Post#73 » by Amare_1_Knicks » Mon Jan 4, 2021 6:19 pm
It’s always lowbrow when Shaq says/does stuff like this. Why’re you going at a guy that has nothing to you? Gobert has no doubt worked his butt off to get to the point where a team values him enough to pay him that much money, and have it be justifiable (whether one agrees with it or not). If Utah didn’t pay him that, another team would’ve paid him something similar, and considering how much he seems to impact the game on both ends and contribute to winning it makes sense for a team to want to lock up their big man spot with a player of his caliber.
Shaq always gets caught up on the numbers, but misses the intricacies to the game. He talks about “this guy needs to get 27/15,” but those are just numbers and don’t reflect any actual dominance/impact per se. KAT might put up better raw numbers than Gobert, but the last couple of years Gobert either has comparable or advanced/impact stats that outdo KAT’s; but from Shaq’s perspective, KAT getting paid a max/supermax deal would be justifiable.
Lastly, he mentioned Gobert being an 11PPG player, and while he was likely just being snide in his remark, it’s wholly inaccurate, nonetheless. Gobert the last couple of years has been averaging roughly 16/13/2 on 68%FG (17/14/2.5 per 36). He’s trying to make Gobert out to be some inconsequential role player and that just couldn’t be farther from the truth — he’s a high level game-changer on both ends.