About an hour before Oscar Tshiebwe took the floor, fighting for his professional basketball life, the 6-foot-8 center cleared out an unoccupied room just off the court for chapel.

In NBA arenas, there are resources for this sort of activity. A designated area is furnished. A minister is on hand to lead players through prayer before a game.

But in the G League, Tshiebwe was on his own.

So in front of a handful of two-way players, former lottery picks and guys clawing to keep their NBA dreams alive, Tshiebwe just started preaching.

It came from the heart, he said. For 20 minutes, he didn’t touch on hoops. He focused on the future.

“When you finish [basketball], what will you try to do?” he said. “If I finish what the Jazz want from me, they’re not gonna keep me longer. They’re gonna let me go, man. We’re finished with you. So now you’re retired. People say, you retired from your dream. But you didn’t retire from your purpose. So many people have never found their purpose.”

Tshiebwe is not one of those people.

While the former National Player of the Year out of Kentucky has tried to stick on an NBA roster, he’s simultaneously curated a life off the floor.

On planes and buses crisscrossing the country — often stopping in sleepy towns on the NBA’s developmental circuit — Tshiebwe wrote two books, penned sermons and read more than 50 novels a year. His musings mostly centered on his spiritual journey, one that snakes from Congo to West Virginia to Salt Lake City.

So it should come as no surprise that he walked out of the Utah Jazz weight room earlier this month carrying two fresh copies of his latest novel. The two-way player got the call-up to finish Utah’s season, and he was going to make the most of his moment.

“I do a lot of stuff just to touch people. To inspire people,” he said. “If I can focus here [in the NBA], I can reach anyone in the world. I’ve sold 5,000 copies.”

Tshiebwe first started writing during his introduction to the G League. Throughout college, he always wanted to author books, but school and basketball got in the way.

When he went undrafted out of Kentucky, he landed in the Pacers’ developmental system as mostly an afterthought. He appeared in eight NBA games as a rookie. But averaging just five minutes a night, he had plenty of downtime hopping from arena to arena.

“We were traveling a lot and I was playing a lot of video games. I just felt like I’m getting too old for video games. Like what else can I do? So I started reading,” he said.

He began with the works of Myles Munroe, a minister from the Bahamas who moved to the United States to study and preach. And the more Tshiebwe read, the more he wanted to write his own story.

Tshiebwe grew up with seven siblings in Congo. His mother married at 16 and started a family soon after. His father died young, forcing them to move from their small village to a city for safety. It was so difficult, Tshiebwe said, that his mom ran away multiple times throughout his childhood.

Tshiebwe spent most of his days helping his brothers sell bricks for houses. In their spare moments, he’d play soccer on dirt roads. Without a ball, they used a taped-up balloon. It might’ve stayed that way if NBA veteran Bismack Biyombo hadn’t come with a basketball camp one summer.

“Anybody who had tall kids sent them to the camp,” Tshiebwe remembered. “We might have a chance to come to America. For that next year, I worked out two or three times a day, four sometimes, just to practice. I quit school. My mom popped my basketball until I went back to school.”

Tshiebwe typed out his childhood tapestry in his book called “Courage in the Dark.” It chronicled his eventual move from Congo to West Virginia to play high school hoops. He wove in getting lost in the New York airport, accidentally hailing a French-speaking taxi driver and tooling around until dark. He detailed how he unexpectedly rose to college stardom, first for West Virginia and then Kentucky. He led the country in rebounds as a junior and senior.

The throughline, though, was his growing religious beliefs. It laid the groundwork for his second novel, “How to Discover Your Purpose.” That novel is his “favorite,” he said, focusing more on his spiritual tenets.

“He’s just writing all the time,” said teammate Elijah Harkless, who has played with Tshiebwe in the NBA and the G League. “So whenever we got free time, he’s working on the book. He’s doing something to help others. On the plane, beginning recovery in the hot tub, he’s writing.”

The Jazz signed Tshiebwe on a two-way contract in 2024 with a lifeline to get more reps. He played 14 NBA games last year and has appeared in more than a dozen already this season.

But off the court, he’s working on a third book that will be published soon and lining up speaking engagements in other countries. He will give a sermon on television this summer, he said, after years of honing his message in G League arenas before games.

The other night, the Jazz called him up against the Golden State Warriors and he chipped in 10 points in a 119-116 nail-biting win. With cameras pointed at him, star guard Keyonte George yelled over, “Tell ‘em about the book. It’s your moment.”

Tshiebwe didn’t hesitate. But it wasn’t for a shameless promotion.

Instead, he thought about the emails from readers in London, Kentucky and Congo, who relate to his story.

“I cry reading those,” he said.

Maybe he will carve out an NBA role one day. But he’s chasing those letters first.