Luguentz Dort’s path to the playoffs did not begin with a draft-night celebration or a fast track to the NBA. It started in Montreal, where he was born and raised in Montréal-Nord, and carried through a year at Arizona State before he went undrafted in 2019.
Now 27 and a 6-foot-4 defensive force for Oklahoma City, Dort is part of a Thunder team that clinched the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference for the third straight season with a 64-18 record and finished with the NBA’s top-ranked defense at a 106.5 rating. Last season, he was named to the All-Defensive First Team and finished fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting, a recognition that matches the role he has carved out as the team’s primary stopper.
Ahead of the playoffs, Dort said, “My journey wasn’t easy,” and pointed to the rare path he took from Montreal to the league. “There’s not a lot of kids that make it to the NBA from Montreal, so just that step was big,” he said, adding that the Thunder and executive vice president and general manager Sam Presti trusted him after he went undrafted and gave him a chance.
That trust has become the foundation for what Oklahoma City has built around him. Dort’s relentless defense fits a roster that leaned on that side of the floor all season, and the Thunder enter the postseason with the best defensive rating in the league and the pressure that comes with being the West’s top seed again.
His story reaches beyond the court. Dort was born to parents who immigrated from Haiti to Canada in their 20s, and he said watching what they went through shaped his outlook. “Seeing everything they had to go through to start a new life, I learned that everything has to be earned through hard work. Nothing’s given. Words I live by,” he said. “Basketball was my way out.”
That outlook now drives his work off the floor as well. Dort set up The Maizon Dort Foundation to support underserved communities in Montreal, Oklahoma City and central Arizona, saying his biggest goal when he reached the league was to go back to his community and give back. “I didn’t think I would be in this position one day,” he said. “And I feel like when I was young, I wish I would have been part of somebody’s foundation, or community events that could stick with me for the rest of my life.”
The Thunder have the record and the rankings to justify their place at the top, but Dort gives that run a hard edge that has stayed constant from Montreal to the NBA playoffs. He has spent years stepping over the same blocks he once described, and now he arrives at the postseason as one of the players Oklahoma City can least afford to lose.
