Milwaukee Bucks bigs climb NBA Defensive Player of the Year Ladder 4.0

The Utah Jazz have not played a lot of great defense lately and there are pundits out there wondering what’s wrong with Rudy Gobert. Tony Jones and Zach Harper of The Athletic delved into that topic late last month on the Game Notes podcast.

The fact remains that even with Friday’s impressive performance in a 99-94 win at Boston, holding the Celtics to just 37.2 percent shooting overall, 27.8 percent from 3-point range and getting six blocks from Gobert and backup big man Tony Bradley (three each), the Jazz have been just bad defensively since the All-Star break.

How bad? Like 25th in the NBA-bad, with a defensive rating of 116.4 over the eight games since the festivities in Chicago last month. Utah has managed to go 4-4 over that span.

Gobert is averaging 2.2 blocks in his last 11 games since the last publication of the ladder, along with 0.7 steals, in 35.3 minutes per game and for the season is at 2.0 blocks in 34.6 minutes per game, good for sixth in the NBA.

He might not be at the top of the Association in defensive field goal percentage from close range, but Gobert is facing 9.4 shot attempts per game at the rim and opponents are shooting just 48.7 percent. Among players facing at least 2.5 attempts per game in regular playing time, that ranks fifth in the NBA behind three Bucks and Ivica Zubac of the Clippers.

So while Gobert may not be at the level he’s been at while winning the Defensive Player of the Year award each of the last two seasons, let’s be very clear — he’s not Enes Kanter all of a sudden, either.

There were going to be adjustments for Utah this season, with longtime frontcourt partner Derrick Favors being traded to the Pelicans and free agent Bojan Bogdanovic coming in to man the 4. That’s made things more difficult for Gobert up front, but he’s still making an impact, ranked first in the NBA in DRPM and defensive RAPTOR … by very large margins.

That leaves him at the top of the charts from this vantage point.