bynum) stayed in the low post. The same sentence can get attributed to the Los Angeles Clippers with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, the San Antonio Spurs with Tim Duncan and Tiago Splitter, and the Memphis Grizzlies with Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph.

Kanter is exactly the type of spark plug the Jazz need off their bench.

Sixth man of the year? Now that’s another story.

Next: Utah Jazz: Why It's Time to Let Trey Burke Play Like A Scoring Point Guard