Rudy Gobert may not yet have quite the dominant presence that his predecessors like Mark Eaton and Karl Malone had in Utah, but the light at the end of the Eurotunnel looks very bright as the French center begins to look like the real business with the back-to-back honors of the NBA All-Defensive First Team. The 2013 NBA Draft Pick, which registered a then NBA record 7-foot 9-inch wingspan in the NBA Combine, has also received an NBA Defensive Player of the Year award, a testament to its contributions to the field as well as its talent.
Rudy Gobert Early Life
Rudy Gobert was born on June 26, 1992, in Saint-Quentin, France, where he also grew up. As a child, Gobert was considered an outstanding student, whose only flaw was his aggressiveness, which got him into great trouble at school. However, when he was 10 years old, he fell in love with basketball and devoted all his energy to this sport.
In 2003, Gobert started playing for the club JSC St-Quentin before moving from home to Cholet in 2007. Gobert continued to learn the game for the junior basketball team of Cholet and was given the opportunity to represent France in the 2010 FIBA European Under-18s Championship, where he finished as the best scorer and rebounder in his country. After this tournament, Cholet was promoted to the senior national team for the 2010/11 season, where he had only one appearance. In the following year, however, Gobert became a permanent fixture in the team and played a total of 29 games, in which he scored an average of 4.2 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. In the 2012-13 season, Gobert showed progression in 27 games with an average of 8.4 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.
After this season Rudy Gobert declared for the 2013 NBA Draft where he was selected by the Denver Nuggets with the 27th overall selection, although he immediately switched to Utah Jazz.
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Rudy Gobert Parents
Rudy Gobert was born as the son of a Guadeloupean father, Rudy Bourgarel, and a French mother, Corinne Gobert. His parents were not married, so Gobert, who was named after his father, took his mother’s surname. When Gobert was three years old, his parents ended their relationship, and he was left alone to be raised by his mother along with his two older half-brothers and sisters.
Gobert owes his sporting genes to his father, as he was a professional basketball player. Bourgarel attended Marist College in New York, with which he participated in the NCAA tournament. After graduating from college, he is said to have returned to France, where he did a year of military service before embarking on a ten-year professional basketball career in Europe. Bourgarel is said to have not only represented the French national team, but also played for teams such as Racing CF, Saint Quentin, and Toulouse ASPTT.
Rudy Gobert NBA Career Profile
Rudy Gobert’s rookie season in the NBA was split between the Jazz and the NBA Development League side, the Bakersfield Jam. In that year he performed a total of 45 times in the NBA, with an average of 2.3 points and 3.4 rebounds per game. In his second season, Gobert proved that he was not above his head in the NBA after showing immense improvements that earned him third place on the voting list for the NBA Most Improved Player Award. He competed in 37 of the 82 games he played in, scoring an average of 8.4 points and 9.5 rebounds per game, with 25 doubles pairs.
In the 2015-16 season, Gobert scored an average of 9.1 points and 11.0 rebounds per game. Jazz then rewarded his man at the beginning of the 2016-17 season with a four-year contract extension for 102 million dollars. By the end of this season, Gobert had become a beast in color, leading the league in blocks per game with an average of 2.6. He also averaged 14.0 points and 12.8 rebounds, earning both All-NBA Second Team Honors and NBA All-Defensive First Team Honors.
In the 2017-18 season, Rudy Gobert, despite missing many regular-season games due to injury, was reappointed to the NBA All-Defensive First Team and was also named NBA Defensive Player of the Year after averaging 13.5 points and 10.7 rebounds per game.
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Who is His Girlfriend?
If you ask an average American girl which country her ideal boyfriend should come from, there is a more than 80 percent chance that she would say France, because Paris is the supposed city of love and romance. So Rudy Gobert should have no problem thinking about who he wants to settle down with, but for some reason unknown to the public, the jazz musician from Utah is said to be very much single.
Gobert’s name, however, has been circulated in the past around the society lady and former Jamaican beauty queen Bianca Fairchild, but that seemed to be just a rumor since the couple is not a couple.
Height, Weight
Rudy Gobert is very far from being the tallest player to ever play in the NBA although he does have a very impressive height of 7 feet 1 inch or 2.16 m. His weight is listed at 245 pounds or 111 kg while his wingspan is 7 feet 9 inches or 2.40 m and his standing reach is 9 feet 7 inches or 2.92 m.
