The making of Jarred Vanderbilt, the Lakers Dennis Rodman in training

Midway through the third quarter of a Lakers–Mavericks game in Dallas in late February, Jarred Vanderbilt, hounding Luka Dončić near half court, quickly shifts his hips as he reads the ensuing give-and-go action.

As Dončić passes to Tim Hardaway Jr. on the left wing, and Hardaway shovels the ball back to Dončić, Vanderbilt deflects the pass with his 7-foot-1 wingspan. Despite Dončić having inside position to the loose ball, Vanderbilt sneaks past him to tip the ball away, outruns him to save the ball from going out of bounds and launches an over-his-shoulder pass to streaking teammate Troy Brown Jr. for a breakaway layup.

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“The ubiquity of Vanderbilt,” shouts ABC’s Mark Jones on the play-by-play, “is really profound right now. He’s everywhere.”

“If you were at the Laker building, this place would be on fire,” analyst Doris Burke proclaims over the replay a minute later.

The swipe and assist from Vanderbilt 🙌🏾 pic.twitter.com/BaotgxcBbp

— NBA TV (@NBATV) February 26, 2023

The sequence, as well as his several key plays just before it, exemplifies Vanderbilt’s rare blend of length, athleticism, IQ, energy and instincts. He plays with an uncommon relentlessness. Crashing the offensive glass. Tipping passes and dribbles. Pressuring ballhandlers. Navigating screens. Switching and rotating at the precise moment — not a beat too early or late. The few mistakes he makes are aggressive ones coaches can live with.

Though Vanderbilt is not the most well-known player among the many trade-deadline additions the Lakers made, he has become one of the central figures in the team’s second-half turnaround. As the Lakers posted the best record in the West and the second-best defense in the league since Feb. 11, Vanderbilt fit in as an ideal frontcourt complement to LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

Vanderbilt is also imprinting his all-out style on the rest of the team. Lakers coach Darvin Ham calls him the team’s “Energizer Bunny.” Austin Reaves says he’s “the best defender in the NBA.” D’Angelo Russell, reunited with Vanderbilt after the two were teammates in Minnesota from 2020 to 2022, goes one step further.

“Vando’s making all these Dennis Rodman plays for us,” he says.

For Vanderbilt, playing hard is a skill honed like any other.

“There’s a lot that goes into it,” Vanderbilt told The Athletic. “It’s energy, but it’s being smart with it too. Like, I know who I can pick up. I know when to back up. I know, just reading the scouting report, when I can shoot the gaps and try to go for a steal. Going certain directions on whoever the player is. So it’s a lot of film and studying that goes into it as well.”

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But where does he get the drive to play hard? The answer has everything to do with what he’s overcome to get here. Multiple foot injuries in high school. A forced reinvention in college. Three NBA trades in which he was a mere throw-in, taking him from Denver to Minnesota to Utah and now to L.A. over the course of three seasons.

“People always asking him, like, why do you play so hard?” says Jamal Vanderbilt, Jarred’s older brother and manager. “Because the game was taken away from him, you know?”

Kentucky head coach John Calipari was the first person to see shades of Rodman in Vanderbilt’s game.

After suffering a left foot injury in late September 2017, Vanderbilt, a five-star recruit who by now had fallen behind his fellow blue-chip teammates in the pecking order, returned to the Kentucky lineup three months and 17 games into the 2017-18 NCAA regular season. Before his debut, Vanderbilt was pulled aside by Calipari, who delivered a message. The Wildcats, Cal said, needed Vanderbilt to come off the bench and embrace an energy role focusing more on defense, rebounding and toughness.

“‘It’s hard to put a guy in the game and change up the whole system of what they’ve been doing for 20 games almost,’” Calipari told Jarred, according to Jamal. “‘You just got to find a way to fit in.’”

Wenyen Gabriel, Vanderbilt’s former teammate at Kentucky and current teammate with the Lakers, remembers Calipari pushing Vanderbilt to lean into his strengths.

“What are you really, really good at?” Calipari asked Vanderbilt. “Let’s focus and narrow down on that.”

Many five-star recruits would have been upset, but Vanderbilt, desperate to get back on the floor and rebuild his draft stock, embraced the mentality shift. Before a conference matchup against Alabama, Calipari told Vanderbilt to, “Go be Dennis Rodman.” Vanderbilt responded with 11 points, a team-high nine rebounds and a team-high two blocks in 19 minutes in an 81-71 Kentucky victory.

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“I knew who (Vanderbilt) was back high school,” Gabriel told The Athletic. “He brought the ball up most of the time. When he got to play with us, he was trying to find a role, a niche. … He was watching to see how he could help our team win (when he was injured). Energy was something he brought that not everyone could bring.”

Back then, Vanderbilt, a Houston, Texas, native, was a five-star prospect, McDonald’s All-American and top-15 recruit. He played like a left-handed point forward, in the mold of Lamar Odom or a young Ben Simmons.

But the two massive growth spurts that made his skill set rare — he grew from 5-foot-10 to 6-foot-4 as he transitioned to high school, and then again to 6-foot-8 — also put undue stress on his lithe frame. He broke his foot twice — once in his junior year and once in his senior year — opting to have surgery the second time and having a screw implanted to stabilize it. Then he broke his foot a third time at Kentucky.

The injuries took a toll on Vanderbilt’s psyche. He comes from an athletic family, one that never dealt with serious, recurring injuries like his before.

“It was hard to stay positive sometimes,” Jamal Vanderbilt admits.

Nonetheless, Vanderbilt’s time at Kentucky was a formative experience that changed the trajectory of his career. With a loaded roster featuring six other future NBA players — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Kevin Knox, Hamidou Diallo, P.J. Washington, Gabriel and Nick Richards — Vanderbilt adjusted to his team’s needs and sharpened his off-ball skills. After he was cleared to return, he played in 14 games, averaging 5.9 points, 7.9 rebounds and 0.8 blocks. But just as he was starting to gain momentum, he injured his ankle in a late-season practice and missed the SEC and NCAA tournaments.

“I missed three or four years of just basketball where I could just develop and become the player I am,” he said.

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Vanderbilt was now in a pickle. For much of his high school tenure, and even entering Kentucky, he was projected as a first-round pick, if not a lottery prospect. But the uncertainty regarding how his feet would recover, and if he could stay healthy long term, threw his NBA future into doubt.

Nevertheless, Calipari advised Vanderbilt to enter the draft. So with no assurances that he would stay healthy if he returned to school, Vanderbilt decided to bet on himself and solve his injury problem once and for all. Instead of hobbling through pre-draft workouts, Vanderbilt decided to have a bone graft on his left foot to strengthen the area that had been hindering him. When told by his doctors that there was an increased chance the same procedure would eventually be needed on his right foot too, Vanderbilt decided to have the surgery on both feet then rather than later. For nearly six months, Vanderbilt was immobilized, unable to work out or interview and only able to transport himself with a scooter.

In the end, Vanderbilt’s decision to go under the knife cost him a chance at being a first-rounder but did not end his NBA dream. The Houston Rockets were infatuated with his game and potential, and they planned on drafting him if he fell to them at No. 46. But the Denver Nuggets got word of Houston’s plans and traded with the Orlando Magic to acquire the No. 41 pick to draft Vanderbilt.

With his childhood dream now actualized, Vanderbilt made a vow to himself. As long as he was healthy enough to play, he was going to lean all the way in.

“Having that time off, like three or four years of not playing basketball, it made me really appreciate the game and value how much it is and how much it means to me,” he says now. “So, anytime I go out here, I just want to go out and play every game like it’s my last.”

As Vanderbilt walks down the hallway from the Minnesota Timberwolves’ visiting locker room to the news conference room after a critical Lakers win March 31, a seated Timberwolves staffer makes a passing remark.

“They should’ve never given up on you,” the staffer says.

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“Aye, man, s—,” Vanderbilt responds. “That’s what they do around here.”

Vanderbilt thought he finally had a home in Minnesota. After arriving two seasons earlier as a throw-in in a four-team trade in which the Timberwolves also acquired Malik Beasley and Juancho Hernangómez, Vanderbilt had mastered the art of playing hard without shooting 3s. He even earned some All-Defense buzz as the Timberwolves earned the No. 7 seed and returned to the playoffs for just the second time since 2004.

“He fits in almost anywhere,” Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch says now. “He does all the things that winning teams need. He plays hard. He makes extra possessions happen. He guards whoever you ask him to guard. He’s unselfish. He knows his role.”

But none of those qualities stopped Vanderbilt from again being a throw-in to a larger trade. This time, the Timberwolves included him in their Rudy Gobert blockbuster deal with the Jazz. And Vanderbilt knew he wouldn’t be long for Utah, either.

“He knew he wasn’t the future there,” Jamal Vanderbilt says. “They were still rebuilding. … I think the major thing was he just wasn’t sure if he had a home there.”

By now, the league was at least noticing Vanderbilt’s potential value. He was a hot commodity at the trade deadline, with multiple teams reaching out to the Jazz in pursuit of him.

Then, Vanderbilt heard the Lakers were interested after their pursuit of Kyrie Irving fell through. His ties to the organization and city ran deep: he spends his summers working out in Los Angeles and joined Klutch Sports — the same agency that reps James, Davis and several other Lakers players — last summer. and nearly signed with current vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka during the latter’s agent days. His brother deemed the possibility of going to the Lakers a “new life, new beginning.”

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Vanderbilt was again a mere piece in a larger deal, with Russell Westbrook and D’Angelo Russell the two main headliners in the three-team trade between the Timberwolves, Jazz and Lakers on Feb. 8. But he has not played like a mere throw-in since arriving in L.A.

While Vanderbilt’s defensive impact doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet — he isn’t a high blocks or steals defender — his teammates and coaches are quick to point out that his presence has almost single-handedly elevated their defense from below-average to a league-best level. Before Vanderbilt’s arrival, the Lakers were 20th in defensive rating.

Vanderbilt’s perimeter shooting remains a work in progress (29.6 percent on 1.2 3-point attempts per game), and has occasionally reduced his court time as teams have roamed off him to stymie L.A.’s offense. But Vanderbilt has learned and continued to fine-tune ways to use an opposing defense’s tactics against them.

“He’s cutting or he’s setting back screens,” Russell told The Athletic. “He’s making things happen, in that sense. And he’s making the 3 more.”

“His energy, his effort alone, he knows where to be on every single possession,” James adds. “And he knows how to utilize teams not accounting for him as an offensive threat.”

He’s even begun to lean into the Rodman comparisons off the floor, from the flashy way he dresses to his insistence on being called “Vando” instead of “Vandy,” a subtle difference he came up with in high school to be different. (Jamal says the family nickname is Vandy.)

“Growing up, I wasn’t idolizing my game after Dennis Rodman,” Vanderbilt says, again invoking the Hall of Famer’s name. “But my role, since I’ve been in the NBA, is pretty much trying to simulate what he did. … Real basketball minds and real basketball players, they don’t underestimate that value of the game.”

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Vanderbilt has a $4.7 million team option for next season, one the Lakers plan on exercising. He’s hopeful he can put down roots in Los Angeles as part of what he deems a “high-caliber organization.”

But no matter what happens, Vanderbilt, now seven years removed from his initial foot injury and five years from his latest break and surgeries, will use the memory of the valuable time he missed to fuel an insatiable desire to make the most of the 48 minutes in front of him.

“It drives a chip on my shoulder,” he says. “I feel like I had some catching up to do, especially being in a position where I started at.”

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(Illustration by Ray Orr / The Athletic. Photos: Amanda Loman, Harry How, Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)

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