It was a busy few days for NBA champion Luguentz Dort of the Oklahoma City Thunder. The native son of Montreal Nord brought the Larry O\u2019Brien championship trophy home to Montreal for a variety of appearances. Among those was a trip to Montreal\u2019s city hall to sign the Golden Book on Wednesday and an appearance at Percival Molson Stadium for the Winnipeg, Alouettes game Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
Of all the appearances, none was more meaningful to the OKC Thunder guard than last Thursday\u2019s special event in his home community of Montreal Nord. Dort began that day by taking time to reminisce. The defensive and three-point specialist visited his childhood home and the outdoor court where he sharpened his skills. Then it was celebration mode starting with a parade along Charleroi. The throng of fans lining the Montreal Nord street reacted each time Dort raised the O\u2019Brien trophy high. The parade worked its way along Charleroi to Parc Pilon where some 5,000 of Dort\u2019s extended family waited for his arrival. \u201cAny success I have, I want to share with my people,\u201d Luguentz Dort said. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of us that get to make it to the to the big stage. As soon as we won, I was like, yeah, I got to come back home with it, especially where I grew up. I had a long day. I went to the park I used to play in then I was in front of my house that I grew up in. Now I\u2019m here with even more kids and more and more action.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd was awash with Dort jerseys and signs for Lu the Champ and Lu the Beast. As the parade arrived at its final destination chants of \u201cLu,Lu,Lu\u201d grew thunderous for the Thunder star as Dort worked his way through the crowd to the stage. After taking it all in, Dort reflected on how he was feeling. \u201cI love it,\u201d Dort said. \u201cI just see how much they really support me. It\u2019s hard to make it to the NBA from this neighborhood. And honestly, the fact that I did it, and then I\u2019m here right now in front of them, there\u2019s a belief for them and I\u2019m really happy to be here enjoying some good times with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dort has given back to his community through his Maizon Dort Foundation. One project helped to revamp the courts at Parc Saint-Laurent last summer. The 26-year-old also holds a two-day camp for many of Quebec\u2019s top youth players where Dort mentors the players along their path. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to make it to the NBA from this neighbourhood,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact that I did it and that I\u2019m here right now in front of them, it\u2019s a belief for them. At a young age, coming from here, I didn\u2019t have a specific guy to look at, to be like \u2018I want to be like him.\u2019 To be in this position in the kids\u2019 eyes today, it\u2019s huge. It shows how the work really is paying off, and how much I carry this city and this neighborhood (with me).\u201d<\/p>\n
Dort helped lead the Thunder to the NBA title in June with a seven-game series win over the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers featured fellow Montreal Nord native Bennedict Mathurin, who grew up several houses away from Dort\u2019s. This is the second time the Larry O\u2019Brien Trophy has appeared in Montreal Nord. The first was by Chris Boucher when the Toronto Raptors won in 2019<\/p>\n
Dort now joins a very exclusive roster of Quebec athletes who are NBA champions. That number is now four as Dort is added to the list of Beaconsfield\u2019s Bill Wennington (Chicago Bulls, 1996 to 1998), Montreal\u2019s Joel Anthony (Miami Heat, 2012 and 2013) and Boucher. n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a busy few days for NBA champion Luguentz Dort of the Oklahoma City Thunder. The native…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,2704,459,82],"class_list":["post-101044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-men","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}