It’s Taken Years for Rudy Gobert to Make His Case as the NBA’s Best Center

NEW YORK — Rudy Gobert will tell you he’s the NBA’s best center right now. His coach won’t disagree.

But before he became an All-Star hopeful and the literal center of one of the league’s sneaky contenders, Gobert was just a 21-year-old French kid trying to learn the NBA. He played in 45 games as a rookie—barely more than half the year—and had to find other ways to progress. 

Defense came easy. His skyscraper height (7’1″) and Mr. Fantastic-like reach (7’8 ½”, the longest wingspan at the NBA Draft Combine) make him impossible to shoot over. His bouncy feet make him hard to circumvent.

But Gobert just couldn’t figure out how to harness all those tools into a steady offensive game. He’d bail out of screens too early or flash to the paint too late. His rail-thin frame prevented him from maintaining strong position in the paint. His wretched foul shooting (under 60 percent for his career entering this season) made him timid while attacking the hoop.

So he began by studying film with Alex Jensen, a Utah Jazz assistant coach. 

“To make everything habitual and instinctive, that takes time,” Jensen told Bleacher Report. “It doesn’t happen overnight.”

First, Gobert had to get stronger. Then he had to learn the nuances of screen-and-rolls—when to hold the pick, how to slip if the ball-handler was blitzed, to stop dribbling every time he caught the ball.

Learn he did.

Gobert has always been a defensive star (2.0 blocks per game for his career), but now, at 24 and in his fourth NBA season, his offensive repertoire has nearly caught up. He’s averaging a career-high 12.4 points, leading the league both in field-goal and true shooting percentage, according to Basketball-Reference.

“I think he’s just more balanced around the rim, he’s catching the ball better,” Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said recently in New York. “It’s taking him less time between the catch and the shot, I think he has a better feel for where he is on the floor.”

Suddenly, Gobert has evolved into an absolute monster, a player who can impose his will in myriad ways. Never in the 40-plus years that the statistic has been recorded has a player lead the league in both offensive and defensive rating (a metric created by statistician Dean Oliver which takes into account the amount of points per possession a player is worth).

Gobert, according to Basketball Reference, currently ranks No. 1 in both.

“He’s taking our offense”—which is 10th …

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