San Antonio Spurs: 2 Reasons people are still overlooking Jakob Poeltl

The San Antonio Spurs big man is a consistent force no one notices

The San Antonio Spurs suffered another tough overtime defeat on Saturday night, falling to the Indiana Pacers 139-133. That makes seven losses in the last nine games for San Antonio. There’s no doubt that the Spurs are sliding but through it all, one player has been there night after night for San Antonio.

Jakob Poeltl put together another impressive outing against Indiana. He filled up the stat sheet, recording 14 points, 13 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and 3 blocks while shooting 50 percent from the floor. That makes four double-doubles in a row for Poeltl and is the fourth game out of the past six where he has blocked at least three shots. Even as the Spurs have struggled, Poeltl has been in a zone.

This season, Jakob has continued to build a reputation as one of the NBA’s best-kept secrets. He’s one of the best young rim protectors in the league and has quietly filled out a consistent albeit limited offensive game as well. But he’s still not on many Defensive Player of the Year projections and it feels like very few NBA consumers outside of San Antonio and Toronto know his name.

San Antonio Spurs getting overlooked is nothing new but this seems particularly undue given how well Poeltl has been playing. Here are a few reasons why it could be happening.

Poeltl provides elite but quiet defense for the San Antonio Spurs

Jakob is one of the best defensive big men in the NBA but in typical Spursian fashion, he does it in a way that hardly gets noticed. He’s rarely mentioned in the same sentences as Myles Turner and Rudy Gobert but he should be.

One of the reasons he’s not included in that category is that Poeltl doesn’t rack up blocks the way that those two do. Their impact on the game aside, forcefully rejecting shots is the quickest way to get noticed as a defender. No one cares if a player remains perfectly verticle and executes a textbook contest but if you swat a shot into the fourth row of the stands that’ll get you on ESPN in the morning.

This isn’t to say that Poeltl doesn’t block shots, he does. He’s up to 78 on the season, good enough for 6th in the NBA, but that’s not where his impact is most readily seen.

Among players who defended more than 15 shot attempts per game, Poeltl has the best defended field goal percentage by a fair margin. Opponents shoot just 41.7 percent against him. Comparatively, they shoot 42.9 percent against Gobert and 43.7 percent against Turner.

Poeltl plays elite defense but he does it his way, a way that will rarely get him mentioned on Inside the NBA but one that should be celebrated nonetheless.

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