SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz, it seems, got precisely what they needed when it came to this year’s NBA All-Star selections.
Gordon Hayward, their seventh-year forward, received the coveted opportunity to play in the All-Star Game, while Rudy Gobert, the fourth-year center whose career trajectory has taken an incredible upswing over the past two years, did not.
For the Jazz, it’s essentially a best-of-both-worlds situation, and here’s why.
Hayward, Utah’s leading scorer and best all-around player, was voted in by the coaches to be a reserve for the Western Conference All-Star squad that will face their Eastern Conference counterparts on Feb. 19 in New Orleans.
For a player averaging 21.8 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game like Hayward is, an All-Star bid seems like a no-brainer.
Still, for a guy who’s approaching free agency this summer, to be chosen for his first All-Star appearance should serve as one more reason why Hayward, when it’s all said and done, will wind up staying in Utah.
After all, there was some speculation that Hayward might be left off the All-Star squad again this year, perhaps giving credence to the theory that it’d be difficult for anybody from Utah, which hadn’t had an All-Star selection since 2011, to make the cut anymore.
Instead, Hayward did indeed earn the honor and will represent the Jazz in the All-Star Weekend’s annual grand finale next month.
And now he realizes that playing in Utah is not detrimental to receiving the kind of recognition that he has yearned for and, when it comes time for him to choose where he wants to continue his career, getting the All-Star nod might be one more factor in his decision to stay put.
The fact that the Jazz can pay him more money for more years than anybody else, along with the team’s resurgence as a factor in the Western Conference playoff race and the highly likable group of players and coaches they’ve assembled together, are likely the most important reasons Hayward might decide he wants to continue playing in Utah.
But finally getting to the All-Star Game for the first time certainly can’t hurt, either.
As for Gobert, whose superb performance this season would definitely warrant an All-Star selection of his own, being left off the team will only serve to further motivate the big Frenchman.
Even though his steady improvement on both ends of the court has been nothing short of incredible over the past two years, the All-Star snub, if you want to call it that, will simply enlarge that giant-sized chip that Gobert’s always had on his shoulder ever since being taken by the Denver Nuggets with the No. 27 selection in the 2013 NBA draft.
Why do you think Gobert wears jersey No. 27? To remind himself, and everyone else, that he was the 27th pick in the draft — and to prove to us all that for him to go that late in the draft was a huge mistake.
With the way he’s played and improved the past two seasons, nobody would argue with that assessment now.
It didn’t always look that way, of course. After being traded to the Jazz in a draft-day deal, Gobert spent some time playing for Utah’s D-League affiliate as recently as a couple of years ago.
But when the Jazz eventually decided to make Gobert their starting center ahead of lottery pick Enes Kanter, and subsequently shipped the disgruntled Kanter off to Oklahoma City in a February 2015 trade, Gobert’s career path has continued to be mighty darned impressive.
This season, he’s averaging 12.8 points, 12.6 rebounds and an NBA-best 2.6 blocked shots per game. Gobert ranks fifth in the league in rebounding, second in field goal percentage, and has the fourth-most double-doubles in the league — not bad for a guy who was once thought of as a long-term project.
But Gobert’s work ethic, determination and self-confidence has served him well, transforming him into one of the NBA’s best centers and arguably the best rim protector in the league today.
Little more than a week ago, he put up a 27-point/25-rebound performance in a win over Dallas, and he had a stretch of 30 consecutive games with at least 10 rebounds — a mark that only four other NBA players have achieved since the 1997-98 season.
Perhaps an All-Star selection would’ve made Gobert feel like he had indeed „arrived“ as an NBA star, that all his hard work had paid off and perhaps he could let up a little bit now.
But Utah coach Quin Snyder said he knows Gobert will definitely not back off. Instead, with Gobert’s „I’ll show you“ attitude fueled even further by this year’s All-Star snub, the Jazz coach is sure Gobert will handle the All-Star selection process in the most productive way possible by continuing to work his tail off in his unyielding quest to improve and keep proving the doubters wrong.
„I just control what I can control and keep getting better and make sure it’s not an option (to leave him off the All-Star team) in the future,“ Gobert said. „
That’s the kind of thing that probably will make me better. “
Wow, a Gobert who’s even better than this one? That’s gotta be a mighty scary predicament for NBA opponents.
