Utah Jazz big man Rudy Gobert was epic in his team’s big Christmas Day win over the Portland Trail Blazers.
There were a lot of heroes in the Utah Jazz’s 16-point Christmas Day win over the Portland Trail Blazers. Led by Donovan Mitchell‘s 19 points, seven different players hit double figures for the home team. And Derrick Favors, who scored just seven points, added 10 big boards and showed out defensively.
But no Jazzman was as good as Rudy Gobert, who was rocking around that Christmas Tree harder than Brenda Lee.
Gobert finished with 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting in the game and added 14 points, SEVEN blocked shots and a steal to lead Utah to its third win in four tries. Clearly, that’s a great line; more than that, though, it was a level of individual performance that’s rare in the Association.
Over the last five years, only four players have matched or exceeded that 18-14-7-1 line league-wide. Since the year 2000, only 20 such performances have been registered overall. No Jazzman has done it since Andrei Kirilenko put up a 21-16-8-2 spot (with three dimes for good measure) against the Blazers in December of ’05.
In a word, Gobert was epic.
📹| Rudy had himself a NIGHT 🌌
— Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) December 26, 2018
18p | 14r | 7b | 1s 👀 https://t.co/dMBA6k4uwy
Really, he’s been great all season long, averaging nearly 15 points per game and leading the league in field goal percentage at 65.1 percent. He’s also eighth overall in rebounding (12.3 RPG), fifth in blocks (2.1 BPG), second in individual offensive rating (129.6) and eighth in individual defensive rating (100.9).
That’s All-Star stuff, folks.
So, given what he’s done, was Tuesday’s showing the exclamation point in a winning case for Gobert to snag that elusive first All-Star nod?
It’s hard to say, because competition in the West is stiffer than ever.
LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis are likely shoe-ins to snag the three starting frontcourt spots. That leaves Gobert to duke it out with Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns, Paul George, Marc Gasol, LaMarcus Aldridge, Draymond Green, Steven Adams, Danilo Gallinari, Luka Doncic and Clint Capela for a spot in the current frontcourt-backcourt selection format.
On varying levels, all those players can make a case for consideration.
For the Stifle Tower to secure selection, not only will he have to continue to own the court on both sides of the floor, but his team will have to keep winning as well. Of the group of players he’s contending with, only Doncic and Towns play for teams that currently have a worse record than the Jazz.
And we all know that team performance looms large in the All-Star vote.
Regardless of whether or not Gobert gets in, though, there’s no denying that he’s a top 20 player in the Association (at worst). And if he misses out, Jazz fans can rest easy knowing that the snub will fan his flame the rest of the season.