What is a career? If Rudy Gobert hadn’t, when he was eleven, slipped on a plastic shark as he walked forward, a cutter in his hand, he might not be here. There, it is in Cleveland, in the heart of Ohio, ready to play, on Sunday February 20, its third All-Star Game in a row – the “star game” rewarding the elite of NBA players, the North American Basketball League.
“You never know what fate has in store for you, laughs the French pivot of the Utah Jazz, questioned a few days before the match. At the time, I was doing boxing, and I opened my hand. I had to have eight stitches, and after that I never took up boxing again, until a few years ago, to train now, during the summer. » Once his wound healed, “a little by chance”, he had started playing basketball.
Eighteen years have passed, and the kid from Saint-Quentin (Aisne) has gained a few centimeters (he peaks at 2.16 m) and a lot of thickness. Elected three times best defender of the year in the NBA, he is now a regular in the great media raout that is the All-Star Game. “I never take that for granted, it is a great pride to be distinguished as one of the best NBA players,” insists the one who is also the pivot of the France team.
Evaporated on ” lack of respect ” that he lamented in 2019, when the NBA coaches had snubbed him, preferring a more gifted player offensively, but whose team accumulated defeats. And if he was chosen “only” as the last replacement for the team assembled by Kevin Durant (Brooklyn Nets), the Frenchman knew his chances of getting a place in the starting five of the “star game” were infinitesimal. .
popularity contest
Initially imagined as a reward for the best players in the League, the All-Star Game has turned into a popularity contest, where the tweets of the public are counted – with sometimes the call of certain celebrities to make their followers vote on social networks for this or that player. “As long as fan votes matter so much to incumbents, I have no illusions that I will ever be there,” breath Gobert.
The Frenchman admits he could make some ” much more ” on social media, if he was looking to capture attention off the pitch. Corn “popularity is not really what motivates me”, he decides. “My goal is to try to be the best Rudy possible on the court, to have the best possible impact and to try to get the NBA title. »
Measured in his words, he takes care not to make waves, in an environment quick to highlight the slightest sentence. In January, his remarks about the defensive involvement of players from teams ahead of the Jazz in the standings were interpreted as a tackle to his partner Donovan Mitchell, the team’s other All-Star. “Drama is what gets the most clicks. We are aware that it is part of the business of the NBA ”, he notes, not forgetting that he was, in 2020, the first player infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the NBA, and singled out as such for having been “the one by whom the sport stopped”.
The silver medalist at the Tokyo Olympics with the Blues does not lack ambition. “Since I was little, I have never set myself a limit. I’ve always aimed very high.” relates the French pivot. Put in the sport by his mother so that he spends his energy hardly compatible with their “small HLM of Saint-Quentin”, he touches everything. “I did athletics, karate, even table tennis at one point. » Then come boxing, and finally basketball. Taken with a passion for this sport – which his father Rudy Bourgarel practiced, among professionals –, he announces the color: “I want to play in the NBA. »
His enthusiasm is greeted with skepticism, even dismissive irony. Like much later, when he proclaimed his ambition to be All-Star, to win an Olympic medal or to want to beat the overpowered Americans with the France team – goals he has since achieved. “It’s human nature, he philosophizes, until something has been achieved, people think it is impossible. » On his list, the next goals are already listed: winning the NBA title and a title with the Blues. With as a guideline “not to live in regret for not having tried to live my dreams”.
Author of an accomplished season
In a year still disrupted by the pandemic, his Jazz team approaches the end of the season with less certainty than last year. First in the Western Conference, Gobert and his teammates had failed at the gates of the conference finals, the equivalent, in the NBA, of the quarter-finals. “This season is quite special, recognizes the pivot. You have to adapt constantly, and try to put everything in place to approach the playoffs with confidence. »
Author of a statistically accomplished season (15.7 points, 14.8 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game), best rebounder in the League and recognized defender, Rudy Gobert could, at the end of the season, leave a little plus his mark in the NBA history books. He appears to be a legitimate candidate for a new title of best defender of the year.
At 29, he would join the Congolese Dikembe Mutombo and the American Ben Wallace, the only players to have won this distinction four times. “Making history is something that will remain forever, raises the French pivot. Getting a fourth trophy would be great, but it really depends on how we play as a team. »
With this third star in a row at the All-Star Game, Rudy Gobert joins Tony Parker, the only Frenchman to have chained in this way (the best French basketball player has six selections in total). Before resuming the course of the NBA season, and hoping to win a first title there, the Frenchman intends to take advantage of this festive meeting.
