NBA: Utah Jazz’s decision on Rudy Gobert could shape future of the center position

The NBA will be shaped by what happens with Rudy Gobert

Rudy Gobert is one of the best centers in the NBA, I’m not breaking any ground saying that.

He’s a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, three-time All-Defensive team recipient, his Utah Jazz teams have been in the top-10 in the league in terms of points allowed per 100 possessions for four years now and he owns possibly two of the greatest nicknames of all time: The French Rejection and The Stifle Tower.

This season, Utah as a team slipped to ninth in defense when using Cleaning the Glass’s filter but Rudy still forced opponents to shoot worse when he was on the court and even forced opponents to shoot 4.3 percent fewer shots at the rim.

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Because of his defensive accolades and his All-NBA selection last season, The French Rejection is eligible for the Designated Veteran Player Extension (Supermax contract) this offseason which would let the Jazz offer him an extension beginning in the 2022-23 season that would pay him 35 percent of the team’s salary cap.

We don’t know how the COVID-19 pandemic has and will affect team salaries yet but using numbers from before the virus, Gobert could make somewhere in the neighborhood of $260 million-plus across five years.

Should the Utah Jazz do it?

Gobert is currently 27 years old and this era of Jazz basketball hasn’t gotten past the second round of playoffs. Utah has a collective 2-12 record against Houston and Golden State in the past three playoff attempts. Losing a critical piece in Bojan Bogdanovic doesn’t help their chances this season either.

While not everyone can be as lucky as Portland last season and waltz to the Western Conference Finals without facing one of Golden State or Houston, the Jazz has clearly struggled against the West’s top tier of teams.

And if you’re Dennis Lindsey and Justin Zanik in Utah’s front office, you need to seriously consider whether it’s worth committing this much money to Gobert.

But what does that mean for players like Gobert? Ground-bound centers whose job it is to play defense, set screens, and score around the rim.

At this year’s trade deadline, we saw Andre Drummond get traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Brandon Knight, John Henson, a 2023 second-round pick, and a year’s supply of high-fives. Drummond was, in theory, the Piston’s best player, a walking double-double, four-time single-season rebounding leader and only 26 years old, why didn’t Detroit get more value in return?

Well when you look at the top teams in the league, what do their big men do?

The Bucks are title favorites and play Brook Lopez, a 7-footer, who took just under five 3’s per game this year or Giannis Antetokounmpo who… well, we all know what he does.

Houston doubled down on their small ball tactic this trade deadline, moving on from Clint Capela and surrounding the 6-foot-5 PJ Tucker with wings and guards. On offense, they either play 5-out or if you had to name one, Russell Westbrook as the nominal “center,” a player who does most of his scoring around the rim.

Then there’s the Warriors, the team that might’ve started this new-age center stuff by closing games with the Death Lineup of Draymond Green at the 5.

These teams get away with it too as Draymond, Tucker and the Bucks are all great players and teams in their own right.

When they’re at the 5, we’re seeing the continued ripple of the Pero Antic splash in a 2014 first-round matchup between the Hawks and Pacers.

Antic, a 31-year-old Macedonian rookie who was starting in place of the injured Al Horford, stood behind the perimeter and forced Indiana’s Roy Hibbert to guard him. This pulled Hibbert away from the rim, where he was most comfortable and had just made his mark on the league as a defensive-minded All-Star center.

The top-seeded Pacers ended up winning the series in seven games. Antic had only hit three triples on 25 attempts for the series, he played one more season and then left the NBA to play in Europe. He might’ve just changed the NBA forever though, what a mic drop.

From there, the Pacers went on to lose to LeBron James and the Heat in another tight series but Hibbert wouldn’t be the same. He spent one more season with the Pacers, put up similar counting stats but his defensive impact dropped off.

Opponents shot more at the rim and a few percentage points better when Hibbert was manning the middle according to Cleaning the Glass, and instead of deterring shots in the paint, he was a near-neutral factor, only forcing 0.9 percent less (-3.8 percent the season prior).

He also went from the 93rd percentile in on/off difference in 2013-14 with a +9.1 to the 43rd and -2.2 when on the court. From there, he went to the Lakers.

Hibbert is now 33 years old and last played for the Nuggets in the 2016-17 season. If Gobert is to sign a Supermax extension this offseason, he will be paid until he turns 33.

I should say that Gobert is much better than Hibbert, he is a more effective defender, he plays his role to perfection on offense and, of course, comes with those incredible nicknames.

Also, instead of being forced to adapt to Pero Antic in the middle of your career, Rudy has grown in the modern NBA and has faced the fastest and smallest teams in the league already, we know he can hang, but is he a regular-season darling?

The reigning NBA champions, the Toronto Raptors won with Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka in their big rotation; guys who are known to step out behind the arc on offense but are rim protectors on the defensive end, not a dynamo, futuristic small ball guy like PJ Tucker. Both those guys are at the end of big contracts but nowhere near the Supermax.

Boston let Al Horford walk in free agency after offering him less than the 76ers were willing to pay him. They used their space that offseason to sign point guard Kemba Walker, opting to fill the center rotation with cheaper options like Daniel Theis, Enes Kanter, and Robert Williams. Is anyone crying that they lost a starting center in Horford?

I believe this coming offseason can be an inflection point in the value of the center position, something we point to for years to come.

If the Jazz decides a Supermax extension is too steep for their traditional center, despite being one of the best in the league, what does that mean for the Andre Drummonds and Clint Capelas of the world? Can other teams point to Rudy not getting paid as much as possible as a reason for them to offer cheaper deals?

Would we see more teams look to invest their money elsewhere on the roster, hoping to fill the big man rotation with good-not-great guys like older Gasol/Ibaka or players under rookie or mid-level contracts like the Celtic’s Theis, Kanter, Robert Williams, and Vincent Poirier?

But Gobert isn’t the best offensive center, does this open the way for Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony-Towns to go to town on lesser big rotations in the league?

If Gobert does get paid, how do the Jazz go about building that team for the future? They exhausted almost all their assets in the Mike Conley trade, their core is on the wrong side of 30 outside of Gobert, and Mitchell and the Supermax wouldn’t help their free agency aspirations.

Let’s see if Rudy Gobert gets paid.