Okay, here’s my blog post about digging into Rudy Gobert’s first quarter stats – a little project I tackled last night.
So, last night I was chilling, watching some NBA highlights, and Gobert’s name kept popping up. I got curious about how he starts games, you know? Like, is he a slow starter, or does he come out firing?
First thing I did, I hopped online. I started with the usual suspects – ESPN, *, even Bleacher Report. I was looking for game logs, something that breaks down his stats by quarter. Man, it was a bit of a treasure hunt! Lots of box scores, but nothing that just handed me first quarter stats on a silver platter.
Then, I remembered a site I used to use way back in the day – Basketball-Reference. They usually have pretty detailed stats. So, I went there, searched for Rudy Gobert, and started digging through his game logs for the current season. They have this cool feature where you can see the box score for each game, and then you can manually add up his stats for each quarter.
Okay, tedious alert! I started going game by game, noting down his points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals – everything – just for the first quarter. I used a simple spreadsheet to keep track of it all. It was definitely a bit of a grind, especially when he had those games where he barely played in the first quarter due to foul trouble or whatever.
After about an hour of data entry, my eyes were starting to cross. But I finally had a decent sample size – like, the last 15 or so games. Now came the fun part – crunching the numbers. I calculated his average points, rebounds, assists, etc., in the first quarter over those 15 games.
Here’s what I found: On average, Gobert scores around 4-5 points in the first quarter, grabs about 3-4 rebounds, and gets maybe half a block. Assists are rare, steals even rarer. So, not exactly a blazing start, but consistent. He’s definitely feeling out the game, setting the tone defensively, before really getting going later on.
I also noticed something interesting. There were a few games where he exploded in the first quarter, scoring like 8-10 points and grabbing 6 rebounds. Usually, those were games where he was matched up against a smaller, less physical center. It seemed like the coaching staff was trying to exploit those matchups early on.
To wrap it up, this little project wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, but it was kinda cool to see how consistent Gobert is in the first quarter. It’s not always about the flashy stats; sometimes it’s about setting the tone and establishing your presence. Maybe next time I’ll compare his first quarter stats to his fourth quarter stats and see how things change as the game goes on.
One last thing, I read somewhere that Gobert was drafted like 27th overall. It’s wild to think about how far he’s come! He really did write his own story. And seeing how he plays now, it’s cool to see that even if he’s not dropping 20 in the first, he’s laying the groundwork for a win.
