MONTREAL \u2014 Luguentz Dort celebrated his NBA championship with a festive parade through his home neighbourhood on Thursday.<\/p>\n
MONTREAL \u2014 Luguentz Dort celebrated his NBA championship with a festive parade through his home neighbourhood on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Oklahoma City Thunder swingman lifted the Larry O\u2019Brien Trophy high while cruising in a Lamborghini as hundreds of cheering fans \u2014 and a Haitian marching band \u2014 followed along rue Charleroi in the city\u2019s Montreal North borough.<\/p>\n
Dort then jumped out of the car and walked among a crowd of locals and reporters to Parc Pilon, where hundreds more waited to greet their native son.<\/p>\n
Dozens of kids, many sporting Dort\u2019s OKC No. 5, lined up for their turn on the court at Parc Pilon. Others held signs reading \u201cLu the champ\u201d and \u201cMtl-Nord fier de son champion,\u201d which translates to \u201cMtl-Nord proud of its champion,” and chanted \u201cLuuuuu!\u201d as Dort took the stage to address the fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny success I have, I want to share with my people. There\u2019s not a lot of us that get to make it to the big stage. As soon as we won, I was like, \u2018Yeah, I gotta come back home, especially where I grew up,” said Dort.<\/p>\n
“At a young age, coming from here, I didn\u2019t have a specific guide to look at, to be like \u2018I want to be like them.\u2019 To be in this position in the kids\u2019 eyes today, it\u2019s huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
A day earlier, Dort signed Montreal\u2019s \u201cLivre d\u2019Or\u201d during a special invitation to City Hall from Mayor Val\u00e9rie Plante, who recognized the homegrown talent for his community work and on-court achievements.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old Dort \u2013 with Canadian MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander \u2013 helped lead the Thunder to the NBA title with a seven-game series win over the Indiana Pacers, a team that featured fellow Montrealer Bennedict Mathurin.<\/p>\n
Dort and Mathurin grew up only blocks apart in the hardscrabble borough, home to one of Canada\u2019s largest Haitian communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dort ultimately became the fourth player from Montreal to win an NBA title, joining Bill Wennington (Chicago Bulls, 1996 to 1998), Joel Anthony (Miami Heat, 2012 and 2013) and Chris Boucher (Toronto Raptors, 2019).<\/p>\n
He was also the most impactful Montrealer on a championship team.<\/p>\n
A starter for the Thunder, Dort regularly takes on the most challenging defensive assignments as a suffocating on-ball defender. This past season, he was named to the All-NBA defensive first-team and placed fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting, while scoring 10 points per game on a talent-packed OKC.<\/p>\n
Dort also embodies the underdog spirit, having been passed up by the entire league at the 2019 draft. <\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 21, 2025.<\/p>\n
Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 Luguentz Dort celebrated his NBA championship with a festive parade through his home neighbourhood on Thursday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-86963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86963","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=86963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}