For how athletic Aaron Gordon is, he’s blocking an embarrassingly low amount of shots this year. 0.5 per 36? As a hyper-athletic forward? No wonder the Magic were obsessed with playing Serge Ibaka over him. There’s probably some reason for his low rejection stats that would become apparent were I to watch full Magic games, but for now, I’m just gonna do some baseless speculation: he doesn’t want it bad enough!
That’s the usual reasoning for players not doing things, right? I think so. It’s all a matter of desire. If Gordon desired, he could average five blocks a game, but he doesn’t so desire, so he doesn’t block hardly anything. I actually looked at a bunch of his denials from this year and almost all of them were accidents. Actual literal accidents, such as where he was just standing at the free throw line with his arms behind his head and an opposing offensive player threw the ball at his protruding elbow. There are dozens of examples of stuff like this happening. It’s quite startling, actually.