Hassan Whiteside or Rudy Gobert: Which Young Big Would You Rather Build Around?
It's a question as old as, well, a newborn baby: Who is the better NBA building block, Hassan Whiteside or Rudy Gobert?
A few months ago, this wouldn't have been a topic of discussion. Gobert was a 22-year-old giant receiving spot minutes for the Utah Jazz. He was just another prong in their packed frontcourt. Whiteside was a 25-year-old struggling to stay in the league, having not logged a second of regular-season action since the 2011-12 campaign.
Both are now full-time starters in promising situations. Whiteside is looking to spearhead a playoff berth with the Miami Heat; Gobert is headlining a midseason phenomenon in Utah.
Neither is supposed to have come this far this soon, or, for that matter, at all. But with both defying timetables and quickly rising up the league's ranks, the question at hand is not just fair. It's imperative.
Rudy Gobert: A Defensive Foundation
Of the two, Gobert's ascension is more predictable, if only because he's a first-round pick and therefore held to higher standards by default. But no one saw this type of climb coming.
Not even the Jazz.
“We thought he would be a good player, but we didn’t know it would happen this soon, to this degree,” Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey told the Deseret News' Brad Rock. “No one had a crystal ball to say this is what he’s going to do in his second year.”
Or even at all.
Entering his rookie season, Gobert was touted for his physical tools more than any one thing he could actually do. You heard about his size (7'1", 245 lbs), his length and the ground he could cover, but not about the pro talents he compared to or the numbers he could put up.
That he's already carving out a niche for himself is astounding.
Modest averages of 7.6 points, nine rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game do nothing to accurately rationalize the leaps Gobert is making on a nightly basis. Rookie head coach Quin Snyder permanently inserted him into the starting lineup just after the Feb. 19 trade deadline, and since then, he's averaging an unbelievable 10.0 points, 14.2 rebounds and 2.8 blocks.
Through those 17 games, the Jazz have the league's third-best record (12-5) to go along with a top-three net rating. They also lead all teams in points allowed per 100 possessions, fielding a defense better than that of the Golden State Warriors. And it's not even close:
Nothing about the timing of Utah's surge is coincidental. Gobert is at the center of its midseason turnaround.
Offensively, he can be a nonentity. The Jazz don't go to him in the post often, and when they do, he ranks in the 16th percentile of points scored per possession.
Though he's more devastating as a pick-and-roll finisher—he ranks in the 80th percentile of points scored per possession—his range is limited. He's wildly inefficient beyond three feet and has yet to make a shot outside the paint.
That rawness is overshadowed by his ridiculous chops on the defensive end. Gobert isn't just 7'1" worth of intangibles that have helped fuel the Jazz's defensive reinvention. His impact is measurable.
Opponents are shooting under 40 percent at the rim when having their shot contested by him, a level of deterrence that ranks first among all players to defend at least five point-blank opportunities per game.
Away from the rim, he's just as effective, disrupting shots anywhere and everywhere, noticeably altering the field-goal percentages of those he's pestering:
The frequency with which he's blocking shots is even more absurd. He sends backs 7.4 percent of everything he faces, the second-best mark this season. It's also the fourth-best block rate in league history among every player, age 22 or younger, to log at least 1,400 total minutes.
What Gobert has given Utah cannot be overstated. It's the means to build, and then sustain, a top-tier defensive attack.
There are obvious obstacles to rounding out a middle-rung offense with Gobert dependent on putbacks and looks at the rim, but few players can do just about everything on the defensive end. He is basically the Draymond Green of 7-footers.
Gobert won't step out on the perimeter and guard point guards, but he rotates anywhere inside the arc, dissuading penetration and ruining successful dribble drives with his long arms and deceptively quick, 360-degree movements.
Tethering futures to will-be perennial NBA Defensive Player of the Year candidates like Gobert is seldom a lost cause—something the Jazz are finding out now, as they keep pace with even the most feared of Western Conference contenders.
Hassan Whiteside: Unexpected Savior
Whiteside's emergence is more complicated than Gobert's, in that it was totally unpredictable.
Drafted 33rd overall in 2010, he flamed out with the Sacramento Kings, and the Memphis Grizzlies waived him this season. No one team has been waiting for him to develop over the years. He was out of the NBA, an afterthought, another second-round footnote who possessed athleticism without fundamental skills.
His ensuing dominance was so unexpected, critics devoted a large portion of his breakout campaign to predicting its premature end. They were waiting for him to stop, for him to cool off.
Instead, he has kept going and going, the only trace of a setback being his short fuse and propensity to pick up ill-advised fouls. He's been so good, so potent, that the underlying storyline has shifted from unwavering disbelief to sheer curiosity.
How in the heck was he out of the NBA this long?
"Hassan Whiteside's exile doesn't make any sort of sense, but his dominance sure does," wrote Deadspin's Tom Ley. "He plays the obvious, forceful version of center you can't fake—not a stiff or a plodder on a nonsense hot streak; he's a massive, athletic, and skilled 7-footer who people want to fight because he dunks on them too much."
Like Gobert, Whiteside is predominantly valued for his shot-blocking and glass-crashing. He has the second-highest block rate of any player to send back at least 100 shots through his first three seasons and remains on pace to post the fifth-highest single-season rebounding percentage of anyone to bring down at least 250 boards.
Miami's offensive model has also allowed him to add some polish to pick-and-roll and post-up sets. He ranks in the 97th percentile of pick-and-roll points scored per possession and cracks the 70th percentile as a back-to-the-basket scorer.
This elevated involvement has him contributing everywhere, averaging 11.2 points, 9.8 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game. The Heat offense is pumping in far more points with him on the floor (since he entered the starting five on Jan. 14), and his ability to collapse defenses has helped open things up for everyone else.
Chris Bosh's field-goal percentages skyrocketed while playing with Whiteside prior to going down, and the three-man combination of Wade, Bosh and Whiteside was outscoring opponents by 20.7 points per 100 possessions before injuries hit.
But Whiteside hasn't incited profound defensive change. The Heat are a defensive minus when he plays, despite him adequately hassling shot-takers:
What remains to be seen is whether Whiteside can sustain this level of play—monstrous 26.3 player efficiency rating and all—on a better version of the Heat. They're playing sub-.500 basketball since he entered the starting lineup, and he still hasn't put together a long string of games in which he logs more than 30 minutes.
Still, those red flags are no match for all he's doing. The Heat have themselves an interior building block with two-way tools.
The Pick
As of now, Whiteside is the better player, because he's more well-rounded, able to make an impact beyond that of a defensive specialist.
But Gobert is the better building block.
At 22, he is only just scratching the surface of what he's capable of. More importantly, he's already doing what Whiteside is not: serving as a fulcrum of a really good basketball team.
Yes, the Heat have a better record. But the Jazz have been one of the NBA's best squads this side of the trade deadline, and Gobert is helping them become elite in at least one area—the more important area (defense)—making him universally useful.
Offenses aren't typically tailored to traditional power forwards and centers anymore. Low-post scoring is an ancillary weapon used to complement the talent of point guards and wingmen. Of the league's top 10 scoring attacks, only one (New Orleans Pelicans) caters to a big man, and that big man (Anthony Davis) is hardly traditional.
Sample size matters, too. Gobert has nearly doubled Whiteside's minutes, and his .203 win shares per 48 minutes put him in historic company.
Over the last 10 seasons, only eight other players, age 22 or younger, have cleared that benchmark while also playing at least 1,500 total minutes. The list is important, because it's filled with only guys who are or were superstars: Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, James Harden, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Amar'e Stoudemire, Kevin Love and Derrick Rose.
Indeed, Gobert looks like the bigger offensive project. But the returns he's yielding, relative to the minutes he's playing, are already exceeding those of Whiteside.
Imagine where he'll be two, three and even five years down the line.
Better yet, imagine where the Jazz will be because of him.
*Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com and are accurate leading into games on March 24 unless otherwise cited.
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