Minnesota Timberwolves star Rudy Gobert knows a thing or two about defending, so during a recent interview with House of Highlights, he was asked to pick between some of the greatest defenders of all time. Gobert had some difficult choices to make, to say the least.
Interviewer: “Which defender ranks higher all time? Scottie Pippen or Kawhi Leonard.”
Rudy Gobert: “Oooh. I got to watch Kawhi more. I got to play against him, so I will say two different eras. But I would go Kawhi.”
Interviewer: “Next we got Draymond Green vs. Dennis Rodman.”
Rudy Gobert: “It’s tough, man. Two different eras. I got to watch Draymond more. I’ll say it’s a tie. I’ll vote for a tie.”
Interviewer: “LeBron (James) or Michael Jordan.”
Rudy Gobert: “I’ll go with MJ.”
Interviewer: “Alright last up. We got Bill Russell or (Shaquille O’Neal).”
Rudy Gobert: “I’ll go Bill Russell.”
I would say Gobert made some solid picks here. Let’s look at each case one by one.
We start off with Kawhi Leonard and Scottie Pippen. Leonard has won two Defensive Player of the Year awards and led the league in steals once. He has also made the NBA All-Defensive First Team three times and the Second Team four times.
Pippen surprisingly never won DPOY but did lead the league in steals once. He made the NBA All-Defensive First Team eight times and the Second Team two times.
I thought this was the hardest pick Gobert had to make. You can make strong cases for both, but Pippen never winning DPOY means Leonard gets the edge for me as well.
Draymond Green vs. Dennis Rodman was next and Gobert surprisingly went with a tie. You’d have thought the 32-year-old’s rivalry with Green would make Rodman his pick, but that wasn’t the case.
As for their resumes, Green has won DPOY once and led the league in steals once as well. He has made the All-Defensive First and Second Team four times each. Rodman, meanwhile, won DPOY twice and has seven rebounding titles to his name. He made the All-Defensive First Team on seven occasions and the Second Team twice. It’s close between these two, but I would go with Rodman here.
Gobert then had to pick between LeBron James and Michael Jordan and went with the latter without much hesitation. Jordan won DPOY once and led the league in steals thrice. He made the All-Defensive First Team nine times, which is tied for the most in NBA history.
As for LeBron, DPOY is the only big accolade missing from his resume and he has never led the league in any defensive category either. He did make the All-Defensive First Team five times and the Second Team once, so he was no slouch on defense at his peak. Jordan does get the better of him here but.
Lastly, we get to Shaquille O’Neal and Bill Russell. While one might think Gobert went with Russell because of his rivalry with O’Neal, that’s not really the case. The Boston Celtics icon is the pretty obvious pick.
O’Neal was a good but not great defender. He never made the All-Defensive First Team and made the Second Team just three times. Russell, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the greatest defensive players of all time and the only reason he didn’t win DPOY was because the award didn’t exist during his playing career.
The NBA also only introduced the All-Defensive teams in 1968-69, which was Russell’s final season in the league. He unsurprisingly made the First Team that year and would have made it so many times more, had it been introduced a decade earlier.
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