Shaquille O'Neal vs. Rudy Gobert | Phil Jackson on Defending Shaq

It's FYF Sports, it's Lamont Wheat back, another podcast episode, man. Just thought I'd come in today, man, with a very interesting topic that I came across. And you know, here at FYF Sports, we love having these type of debate contentious arguments, past present debates. And we have one here for you guys today, with Shaq and Rudy Goldberg. Before we get started today, though, make sure you guys like, comment, and subscribe. Hit the notification bell if you haven't done so. Subscribe to our second channel, FYF Sports Live, where we're going to be doing our live weekend shows, our Sunday live specials, and then we do a lot of reruns throughout the duration of the week. So if you want to check out some of our older live streams, if you want to see that content, if there's something you think you might have missed, go tune in to FYF Sports Live for any live stream action that you want to check out from the past as well. But today, I think this is really one of the better player versus player arguments that I've seen come up. And so recently, the sentiment has been brought up, how would Rudy Goldberg hold up against Shaquille O'Neal of the past? Shaquille O'Neal, probably the most dominant force that we've seen in NBA history. I mean, he came in in, I think, 1992, dominated from year one all the way through his years with the Lakers. Obviously, really the only thing that slowed Shaq down was his athleticism and just staying in shape. Once he lost his fitness, he essentially lost what made him dominant. But still, nonetheless, he had a dominant run in NBA history, easily one of the greatest big men of all time, and just one of the best players of all time in general. And when we talk about today, in this era, a different style of play, a lot more finesse, a lot more shooting, right? The centers defend a lot differently because of how the game has changed with zones, a lot of high ball screens and things of that nature. But nonetheless, Rudy Goldberg is still one of the best defensive centers that we have in today's game. As of late, a player like Rudy Goldberg has been taking a lot of flack because his teams, especially ones he had in Utah, haven't had much success. And defensively, those teams have kind of flaunted a bit and flopped and flailed and just couldn't figure it out. I don't necessarily blame Rudy Goldberg, but there are a lot of casuals out there that expect Rudy Goldberg to be the Captain Sabre Ho for everything that went wrong for the Utah Jazz. We did a really good video about what truly went wrong with the Utah Jazz. You guys should go check that video out. But nonetheless, Rudy Goldberg, I think, is a three-time defensive player of the year. I mean, he's always in the top five in blocks categories. Just dominant. There's very few guys in the league where you can tell they have a joy for playing defense, and especially in a league where everyone wants to be the offensive star. Everyone wants to score points. Everyone is trying to find ways to rest on defense. This is why we see more and more zones where team defense is more heavily relied upon as opposed to individual man defense, which really nothing wrong with that. And I understand the sentiment with that strategy, but I think Rudy Goldberg is slighted to a certain degree. And so the contentious talking point came up, how would Rudy Goldberg hold up against Shaq? And Rudy Goldberg simply stated he would lock Shaq up. And he says, and then Shaq came back and said Goldberg could not guard him. Shaq went as far as saying that Rudy Goldberg, the first two, three minutes of the game, he would have close to 20 against a player like Rudy Goldberg. So before we give our thoughts on who we think would win in this particular battle, I want to hear from an actual coach, someone who's actually been there, done that. And I think the one person who can explain Shaq better than anybody is the guy that coached him by the name of Phil Jackson. So there was a podcast a while ago where Phil Jackson was asked about Shaquille O'Neal's dominance and how it actually changed the game into what we see now. And I think this definition and this explanation of Shaquille O'Neal gives us an answer to this particular question. Let's go ahead and get to that video. Kurt says Magic's the greatest Laker. Where do you place Shaq? Not just among great Lakers, but among great NBA players. Shaq had a dominance that changed the game. And in that era when the league was making adjustments in how they were going to allow defenses to happen, Shaq was the major component that allowed defenses to change. So that you could front and back a guy like Shaq now, you can play his own, basically. They just have a three-second lane violation, but you can play any defense you want. Before that, when Shaq was in the early stages of his career, it was difficult to defense against Shaq because you had to do it individually. You can come double-team, but you had to double-team in a certain way. And Shaq was a great passer out of the post. So he's a man that changed the game into what we have now, in this era we have now, which has really eliminated, I think, a lot of post play. Which is okay. I mean, you know, you should be able to play basketball however you want to play it. That's one of the reasons the game should be a good game. But Shaq's dominance changed the game. And when I looked at that opportunity to coach him, I was extremely excited because I'd never had a dominant center to coach in an offense that really had a system built around putting the ball in the post and really activating a center, allowing him to be the dominant playmaker in the game. If Shaq were to play today where there's only a few guys with talent who play with their back to the basket, how do you think he'd do? Well, he'd do great. I think it would change how people play. I mean, right now everybody's playing screen roll with three-point shooters sitting out in the wings, in the corners. If you had a player like Shaq, it would still be, he'd be putting the pressure on the defense to make them collapse, and he'd be the guy finding the players out in the corners or in the wings that are three-point shooters, and he wouldn't have to be playing as much screen roll. That's the way it would be going today. I really think that they wouldn't allow him to get to the paint and to the basket like they did back in the 90s. So say if Shaq were playing on the Lakers right now, guys like Steve Nash and Jody Meeks would be wide open for threes, and defenses would collapse, and Kobe's job would be easier. Is that what I'm hearing? That's it. So, why isn't that happening when Dwight Howard's standing there with his back to the basket at seven feet tall? Well, Mike D'Antoni has a different style of coaching the game, and that's his priority and that's the Laker management's choice as to how they want to, you know, what kind of coach they want to have. Mike's very attached to screen roll, with bigs rolling to the hoop and a stretch four popping for shots, and that's become his kind of calling card in the NBA, and it's been successful for him, but it doesn't really feature Dwight. And there we heard it right there. We just heard from Phil Jackson, 11-time NBA champion as a coach. To me, the best NBA coach of all time. He's had the opportunity to coach players like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, and he's had an opportunity to win at a high level with all of these players as well, and I like the honesty in the tape that Phil Jackson had. He was honest. He was honest about the fact that in the 90s, the way the rules were set up, the rules were set up with the illegal defense, it allowed a dominant player like Shaquille O'Neal to thrive in a lot of one-on-one matchups, which overpowered players individually. If we're talking about just a one-on-one matchup, so again, I don't want to argue, make this argument with Rudy Gobert versus Shaq with the understanding that Rudy Gobert has zone health. I think we're talking, if we're being fair, we're talking about how would Rudy Gobert fare against Shaq in the one-on-one situation. After listening to what Phil Jackson said about Shaquille O'Neal's dominance in the one-on-one situations, and we're talking about sheer dominance even against players like Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Dikembe Mutombo, I mean, you name any great center, defensively or offensively, however you want to put it, and they all got abused individually by Shaquille O'Neal. Now, again, Phil Jackson has admitted, with the rules changing, with zones into effect, if you want to skew the narrative of this argument and say that Rudy Gobert is going to have zone coverage helping him, that's going to change the game. Phil Jackson basically alluded to the fact that the zone wouldn't necessarily stop Shaq from being effective. He would become much more of a passing big, kicking it out, because his dominance as an ISO player would force teams to kind of collapse. Phil Jackson said that, this is one thing that I really never took note of, but Phil Jackson said Shaquille O'Neal was a great passer. So I feel like in this day and age, based on some of the things that Phil Jackson stated, Shaq would be dominant if he actually played in today's game in a different fashion, probably not with so many points as we saw him do individually in the 90s, but I think he would be able to dominate because of his presence. So I still think he would be a great scorer as far as dominance at the rim, but I think this error would help us. It would accentuate some of the other skills that he had, such as his passing, and we would see more kickouts, so more assists. So I think his assist numbers would be a bit more inflated in this era because of the kickouts, and we're in an era where there's better shooters. If you had Shaquille O'Neal in this era, what better way to support him by surrounding him with the best shooters you can find? I think you would really have a recipe for success there, but if you're talking about the head-to-head matchup with Rudy Gobert versus Shaq, how would Rudy Gobert fare if Shaq caught the ball on the low post? No help was able to come help, and he had to hold his own one-on-one against Shaquille O'Neal. I think we all know what the end result would be on a consistent basis. Could Rudy Gobert get a few stops here and there? Probably so, but I believe that if Rudy Gobert was consistently put in one-on-one situations against Shaquille O'Neal, I think Shaquille O'Neal's strength, and I think sometimes his sheer strength in dominant, overshadowed his footwork and finesse as well. Shaq had great touch at the rim, which is one of the reasons why he has such a high field goal percentage, and then he knew how to finish in traffic with power. Even if you were a barrier between him and the rim, he knew how to rise with aggressive fervor to destroy you and the rim along with it. I don't really think there would be much Rudy Gobert could do in stopping Shaq. We've seen Rudy Gobert struggle mightily if he doesn't have great perimeter defense around him. As a health defender, he's good. As an individual defender, we've seen him kind of struggle against superior athletes at the rim. Shaq, in his prime, was a superior athlete physically and athletically. So again, I definitely would have to say Shaquille O'Neal would win that battle in the ISO matchup. Now again, the element of this argument could change if we put a great defensive team around Rudy Gobert in this era, and you allowed that team to zone up in some different and more unique ways, and you made a constant effort as a team to shade two to three guys over towards Shaq in some type of man-to-man matchup zone to slow him down. But that would probably be the only realistic way Rudy Gobert could consistently apply pressure to Shaquille O'Neal and stop him enough so his team could have a decent chance to win the game. But you guys, spam up the comments, let me know what you think about this argument right here. I love the debates, old versus new, old errors versus new errors. I know a lot of people like to avoid talking about what would happen if you bring a player into this era, or if you take another player back to that era. It still makes for good conversation, and again, I think Phil Jackson did a good job of bringing a non-biased perspective, talking about some of the things that would give Shaq problems in today's game from the team perspective, and what he would excel at in the individual perspective. And that, again, it just makes for good conversation where we can have these types of arguments because it kind of helps bring to light what type of player Shaq was, and how much more respected he should be in the grand scheme of things. When we look at the top 10 all time, I think a lot of times Shaquille O'Neal doesn't get enough respect. I've seen a lot of people throw Tim Duncan in there over Shaquille O'Neal, and again, I don't know if that's necessarily the case. Respect to anyone's list though, but again, when you hear coaches like Phil Jackson talk about Shaquille O'Neal in this particular light, it just adds to how dominant he was, and it wasn't just about the dunks, or the power, or some of the things that we saw in the 90s. He has so many more elements to his game that we just couldn't see because of the era that he played in. But you guys, spam up the comments. Let me know your thoughts on this. If you have any other players that you would like me to pair up and do some research on, see if there are any coaches out there that have done any commentary on these particular match-ups, let me know in the comments, and I'll see what I can put together for you, because again, it does make for a great debate here on FYF Sports. Hey, this is FYF Sports. It's been another great podcast episode. Make sure you guys sub up to the Spotify channel, or even FYF Sports Live, our second channel on YouTube, for more FYF Sports debates content, but hey, it's FYF Sports. It's been another great show. We will be back with more sports news, but until then, it's FYF Sports.