The Refugee Who Could Be Rookie of the Month
Duop Reath didn’t take the typical path to the NBA
On Monday, a rookie’s name sat atop the Portland Trailblazers’ stat sheet. Center Duop Reath had erupted for 26 points against the Minnesota Timberwolves in only his third ever start. It seemed like a player proving himself as a future building block for a lottery team.
But look deeper, and you’ll find an extraordinary story of determination—a long road to those 26 points.
“A lot of times NBA fans aren’t going to see what it took for a guy to get here,” Reath’s teammate Matisse Thybulle said. “Knowing his story, of what it took…It almost made me emotional watching it.”
Reath was born in 1996 in Waat South Sudan, growing up in the midst of a brutal Civil War. When he was just six, his family fled to Kenya and to Kakuma Refugee Camp, one of the largest refugee camps in the world and at the time, home to around 50,000. Many never make it out of the camp, but after a year, Reath’s parents had secured their family asylum in Australia. “When we first found out that our papers got approved, I didn’t know what Australia was,” Reath remembered.
He also didn’t know much about basketball. But after arriving in Australia, Duop saw kids playing the sport. Once he hit a growth spurt, he spied a flyer advertising a new team. He called the coach, who told him when and where to show up for practice.
One problem: the buses didn’t run to the gym, and Duop’s family didn’t have a car. Crushed, he had to call the coach back. He couldn’t play.
The coach, though, had another idea. She agreed to come pick up Duop for practice and games. “That absolutely changed my life,” Duop said. During high school, he was approached by a coach after a tournament. The coach was from Lee College, a junior college in Texas. He wanted to offer Duop a scholarship.
Duop’s mom didn’t want him to move to another new country, but Duop said, “It was something I felt like I had to do to help my family…I can’t let them down, you know?” When he showed up to play JUCO hoops, he thought he was already playing in the NCAA; he had no idea there was another level to reach.
But soon, Duop reached it anyways. After graduating from Lee, he enrolled at LSU and played for the Tigers. NBA teams didn’t come knocking immediately, however. He graduated in 2018, and left undrafted, started to bounce around to lower-level pro leagues. He played in Serbia, Australia, Lebanon, and China. Every summer, he tried to make his NBA dream come true at the Summer League, but no teams ever bit.
Then the Trailblazers called. Earlier this season, they signed him to a cheap two-way deal, and he made his NBA debut against the Lakers in November. “To be here today is just a big blessing,” he said after the debut.
Most players like Duop would have bounced around the NBA and the G-League. But every time Duop got an opportunity, he made the most of it. In his first start, he put up 8 points and 4 rebounds. In December, he dropped 25-points and 9 boards against the Sacramento Kings. A few weeks ago, the Trailblazers signed him to a three-year, $6 million deal.
And now, due to injuries, Duop has found his way into the starting lineup day after day. For some, the road to the NBA goes straight from AAU tournaments to Cameron Indoor to the Staples Center. For others, it starts at a refugee camp and winds its way from Australia to Baytown, TX, to Baton Rouge to Belgrade and Qingdao and a number of other stops along the way. But the beautiful thing about sports is that the path doesn’t matter. It’s just about what you do with your opportunity when you get it.
"It doesn't feel real," Duop said recently. Then he paused for a moment. “[But it] also felt like that moment was something that was just meant to be. It felt like, 'Okay, you're in your dream right now. Enjoy it. Have fun.”
❤️ In the 2004 rom-com Wimbledon, Kirsten Dunst’s character famously said, “Love means nothing in tennis. Zero. It only means you lose.” Not so fast! Last weekend, lovebirds and tennis stars Katie Boulter and Alex de Minaur were each playing in tune-up tournaments for Indian Wells. De Minaur won his tournament in Acapulco, then caught a 6 a.m. flight to watch his Boulter win her championship in San Diego. How ‘bout that?
🇧🇷 I missed this one when it first came out, but it was flagged by our own Victor Buhler: Atlas Obscura brings us the story of Clésio Moreira dos Santos, one of Brazil’s first openly gay soccer referees. “If I happen to steal the show,” he once said, “it’s because the game is boring.”
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🐾 Longtime readers of The Word will know that I am absolutely obsessed with all things Iditarod (read the story on last year’s champion here). This year’s edition of the famed dogsled race got off to a wild start this week, as a moose charged one contestant. But don’t miss this story from Roman Stubbs about the growing Junior Iditarod and the young mushers trying to keep “The Last Great Race” alive. And if like me, you can’t get enough, it’s always a good time to revisit Brian Phillips’ essential look at the race for Grantland back in 2013. It’s one of my favorite essays ever. “There’s something magical to me, something literally enchanted, about a place that can inhale a clutch of Victorian sailing ships and leave behind a handful of brass buttons and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield. Terrifying, but enchanted,” Phillips writes. “That high white vanishing fog — doesn't it call to you, too?”
🧢 And finally…need a little motivation before work today?Just watch this Little Leaguer’s incredible pregame speech.
