Rare is a first-ballot Hall of Famer as polarizing to the masses as Rudy Gobert.

The online discourse surrounding Gobert has always been befuddling, and even players believe he's overrated. (General managers are a bit more appreciative of his impact; he finished second in both the "best defender" and "best interior defender" categories last season in the annual preseason survey.)

Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch revived the conversation surrounding Gobert and the Hall of Fame with a passing comment during his appearance on the "Road Trippin' Show" with Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye that recently aired. And Finch is absolutely correct: the Hall of Fame case is not even debatable. Rudy Gobert will make it to Springfield in the year that he becomes eligible.

The case for Rudy Gobert's first-ballot HOF bid

Unequivocally, there has never been a player with the accolades that Gobert has accumulated who has not made the Hall, and Rudy likely has several years remaining in his career.

Award collection

This is the easy one.

Only three players have ever won the Defensive Player of the Year award four times: Gobert, Dikembe Mutombo, and Ben Wallace. Mutombo and Wallace are both in the Hall of Fame.

Mutombo and Wallace each made an NBA All-Defensive team six times. Gobert has already made nine All-Defensive teams— and eight of them have been on the first team.

The All-NBA nods are comparable: Mutombo made just three All-NBA teams, Wallace made five, and Gobert has been named to an All-NBA squad four times. Gobert has been an All-Star three times; Wallace was a four-time All-Star and Mutombo racked up eight appearances. Gobert has also won one block title and one total rebounding title; Mutombo had three and two, respectively, and Wallace had one and two.

Moral of the story: Gobert has the hardware to be in the Hall of Fame.

The individual stats

Let's start by acknowledging that there is no perfect advanced metric. There are plenty of useful "catch-all" stats that do a good job of approximating individual player value, and they're best used in context.

The other thing they can do, though, is illustrate the waters in which a certain player is swimming—and Basketball-Reference's Win Shares make it crystal clear that Gobert is swimming in the pristine waters of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Of the top 50 players in career Win Shares in the NBA, 49 of them are either in the Hall of Fame or will be there when they retire. Shawn Marion, at No. 46, is the only former player not in the Hall.

Rudy Gobert sits at No. 47, and given relative health, should rise several spots this season, passing Marion and Hall of Famers Scottie Pippen, Vince Carter, Patrick Ewing and Steve Nash. (The current active players ahead of Gobert in Win Shares? LeBron James, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, Jimmy Butler, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.)

And perhaps this illustrates the point when it comes to Win Shares: I'm not making the case that Gobert is better than Pippen. Not at all. But Win Shares is a catch-all statistic that shows that Gobert is in the same conversation as Pippen, Carter, Ewing and Nash—the Hall of Fame conversation.

For what it's worth, the other four-time DPOYs, Mutombo and Wallace, are No. 59 and No. 110, respectively, in career Win Shares.

If you're more of a traditionalist and are interested in counting stats like blocks and rebounds, Gobert looks good there, too. He's currently No. 24 in career blocks. Thirteen of the 23 players ahead of him are in the Hall of Fame, and two are active (Brook Lopez and Anthony Davis). He'll surely end up in the top 15, and possibly higher. Gobert is also No. 26 in defensive rebounds, and 18 of the players in front of him are either in the Hall of Fame or definitely will be in the Hall (LeBron James and Kevin Durant).

Impact on team success

In 10 out of the last 11 seasons, Rudy Gobert has anchored a top-10 defensive unit —a staggering statistic. Mutombo was on a top-10 defense just nine times in his first 15 seasons before his late-career Rockets teams were in the top-10 of the league every year from 2004 to 2009. Wallace did it nine times in his career spanning 16 seasons.

Of course, Wallace won a title with Detroit, and Mutombo played in two NBA Finals, losing both. But Gobert not only made the playoffs in his first two seasons in the rotation in Utah, but he has been to the postseason in each of the last 10 seasons.

While Gobert has always been the best defensive player on every team he's been on, he's obviously never been a leading scorer (just like Mutombo and Wallace). But Gobert was second in scoring on the 50-win Jazz team in 2018-19 and fourth in scoring on the No. 3 offense in the league in 2020-21 and the No. 1 offense in 2021-22 while making the All-Star team and being named All-NBA Third Team.

Verdict: Rudy Gobert is a slam dunk first-ballot Hall of Famer

There is absolutely no doubt that Gobert will be named a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as soon as he is eligible.

Simply put, there is no precedent for a player with Gobert's accolades and impact who has not been inducted into Springfield. Still, the Win Shares metric is perhaps the most clear: of the 47 players ahead of Gobert in Win Shares, only one player will not be in the Hall of Fame. Players that reach that level of impact get enshrined, full stop.

So, to the head-in-the-sand detractors: it's time to go find another punching bag. Gobert will be in the Hall of Fame.

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