SALT LAKE CITY — For a 21-year-old 7-footer who craved minutes and development as much as he hankered for eventual stardom, Bakersfield, Calif., wasn’t the place to be. That’s where Rudy Gobert found himself, though, midway through his rookie year. In a hotel room, plopped down on a bed that was too small, channel-surfing, flummoxed, wondering when his time to flourish would come. He still remembers exactly where he was when he was told to pack his bags.
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Those kinds of bummer moments are the ones that stick.
The Utah Jazz were in Denver on Dec. 13, 2013. A bad team that would finish with a bad record, caught between two worlds: Figuring out how to compete with a young core of unproven talent coupled with former greats who were playing closer to their collective dusk than dawn. The Jazz coaching staff told Gobert he’d be catching a flight to Bakersfield. Gobert was a DNP-coaching decision the night Utah upset the Nuggets to improve to … 6-19. The Jazz assigned Gobert and fellow rookie guard Ian Clark to the Bakersfield Jam of the NBA Developmental League — the D-League before the G League — that night in the Mile High City.
“When I came to the league,” Gobert told The Athletic, “I told myself I was never going to play in the D-League.”
On Wednesday night, Rudy Gobert is rolling back through the memory bank. He’s in Philadelphia as the Jazz prepared for their last regular-season outing of the first half of this complex NBA campaign. He’s speaking now as a two-time NBA All-Star, having been chosen for the second consecutive year as a representative in a stacked Western Conference. The world knows Rudy Gobert, the two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year. The NBA has to adjust to him on a nightly basis. In Atlanta, as part of this year’s truncated All-Star NBA Weekend festivities, Gobert will be as far away from those Bakersfield days as it gets.
He is no longer dedicated to that chin goatee like he was earlier in his career. The jerseys that used to awkwardly sag off his thin frame are a much tighter fit as he has bulked up significantly from those early years in the league. Utah’s star center doesn’t forget things. Especially from that rookie season that helped shape who he’d become in the league — the big man who makes every player in the league think twice any time they enter his general vicinity.
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When he got to Bakersfield for that D-League assignment, he stayed put in the hotel because the coaches asked him to. The Jam arena is in the Bakersfield neighborhood of Oildale, a central California town long known for its extreme poverty levels and permeating drug issues. The town had its own unofficial “Heroin Alley.” So when Gobert arrived, former Jam coach Will Voigt just told him to relax, watch TV, watch film and, when possible, work out at the basketball facility.
“That would be a culture shock to just about anybody, let alone a Parisian,” Voigt said. “He was not going to find a croissant and an espresso anywhere around there.”
What he found, instead, was an even deeper level of desire to be great, when many believed he’d never be more than a gangly center with long arms and decent footwork. And look at him now.
The press release is just 112 words long. On June 27, 2013, the Jazz acquired Gobert in a draft-night trade with the Nuggets. He was the 27th pick of the first round that year. The last sentence in the press release announcing Utah acquired its future All-Star stated that the 21-year-old Gobert owns a 7-foot-9 wingspan. That night the Jazz also traded up to draft Trey Burke ninth overall.
Back in Salt Lake City, Jerel McNeal was a holdover from the previous year’s fringe portion of the roster. He was a summer league attendee and signed some 10-day deals with the Jazz at the end of the previous season. He was there when Burke and Gobert touched down in Salt Lake. Initially, all the attention was on Burke, the star scoring point guard who led Michigan to the NCAA title game that spring. Flying under the radar was Gobert, who promised intrigue as a prospect. But it was unclear how he’d fit into the NBA and how quickly he could assimilate.
“Obviously, a lot of people see him on TV, but I’m not sure how many have been able to see him in person,” McNeal said. “When you see him in person, it’s a little bit of a different feel. Rudy’s a massive guy, man. He’s a big, big, big load to deal with.”
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And he had expectations as high as his massive wingspan could reach for. Gobert harbors the angst from doubters he’s had along his path. He said this week that he still remembers people in France and in the media saying he was too much of a “project player” to evolve in the NBA. It’s why his aversion to the D-League was heightened. Gobert wanted to prove he could be what he knew he could develop into, while also casting a long pall on those skeptics.
“He was hardheaded, didn’t want to listen, and he was just trying to be a player that he wasn’t,” said John Lucas III, Utah’s third point guard Gobert’s rookie season. “We all saw something special in Rudy, and obviously the Jazz did, too.”
In training camp, Gobert would swat shots, but above the cylinder. The Jazz vets remember having to elaborate on the differences between goaltending in the league and abroad. Older players on that team learned that to get to Gobert, they had to relate to him. His mind was so focused on being elite at such a raw, young age, that he was a bit guarded, Lucas remembers. Guys like Lucas, Marvin Williams and Richard Jefferson told him early: Be the guy that no one else in the league is currently or can be. Be the big man who sprints up and down the floor, who cleans up mistakes around the basket, who can flush home random bounces off the rim. The defensive ability was always there. Lucas recalls sitting on the bench with Brandon Rush. The two marveled at Gobert’s uniqueness and routinely talked about his ceiling as a player.
“If he listens … he’ll be really good,” Lucas said. “It just takes time. That’s all.”
Time, and, of course, talent.
“Rudy’s confidence, what we’re seeing right now, is the confidence that he has back when he came in as a rookie,” Jefferson said. “It’s just his game and experience level hadn’t caught up yet, which is very common for a lot of players. His confidence is what made him work so hard. He believes he would be one of the best. He believed he could be dominant.”
Rudy Gobert wore No. 50 with the Jam. He also wore the Jam sweatpants he was given. They didn’t fit all that well. But he wore them a lot. They were comfy. He laughs about it now, his path to superstardom featured a pit stop in necessary acquiring of style. Earlier that NBA season, when the Jazz were in Chicago in early November, Jefferson took the rookies to a custom suit shop and bought them all their own on his dime.
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“I didn’t have swag,” Gobert said. “I had clothes, but I was going to the Big & Tall (men’s clothing store). Nothing was fitting me right. It was OK, but once I was able to do more fitted clothes, it was definitely better.”
While he was in Bakersfield, he was starting to turn heads. He averaged 18 points, 15 rebounds and four blocked shots per game. He shot 74 percent from the field. All these years later, the moment from that season that Voigt can’t forget isn’t a thunderous put-back dunk or block into the stands. It was Gobert walking into the Jam locker room after struggling with foul trouble. The Jam lost. And Gobert, whose English at the time was still a work in progress, apologized to every player.
“Rudy came into that locker room after that first game in his heavy French accent (said): ‘Fellas, it is my bad. Tomorrow will be much better,’” Voigt said.
The next time out, Gobert dominated.
“The way you think, ‘Well, if he ever gets that down consistently? He’s going to be a player,’” Voigt said. “That was the first time, where for him to declare that he was going to do it and for him to come out and do it, you knew that this kid has a chance to be special.”
Gobert’s memory put him back in that exact same spot this week. He remembers saying the loss was on him. That he needed to be better.
“Whenever I’m doing something, I try to be present,” he said. “There was no point for me to go there just to go there. I knew I had to go there to play the best basketball I could play. You have to be able to show that you don’t belong there.”
There were glimpses of plays only Rudy Gobert could pull off. In the 2013 summer league in Orlando, Gobert reached a ball that was near the top of the backboard and was able to tip it in with ease. In training camp that season, he met Jefferson, who in his prime was one of the more emphatic dunkers in the league, and shut him down.
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“I do tell him: I was the first person to ever dunk on you. Hard,” Jefferson recalled. “So he had blocked my shots like he always did with everyone else. He got it and he said something. I remember saying, ‘Oh, I’ll be back. Like, Hi, I’m Richard. Nice to meet you. But I’ll be back.’ Then later on in training camp I just had a backdoor cut and he came over late and I just put him in the basket. I knew this kid is going to be good and he’s a rookie right now, so this is probably the best chance for me to get him.”
Gobert busts out laughing when Jefferson’s recollection is relayed to him.
“I know it’s coming. I know what he’s going to say,” Gobert said. “The one story he’s going to talk about is his only good story against me. He got me. He dunked on me. There were only two guys that dunked on me that year. He was one of them. He was really athletic for his age. He didn’t have much hair, though. But he could jump.”
The D-League and rookie year experience forever changed how Gobert viewed his career.
“We remember him as kind of a big helpless French boy,” Voigt said. “Just seeing that transition is almost as shocking as seeing his transition as a player.”
Jefferson interrupts the question like he did Gobert’s attempt at that block over seven years ago. In retrospect, is Gobert’s path to being an indispensable player on the league’s best team as remarkable to him as it is to others around the league?
“No, and you know what I like about him? When Rudy cried after he didn’t make the All-Star Game,” Jefferson said. “It didn’t sit well with me when there were other players that might’ve been critical of that or made jokes. Coming from a dude who played 17 years and was on the verge of probably about three or four different All-Star Games and having never made it, I understand those tears. I sat there and watched TNT and watched the reserves get announced and (was) bummed because I had a career year but my team was struggling or other bullshit.
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“That confirms how much he cares, how much he wants to be great, how much he cares about his peers and his teammates.”
Gobert’s show of emotion after a practice in 2019 when he wasn’t named to the All-Star squad was mocked by some but embraced as a real moment by others.
“The thing for me and my story is that it’s always been that way for me,” he said when referencing his career in basketball up to this point. “It’s not like people were always telling me, ‘There you go, you made it, you’re in the league.’ No. I’ve been rejected my whole career. I’ve been disrespected my whole career. It’s kind of the story of my life.”

From D-Leaguer to two-time NBA All-Star, Rudy Gobert has come a long way. (Mary Holt / USA Today)
As Lucas explained, some players need that experience of being tested, like being sent down to the D-League. For Gobert, it was the first real moment in the U.S. when he told himself he wouldn’t accept being anything less than a rotational piece. That motivation swelled more and more.
“Playing is how you get your confidence,” Lucas said. “Playing is figuring out who you are. Him going back and forth (to) Bakersfield probably made him hungrier. You go from flying charters around the country, and then now you’ve got to take buses to your game, go check in at the airport, take everything out of your luggage. It’s either going to light a fire in you to make sure you don’t want to come back here or are you going to be that type of person that you’re content?”
The flame burned bright from then on.
“It’s only the beginning for me, I feel like,” Gobert said. “Obviously being an All-Star, All-NBA, being a Defensive Player of the Year and all that is great. I hope it inspires a lot of kids out there that don’t feel like they’re being valued or feel like they’re being overlooked to just never give up. Hopefully, when I retire, I will have accomplished way more things than that and the story will be an even more inspiring one.”
(Top photo of Rudy Gobert with the Bakersfield Jam in 2014: Jack Arent / NBAE via Getty Images)
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