Now in his 13th season, Rudy Gobert has never been a great free-throw shooter during his tenure in the NBA. He’s never made more than 70 percent for a season, and currently is at 63.6 percent for his career.
When naming the least-accurate players from the charity stripe, though, throughout the years, there are numerous names that can be mentioned before Gobert. That has been the case at least until this season, and especially of late due to his major foul shooting woes.
Gobert has been way off from the line
In a disappointing loss to the Utah Jazz on Tuesday (the team that Gobert spent his first nine years in the league with), he went just 1-for-5 from the foul line. That continues what has been an awful trend for the four-time Defensive Player of the Year.
In the previous game against the Houston Rockets, Gobert went just 2-10 on free throws, which included a couple of airballs. One of those badly-missed attempts included a stank-faced look from Kevin Durant.
The Timberwolves lost both of these games by five points and Gobert's poor free throw shooting clearly hurt the team.
Kevin Durant’s face after Rudy Gobert airballed a free throw 😭💀pic.twitter.com/6sdjXP6RDn
— NBACentel (@TheNBACentel) January 17, 2026
Over his last five outings, the 33-year-old has made just 4 of 20 free-throw tries. That has now put Gobert at under 50 percent for the season (79-159, 49.7 percent ).
While he has had a season under 50 percent before, that came in Gobert’s rookie year when he only attempted 65 on the year.
Overall, Gobert is having a very impactful season for the Timberwolves. He is a leading candidate to win Defensive Player of the Year (again). He leads the league both with a 71.8 field goal percentage and his 477 total rebounds.
The Timberwolves just have to hope that Gobert can at least become passable at the foul line again, especially come playoff time. It wasn’t just him, as the Wolves missed 15 total free throws in their recent game against the Rockets, and those misses were a large reason they lost that game.
They got outscored in the fourth quarter 43-26 in Utah's come-from-behind victory on Tuesday, and the 7-foot-1 big man made just 1 of 4 attempts in that final stanza.
Last season, Gobert made 67.4 percent, the third-best mark of his career. In 10 of the last 11 years, he has made them at better than a 60 percent clip. It’s imperative that Gobert at least can hit them at that frequency so teams, especially come the postseason, don’t go the intentional foul route.