When someone throws an alley-oop and you finish, everyone's happy, the one who makes the pass and the one with the dunks. It's a great play.
— Rudy Gobert
Once I got 13 or 14 years old, I started watching a lot of videos on YouTube and NBA.com and I started following the NBA ball.
At the end of my life, I just want to make sure I made a big difference in this world.
To be honest, I love being in Utah so I think most people have the wrong idea about the city, about the place.
People watch the points, they watch the highlights. But the defense I think helps the offense.
The Defensive Player of the Year is the guy that makes his team better. Not only gets stats - it's the guy that also has an impact on his teammates and leadership.
I want to stay with the Jazz.
I just try to make the right play, stay aggressive and defensively just do what I do. I make sure I talk to everyone and control the paint.
You don't have to think, you just have to play hard on defense.
I'm just worried about winning and making my teammates better and getting better.
I don't like to fall short. It's tough. Just make the right play when I'm open, and I'll thrust to the rim and be aggressive.
My goal is to protect the basket. Most of the time, I won't block the shot but I'm going to affect the shot or I'm going to affect the way they think.
I always love to help the community, to interact with the kids, with the fans. It doesn't matter who I am on the court, to me it's important.
Defense doesn't sell as much as offense.
For years now, I've used gaming to unwind and relax during the season. It's also how I manage to keep up with my friends when I'm on the road.
When you know where you want to go, you're mentally tough.
I just wanted to keep getting better and better and better, and that's just my mindset.
It's a tremendous amount of fans in France that love basketball, that follow it every day even though the games are at like two or three in the morning.
Obviously, the basketball career doesn't last forever.
Defense doesn't matter enough.
I think when you're a very good defensive team you give yourself a chance every night, on the road, at home, it's a big factor and something to build on.
I mean, defense to me is something that when you watch a game you don't really pay attention to defense unless you're very - unless you're a specialist.
It's a team game.
It's great to communicate as a team.
Goaltending, sometimes it's tough because you're in the air and you say, 'No, no. Don't take the ball.'
I think I learned how it works in the league. When you are outside you don't understand everything, but when you are inside you can know how it works.
When I started to do it with precision, I realized how much setting good screens made us better as a team offensively. It made things easy for me and my teammates.
Some games I'm going to get more blocks or they're going to do more mistakes and give up more baskets but some games I get zero blocks and I affect 20 shots.
You don't want your opponent to score. You don't want your guy to score and once you get better at it, you get used to it, it becomes a mindset. You just try to do it every game.
When I was young, I didn't watch basketball, but I watched 'Space Jam' with Michael Jordan so he was my favorite player.
Obviously I think offensively, spacing for me as a guy that puts a lot of pressure on the rim is going to make it harder on a defense. They're going to have to make tougher decisions, and space is going to be way more open for all the guards, too.
My passion for gaming is well-known among both the Utah Jazz and my team in France.
I've been away from my family even when I was in France.
I'd take the Defensive Player of the Year any day over an All-Star selection. There's only one of these in the whole league every year.
I was watching 'Space Jam' when I was a kid but that was pretty much the only thing I knew about the NBA.
I'm able to impact people's lives by the way I play, but there's so much more things I can do so there is no limit to what I can do.
I don't watch college basketball.
I think when you're a very good defensive team - it's very rare a team wins a championship when you're not a very good defensive team.
I do a lot of things to help my team winning - set screens, roll into the rim, finishing. I think I can be even more than that.
There's a lot of things you don't see on the stats.
I just try to do what I do by getting my teammates open and getting better at finishing and making plays when I can.
I want to be an All-Star. That's my goal. And win a title.
I think I learned basketball. I learned a lot.
First, I'm just trying to set screens for my teammates and then just be aggressive, make the right play.
Sometimes, I see the guys driving and they don't even look at the rim, they just dribble out so it's as good as a block or even better because I'm kind of laughing when I see that. That's what it's about.
Even though I didn't have a lot of material things, I had the love and education and all together a lot of kids don't have the same chances, so the goal is to give some chances to the kids that don't have it.
I'm prepared to guard anyone.
I play every year to try to win.
The more you see, the more you know, the more you feel like you can help others and the more you feel like you can help the team win.
When you know what you want, you know where you want to go.
