Rudy Gobert: The Gobzilla Effect

The Utah Jazz are building a team for the future, and Rudy Gobert is the center of it.

Rudy Gobert, acquired on draft night in 2013 from the Denver Nuggets, had a slow start to his NBA career in his first season. Under first year head coach Quin Snyder, Gobert has seen his skills and playing time grow. The improvement from his rookie season to year two is remarkable. Gobert has seen his minutes more than double while his points and steals per game have both tripled and his blocks have more than doubled.

While his numbers are taking a jump on the offensive side of the ball, it is the defensive component that really has people taking notice. Gobert doesn’t just function as a capable backup center, he is playing defense at an elite level. Gobert is the top ranked center in the league in opponent field goal percentage at the rim, allowing opponents to shoot just 38.1 percent. These numbers place Gobert ahead of names like Andrew Bogut, Roy Hibbert, Larry Sanders and Dwight Howard. He also has a ridiculously high contest percentage which measures the number of shots the player contests at the rim in relation to number of possible attempts. Gobzilla, as SLC Dunk calls him, contests 67 percent of all attempts. That number is a 6.4 percent ahead of the next closest big man, Brook Lopez. To demonstrate further just how far ahead Gobert is, Lopez is contesting 60.6 percent of shots, but his opponent field goal percentage at the rim is just 48.2 percent, which is ten full percentage points worse than Gobert.

Based on the numbers, which I got from the good people at Nylon Calculus, Gobert is saving his team almost 5 points per 36 minutes. He is 1.4 points ahead of second placed Andrew Bogut in that category, and uses about 10 fewer arm bars per game.

This emergence of Gobzilla is a revelation for the Jazz. Finding a legitimate interior defender with his ability is rare. To have the good fortune to have him on contract for two more years at little more than $1.1 million next year and $2.1 million the following year is more than any team could hope for. Not only is Gobert already standing out as a league-best interior defender, but he is barely moving the meter on the salary cap for the next two seasons. This provides the Jazz a serious amount of freedom, and as Jordan White points out in his piece on Gobert for Hardwood Paroxysm, could lead to moving Kanter:

“After looking stiff and lost for most of his rookie year, Gobert’s become a force on defense, changing the conversation from “should the Jazz have re-signed Enes Kanter?” to “what can the Jazz get for Enes Kanter?””

Beyond the possibility of moving Kanter, Gobert has simply been outplaying Kanter. Gobert averages 0.5 rebounds less than Kanter and is far behind on the offensive end, scoring less than half as many points, but he is already significantly better on defense producing far more blocks and edges Kanter in both steals and assists. The blocks that Gobert brings to the table are significant, the Jazz are currently ranked 5th in the league in that category.

What may be an even bigger boon for the Utah Jazz is not just that Gobert is developing into a top tier talent, but the fact that they might now have their center moving forward to pair with Derrick Favors. When isolating for a minimum of 100 minutes played together, the two man lineup of Favors-Kanter has a defensive rating of 114.1 in 609 minutes — that is highest on the team. Conversely, the two man lineup of Favors-Gobert has a team best defensive rating of 96.4 in 187 minutes. You can definitely point to a number of factors that make this lineup look better, one being the limited amount of time played together in comparison, but the numbers don’t lie. Kanter brings more points, but they are getting eaten alive when coupling him with Favors on the defensive end. This isn’t just with Favors either, Gobert is the link within the system for the Jazz. Gobert is part of three of top five two man pairings for the Jazz in defensive rating. Looking at a larger sample size, the second best defensive rating pairing behind Favors-Gobert is Gobert-Ingles which has played 433 minutes with a rating of 96.7.

Gobert is only in his second year as a pro in the NBA. The young French national has plenty of time to get even better, which is a crazy prospect given that he has already used his natural length and inspired work ethic to move the top of list of best rim protectors in the league. And his quality extends beyond this season, SLC Dunk broke down a formula for delta defense which places Gobert among not just Jazz legends, but among some of the most revered names in the history of the league.

There seems to be no way that the Jazz would not want to extend his contract at this point, given the rising salary cap they should have plenty of room a year from now when they will start to enter that phase of negotiations with Gobert. His defense is already All-NBA and he has plenty of time to mature the offensive portion of his game. The Jazz have found a center capable of changing the game near the rim in a way that few other players in the league can and this will provide them options moving forward as they look to leap out of the lottery.