If you play for the Utah Jazz, you have to be extra special to get league-wide recognition. Even with that hurdle, Rudy Gobert is gaining a reputation as the league’s best defender.
Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz is not only in the conversation for the Defensive Player of the Year award, but you’d thrown him in and among those players in the league that are the most underappreciated.
It’s always the same.
“If Player X played anywhere other than Utah he would …”
There’s any number of different ways that sentence has been finished over the years but in 2017, “Gobert would be a household name” is the answer.
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Gobert is a game-changer and while Gordon Hayward and his fancy haircut may be the face of the franchise, it’s the Stifle Tower who leads this team on the court.
His unbridled enthusiasm and desire to be involved in every possession is most evident when he’s not on the court.
With Gobert on the court, the Jazz have an offensive rating of 108.3 and a defensive rating of 99.8 for a net rating of +8.5.
Off the court is a different story, with the Jazz only managing a 103.7 offensive rating while the defensive rating balloons out to 107.3.
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That ensuing minus-3.4 net rating with Gobert off the court is the only negative net rating across the whole Jazz team.
It’s not unfair to say Gobert is limited but improving offensively.
He shoots 65 percent from the field, with 86 percent of his shots coming from either layups or dunks, and he is primarily the beneficiary of great cuts and passes from the ball-dominant players such as Hayward and George Hill.
It’s on the defensive end that Gobert justifies the four-year, $102 million extension he signed in November and has his name as a front-runner for this season’s Defensive Player of the year honor.
The French native leads the league in defensive win shares with 5.3 and is second behind only James Harden in overall win shares at 11.9. That’s an incredible feat for a guy that, as mentioned, isn’t considered an overly dangerous scoring threat.
Gobert’s counterparts in the DPOY race are close behind in defensive win shares — but behind nevertheless — with Draymond Green having 4.8 and Kawhi Leonard 3.9.
As the leading shot-blocker in the NBA at 2.6 blocks per game, Gobert has made the painted area an inefficient shot for the opposition.
Players are hitting 61.6 percent of their shots within six feet of the basket on average throughout the league. Plant Rudy inside that six feet and opposition players are only making 48.5 percent of those shots.
Gobert single-handedly removes the easiest and most sought-after shot from a team’s game plan.
It’s not only around the rim that Gobert has a direct impact on defense.
Indirectly, his presence inside forces teams to shoot from distance, further exposing his influence on the defensive end. When the Jazz have Gobert on the court, their opposition shoots 3.5 percent worse overall than with him off it.
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The Jazz have become a legitimate Western Conference contender on the back of Gobert’s defensive dominance. For that reason, Gobert is the deserving winner of the 2016-17 Defensive Player of the Year award.
Whether he gets it is a different story.
More so than MVP voting, the criteria for judging the best defensive player in the league varies from voter to voter.
Whether the voter uses statistics, the eye-test or the glaring improvement and performance of the team with and without Gobert, the Frenchman is the rightful recipient of the award.
This year’s voting will give a clear indication of the validity behind the aforementioned, “If Player X played anywhere other than Utah he would …”.
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If the answer ends up being, “have won the Defensive Player of the Year Award,” there might just be some of the most polite and civilized riots you will ever see in the heart of Salt Lake City.