If you’re just dumping the ball off to a big boy to finish quickly before a shot blocker recovers, you want the ball in his hands as high as possible. Sometimes you may need to wrap around and just put it in his chest but those guys move slow. If he has to lift the ball from his stomach to the top of his reach that gives smaller defenders a window for a strip and bigger defenders more time to recover to block. If he has to bend his knees and reach down to catch a low pass, then gather and bring it all the way up in traffic, there’s a lot of opportunity for guys to dig in and deflect the ball, plus a lot of time for a shot blocker to make it back to that side of the rim. Doesn’t need to be a lob per se but yeah, you want to hit guys high if the idea is they’ll be catching your pass and immediately dunking it.

Stats on Gobert FG attempts and % over last three regular seasons (rounded/eyeballed numbers):

80% of FGA are layups (0-3 ft from basket) and dunks (45% dunks and 35% layups)
FG% for these 80% is 76% (which means he makes half of his layup attempts)

18% of FGA are from 3 – 10 ft.
FG% for 3 – 10 ft is about 33%

Negligible FGA beyond 10 ft.

Stats from basketball-reference.com

Obviously can’t let Gobert set up position under the basket, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to punish you if you let him catch the ball at like 4 or 5 feet.

I do recall I think the Clips closed out the win against Utah the last regular season game by going small and it worked well. I do think it would be a great strategy to use in this series. Gobert isn’t going to punish you on the block, just need to make sure you block out and keep him off the offensive glass. Will be interesting if they start of Game 1 with small ball, or if they first try a more traditional lineup of Zu on Gobert.

Gobert poses an interesting problem they didn’t face against the Mavs. A true defensive big in the middle. Clips have the shooters to play a jump shooting contest against anyone and win, but also some risk in relying on jump shots to win a series. We saw the Clips really win 2 games against Dallas by just forcing their way under the basket. I just don’t see them being able to do that against the Jazz. But the last few games against the Mavs where they were undersized and going against a twin tower in the paint might be the recipe for wins against the Jazz.