Rudy Gobert is the heavy favorite to win his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award at the end of this regular season, as he is anchoring the league’s best defense in Minnesota for one of the West’s top seeds.
While some have pointed to Victor Wembanyama’s outrageous block and steal totals and wondered if the Spurs star rookie should be in the mix, plenty have noted that the Spurs are still near the bottom of the NBA’s defensive ranks. That said, not everyone is on board with another Gobert DPOY, with Shaquille O’Neal laying out why he’s never been sold on Gobert being an elite level defender on The Big Podcast during the latest episode with Mario Chalmers.
At the 17:00 mark of the below video, they start discussing Gobert and Shaq’s big issue with the French big man is that his impact on that end comes mostly from his work as a help defender
“I never thought he was a great defensive player either,” Shaq said of Gobert. “See what it is is there’s not a lot of centers that are making him play defense. He not doing that sh** against Joker cause he’s got to be engaged, but when he goes against another guy – he’s 7’6! Of course if you lay it up he’s gonna block it, but defense to me is guard that motherf**ker and shut him down. You want to impress me? Hold Joker under 15 points. Now you’re playing defense. All that weakside, blocking shots, that’s cool, but it ain’t gonna work against guys like me, Joker, and Embiid. What he’s talking about with Bam is, Bam plays people. He plays the two, the three, the four, and the five. So, I would give it to him too.”
Now, there is an argument to be made that Gobert’s defense has never had the same impact in the postseason as it’s had in the regular season, but DPOY is still a regular season award. It’s also a bit funny to hammer Gobert for not stopping Jokic (who no one stops) and then shifting your praise to Bam Adebayo for guarding guys when…Jokic gave Bam fits in the Finals (again, because no one has an answer for him, not because Bam is not a great defender).
Having “stop Jokic” as your criteria for being a good defender is probably not fair, but there is certainly a fair way to question how valuable, exactly, Gobert’s defensive impact is to winning come playoff time. Adebayo’s versatility has certainly lent itself to being more effective in the postseason in years past, but as we always have to remind folks at this time of year, awards are about the regular season and you can’t project about playoff performance (as we learned last year with Jokic finally winning his first title).
It’s especially funny to hear Shaq call for someone else to be DPOY over Gobert when one of Gobert’s most vocal critics, Draymond Green, stumped for Gobert this year when discussing Wembanyama’s candidacy.
