Who is the most important player on the Utah Jazz?

The case for Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert

Frankly, the case for Gobert is pretty simple: virtually every advanced metric pegs him as the most important player on the Jazz.

He paces the club in Win Shares (WS) in 2021-22 so far at 1.7. He’s atop the Jazz leaderboard in Box Plus/Minus (BPM) at 5.2. He also leads in Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) at 0.5.

In case you think this is an example of small sample theater, the numbers told the same story in 2020-21. His 11.3 WS led the Utah Jazz by a considerable margin. His 4.5 BPM narrowly edged out Mike Conley’s 4.4. Finally, his VORP of 3.6 was (you guessed it) the highest mark on the team.

None of which should be particularly surprising. Gobert’s presence as a rim protector fundamentally alters opposing teams’ strategies in a way that no other skill possessed by any other Jazzman can. The paint becomes a no fly zone when Gobert is in the middle of it. He effectively removes the best shot in basketball from any team’s diet, which frequently leads to more general offensive breakdowns.

On the offensive end, Gobert is obviously not a featured weapon, but his combination of vertical spacing and elite screen setting is still essential to the Jazz’s plan of attack. It’s a little early in the 2021-22 season to factor Offensive Rating prominently into our equation, but it’s worth noting that Gobert actually led all Jazz starters in that category in 2020-21 at 131.

That’s not to say that Gobert was the Jazz’s most important offensive player. He’s a complimentary piece on that end: an NBA offense built around him would be built to suffer. Still, as far as two-way impact goes, the numbers make a strong case for Rudy Gobert as the most important player on the Utah Jazz.