In Defense of
Rudy Gobert
Four DPOYs. Nine All-Defense teams. Can't make a free throw. Still wins you the game. A case file for the most simultaneously overrated and underrated player in basketball.
The 2-Point Game
April 21, 2025. Ball Arena. Game 2, Nuggets up 1-0. Rudy Gobert plays 27 minutes and scores two points. He finishes 1-of-4 from the field, 0-of-2 from the line, and -4 for the night. You could show that stat line to a stranger and convince them he was the worst player on the court.
The three-time MVP went one-for-eight in his individual matchup with Gobert. He'd just scored 14 points in the last seven minutes of the third quarter against Naz Reid and Julius Randle while Rudy sat in foul trouble. Before the fourth, Anthony Edwards pulled Gobert aside and told him: no double, guard Jokić one-on-one, don't foul. He did. The Wolves won by five.
The Résumé
Let's handle the accolades before the vibes. Four Defensive Player of the Year awards is the most in NBA history. It is a club of three. The other two are Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace. That's the whole list.
The One Chart Shaq Doesn't Want You to See
This is a team's defensive rating with Rudy on the floor versus off it, every season of his career. The gap between the two lines is his gravity. It has been negative every single year for thirteen seasons straight. The 2020-21 Jazz were +12.1 points per 100 better when he played. The 2024-25 Wolves were second in the league with him on the floor and dead last without him.
The Peak
Defensive metrics famously disagree with each other. They did not disagree in 2020-21. That season, every major defensive impact metric — RAPTOR, RPM, D-EPM, D-LEBRON — ranked Rudy Gobert as the best defender in its entire historical sample. Not the season. The sample. The youngest sample starts in 1977.
The pick-and-roll screener numbers that year: 0.85 points per chance. Lowest of any center with 300+ plays. Closeouts: 0.87 per chance. Lowest of any center with 150+ closeouts. Post-ups: 0.64 per chance. Second-lowest, period. There was no style of defense he wasn't best-in-league at.
The Rim
Deterrence is the thing we can't measure — the shots opponents don't take because they see him standing there. What can be measured is what happens to the shots that do get taken. Answer: they miss.
Pick Your Final Boss
Four different archetypes of offensive nightmare. Four different tests. The record is mixed. The reputation is unearned.
Three MVPs. The best offensive big man who's ever lived. Allegedly 1-for-8 from the field when Rudy is the closest defender in Game 2 of the 2025 first round — the lowest field goal percentage of any single-defender playoff matchup in Jokić's career. When Rudy went to the bench in the third quarter, Jokić scored 14 points in seven minutes. When Rudy came back in the fourth, Jokić scored 2.
The only other modern center who combines size, skill, and a willingness to dunk you into the floorboards. They've met ten times. Embiid averages 28 and 11 against him, which is a lot, and also somehow his below-career scoring average for the last five seasons. They've never met in the playoffs, because Embiid's teams keep not getting there.
Seven-foot, mid-range jumper, face-up game, and a slasher's athleticism. The closest thing to a physical cheat code in the modern era. Rudy has a winning record against him across 24 games. AD still scores — of course he scores — but he rebounds nearly a full board fewer than the guy guarding him. Which is the point.
May 24, 2024. Western Conference Finals Game 2. Three seconds on the clock. A Dereck Lively screen forces the switch Luka has been hunting all series. Rudy recovers, contests, gets thrown against the grain of his own scouting report — and Luka buries a stepback three. One play. One series. One decade of "Gobert can't switch" takes launched from the aftermath. The box score says Rudy was toast. The film says he denied the drive, forced a contested low-value shot, and lost to a legendary make. Both things can be true. Only one of them ever gets said.
The Receipts
A non-exhaustive list of high-profile disrespect, paired with what actually happened next. We're not going to litigate all of it. Just the funny parts.
The Verdict
Some of it is fair. Rudy Gobert is a bad free-throw shooter, cannot create offense, and has been a footnote in two or three playoff series where he probably deserved to be a chapter. He will not win you a series by himself. He has never pretended he could.
What he does is simpler. He turns the middle of the floor into a place opponents don't want to be, and he has done it at the highest level in basketball for twelve straight seasons. His teams defend better when he plays. All of them. Every year. Without exception. The one advanced metric that never goes negative on him is the one that matters most: the score.
He is not Wemby. He is not prime Hakeem. He is not even the best defender in the league right now. But he is inside a building that only holds about ten players in the history of the sport, and the door is locked from the inside.
Rudy Gobert: simultaneously overrated and underrated.
Offensively, a traffic cone.
Defensively, a small war crime.
The stat sheet has been lying to you for a decade.