Jazz center Rudy Gobert is a rebounding machine, but he's got a long way to go still

We love Rudy Gobert. I know it was love at nearly first sight when I saw him at the combine so many moons ago. The Utah Jazz have a really awesome bigman on their hands -- and while we get excited for all his dunks, salutes, and blocks -- probably where he is truly biggest is on the boards. Last night he had an epic 22 rebound game. He had a double double after the first quarter. These types of results for a 22 year old player are almost unheard of. This is what Shaquille O'Neal used to do in Orlando. That's how crazy these numbers are.

But this is Utah. And in Utah numbers are nice, we keep track of a lot of them. And when you look at Jazz history, Rudy has some catching up to do. Here are all the 15+ rebound games (regular season and playoffs combined) for Jazz players from 1985-85 till today:

(N.B. Bar color is an era designation.)

Karl Malone's 181 is so large it wraps around again. Effectively he's #1 and #2 on this list. Carlos Boozer is up there too, and I think we are too quick to forget what a big part of our team he was when he was actually healthy enough to play, and motivated to play. Far behind them we finally get centers Mark Eaton and Mehmet Okur. Our very own second round wonder Paul Millsap rounds out the Top 5 (if we count Malone's numbers are just one person).

The next group is fun, you have Big Al Jefferson, Greg Ostertag, and then three young guys: Derrick Favors, Enes Kanter, and Rudy Gobert. I wouldn't be surprised to see Rudy climb this list quick if he keeps playing with his level of hunger and intensity.

There are other Jazz players who have rebounded the ball 15 or more times in a game. In fact Donyell Marshall also did it 7 times, but I'm really not going to put him on this list. Andrei Kirilenko and Felton Spencer did it six times. Tyrone Corbin and Adam Keefe did it twice each. And Thurl Bailey, David Benoit, Trevor Booker, Mike Brown, Greg Foster, Matt Harpring, Gordon Hayward, Scott Padgett, Michael Ruffin, and Bryon Russell all did it once.

If you cross reference this against Jazz players who have had 15/15 games you see that a) Karl Malone was the real deal (179 / 181), and that Young Rud has been impressive here, but has a long way to go still.