Three-Time? The Case For Gobert As DPOY

Gobert has had another excellent season protecting the paint for Utah. (Layne Murdoch Jr. via espn.com)

The regular season portion of the NBA Restart is over, and here come the playoffs, meaning NBA award season is here. All Jazz fans care to know is if Rudy Gobert — nicknamed “two-time” after his consecutive Defensive Player of the Year awards — will soon be called “three-time” by his teammates. Only Dwight Howard has won three straight DPOY awards, a feat Gobert hopes to match.

Many NBA reporters write end-of-year awards columns, detailing who they voted for (or who they would vote for). Unlike in previous seasons, Gobert didn’t appear as everyone’s favorite. This season’s popular choice is the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is also the frontrunner for league MVP. Reporters like Zach Lowe, Bill Simmons, Ben Golliver, Sam Amich and Colin Cowherd all voted for the “Greek Freak.” All of these writers had Gobert in the top three. The lone reporter who picked Gobert as this year’s winner was the Athletics’ John Hollinger.

“[Gobert] statistically and observationally was the best defensive player in the league, despite a weird midseason swoon in both effort and production,” Hollinger wrote in explaining his pick. “His dominating presence made it possible for the Jazz to play extremely small lineup groupings, often involving multiple suspect defenders, without suffering inside. The midseason burp likely makes this the worst of his past three defensive seasons overall, but it’s still better than anybody else’s.”

The “midseason swoon,” Hollinger mentioned was indeed very frustrating to watch, and might have had something to do with the now-public tension between Gobert and fellow Jazz All-Star Donovan Mitchell. Many of the voters spoke very highly of Gobert but if he comes in second, that slump might be what costs Gobert the award.

The past few seasons the Jazz ranked as one of the top defenses in the league. After last year’s playoff loss to the Rockets, Jazz management changed the complexion of the team by adding more offensively skilled players (like Bojan Bogdanović and Jordan Clarkson), even at the cost of the defense. They hoped that Gobert would hide the weakness on the defensive side of the ball.

Gobert did his best (beside the midseason swoon) and had the Jazz ranking 12th in the league on the defensive side of the ball. Antetokounmpo’s Bucks finished with the best defense in the league, but he had way more help on “D” than Gobert. The Bucks surrounded Giannis with players like Brook Lopez, Eric Bledsoe (All-Defensive team level defenders) and Kris Middleton, a two-time All-Star who is a solid wing defender. Gobert leading the Jazz to a top-15 level defense, with the personnel he had, was no easy feat.

The on/off numbers show how important he was to the Jazz defense. According to Cleaning the Glass the Jazz were a +13 with Gobert on the court. The Jazz were a better defensive rebounding team and blocked more shots with him on the court. The Jazz also held their opponent to eight fewer points per 100 possessions with Gobert in the game (per Basketball Reference).

ESPN’s Real Plus Minus, a stat that filters out the noise of who players share the court with, ranked Gobert as the number one defensive player by a mile. His DRPM was 5.07; the next closest is a 4.11. There isn’t that big of a gap between players anywhere on this list. He’s in a whole other tier than any other player, according to this metric.

In Lowe’s article, he called Gobert “a one-man defensive architecture.” Snyder built his whole defensive scheme around his All-Star center. In the NBA where smaller, quicker players seek out slower big men, Gobert has become someone that these type of players struggle to take advantage of. Lowe also wrote, “Gobert is a little faster and more comfortable scrambling with opposing ball handlers on the perimeter. One data point: Opponents averaged an embarrassing 0.688 points on 177 isolations against Gobert, the lowest figure in the league among all defenders who faced at least 100 isos, per Second Spectrum.” He can do it all and the stats show just how dominate he is.

Fellow Salt City Hoops writer Jake Lee tweeted out recently about Gobert’s defensive metrics compared to Anthony Davis (who is also a finalist of this award). Gobert’s dominance is pretty easy and amazing to see. 

The stats show how great he is defensively, but so does the eyeball test. Pick any game and watch how many times a player will drives to the hoop, only to see Gobert there and turn around and retreat. The main reason the Jazz are a good defensive team is Gobert. He continues to work and become a better player every year. We’ll find out soon if the voters will reward him for his dominance on the defensive side of the ball and name him the three-time Defensive Player of the Year.