Who’s going to win (lose?) the Rudy Gobert trade extravaganza?

Honestly, I can’t think of a player more apt to be traded for Gobert than Vuc. They rank slightly above “Meh” on the fan enthusiasm scale, and their impact on the game never lives up to what’s promised.

Sure, there are stints when Gobert is turning away shots and making opposing guards and small forwards think about how they want to go about attacking the rim. That wears off quicker than the taste of Bubble Yum, though, and the Jazz are left trying to figure out why they’re paying a center more than Joel Embiid when he’s a complementary player on offense.

The Bulls are a creative, Bam Adebayo-type big man away from having a versatile starting five that could score on one end and switch on the other. Gobert is a regression to a prehistoric play style that they finally crawled out of last year, and one they should leave on the shelf next to the Triangle.

This is interesting to me because I trust Masai Ujiri and Nick Nurse, but I don’t understand how the Frenchman fits into the team. They’d have to give up Pascal Siakam to bring in Rudy as their cap situation isn’t ideal. Maybe Gobert makes it easier to hide Fred VanVleet. However, as we’ve seen time and again in the postseason, teams are going to have to hide (or sit) Rudy at some point, so it doesn’t really solve a problem as much as it shifts it around.

I’m also anti anything that has even a minute chance of hindering the development of Scottie Barnes. He’s a player whose most effective area happens to be the one that Gobert often occupies. The only reason the Raptors aren’t dead last on this list is because I trust management and the coaching staff — and perhaps they think it’ll be easier to get off Gobert’s contract than Siakam’s deal.

Is Mark Cuban trying to build an updated version of the 2010-11 Mavericks? Surrounding the franchise cornerstone with a ton of good to great role players only works if the opposition has an existential meltdown in the Finals. Luka Dončić is insanely talented enough to carry a team to a title, so it’s a somewhat reasonable approach even if it’s outdated.

The issue is the team that showed Dallas the door these past playoffs — Golden State — takes pleasure in gutting Gobert, and it’s hard to see how that’d be any different. To me, Luka is the closest facsimile to LeBron James in the league, and the best way to maximize a player of that caliber is with a No. 2 who can do the your-turn-my-turn dance and a bunch of 3-and-D glues guys who can space the floor and knockdown open jumpers. Rudy fills neither of those needs, and the Mavs were a top five defensive team last year without him.

I thought about going with a paragraph of 🙃 emojis here because Charlotte’s offseasons feel like when you get to a restaurant after they’ve already sold out of all the good dishes and are left settling for an overpriced piece of fish that’ll upset your stomach about 15 minutes after you get home.

I’m not going to do that because Gordon Hayward only makes $8 million less than Gobert, and if you’ve already got that sunken cost on your roster, why not try to flip him for a guy who actually plays and could improve an extremely problematic defense. It’s not like LaMelo Ball cares who’s on the other end of his lobs as long as they’re highlights. And the Hornets are happy just making the playoffs, so if that’s the standard for success, Gobert can help them get there.

Atlanta didn’t play the same defense without Clint Capela in the middle, and Gobert is essentially a higher grade version of Capela. The Jazz hasn’t had any perimeter defenders for a few years, so the job responsibilities would be similar in Atlanta. There also would be more lob opportunities for Rudy given Trae Young’s vision and love of tossing alley-oops.

This is the trade that’s most beneficial for both parties as the Hawks have a plethora of movable contracts and desirable assets as well as a need for a defensive insurance policy. That doesn’t mean teams aren’t going to have a field day trying to figure out which liability they want to prey on between Gobert and Young in the playoffs.

And that’s really the rub with all of this. Gobert isn’t going to destroy a season with midrange jumpers like Russell Westbrook. He’s going to do his job as best he can, which will get a franchise to the playoffs season after season, and that’s great until it’s not.