Senegal Basketball Star Tries to Give Back

Out of Africa and back: Senegal basketball star returns as mentor and businessman

By TODD PITMAN Associated Press Writer
DAKAR, Senegal June 23, 2009

He moves across the sand-specked basketball court swathed in the glossy dark blue jersey of his old Japanese pro team, a keepsake from a career that propelled him around the world.

Now back home in Africa, playing among friends, Ndongo Ndiaye is in no hurry to impress anymore. But when a crosscourt pass comes his way, time stands still for a moment.

The 7-foot-1 Senegalese hoop star snatches the ball from the air and slams it home in one deft motion — just like the old days.

Not long ago, Ndiaye lived the life of a professional international athlete, scoring kudos, cash and respect on courts from the U.S. to Lebanon to Japan.

Plucked from teenage obscurity by an American scout, he turned basketball into a 14-year trek across the globe, experiencing things along the way that people in his tiny West African village never had, from hot showers to the finest sashimi and sake.

Earlier this year, Ndiaye moved back to Dakar to start a new career in business, imbued with a fresh perspective on the world. But the nation he left is unchanged. It's still full of kids just like he was once: naive and inexperienced, desperate to escape the continent's crushing poverty and unemployment.

They are there in the basketball academy in Senegal's interior that he visits, the promising high school students hoping for professional careers in the West. They are there, sometimes, on his doorstep, the young kids who cannot afford school, who may never play the game well.

"Basketball helped me to have an education, see new things, travel, make a little bit of money," Ndiaye said in an interview. "And the best thing I can do with that is come back here and help."

The number of African players in the United States has been climbing significantly in recent years. The Associated Press counted more than 170 of them in U.S. junior colleges and colleges last season.

With many more pursuing the great American hoop dream, Ndiaye's story offers a glimpse of what it takes to break out — a combination of talent, work, timing and flexibility.

"The potential in this country is unbelievable as far as basketball," Ndiaye said of his native Senegal. "But most kids here are never given a chance."

———

When Ndiaye was growing up in Sadio, a village some 130 miles east of Dakar, everyone he knew seemed to have the same goal. "Get out of this country and start a new life," he recalled.

The aim: find a job, make enough money to come back, support your family and friends.

He had never heard of basketball before. In Sadio, there were no courts or even TV.

The first time he picked up a basketball was when he went to high school in Dakar at the age of 16.

Already a head taller than his peers, Ndiaye stood out. Boys teased him. Girls wouldn't have anything to do with him. The alienation proved advantageous, though. With little else to do, he was soon playing — and improving — every day.

He joined the high school team, and in his senior year, an American recruiter from the University of Maine showed up.

The man looked at Ndiaye and said, "Holy God, you're 7-foot-tall!" Ndiaye recounted. "Why don't you try out?"

The recruiter left, and two weeks later called — offering a one-year scholarship to a U.S. prep school where Ndiaye could learn English and try his chances at college.

The prospect was daunting. America, from the movies he'd seen, appeared to be a violent frontierland.

"I thought I'd be armed, live with black gangster-rappers or white cowboys," Ndiaye said.

Before leaving, his father handed him a good luck charm, a small pouch made of goatskin to be wrapped around the waist on a thin string. It contained a prayer written in Arabic — "to protect me against guns," Ndiaye shrugged with a smile.

In the fall of 1995, Ndiaye boarded a plane for the first time in his life. Soon, he was gazing down at the world from above the clouds.

———

Instead of Wild West gunbattles and gangland drive-bys, the Senegalese teen discovered quiet American suburbia and lived in a dorm on the campus of Suffield Academy, a private Connecticut prep school founded in 1833.

He fell in love with it, and America.

It was everything Senegal was not. The cars were big. The houses were big. The roads were trash-free and paved. And unlike Senegal's dry and dusty climate, greenery was omnipresent — in neatly trimmed lawns, in lush swaths of treetops.

His coach took him shopping for clothes — the school dress code required blue blazers and khaki pants — and tied his tie each morning because Ndiaye didn't know how.

He took his first shower with hot-running water. And then, in the campus dining hall, he spied something bizarre: a drink dispenser filled with cold milk.

"They told me you don't have to drink it all, if you need more, it's still gonna be there," he said. "But I was hungry. My mind was hungry. It was all so overwhelming."

Ndiaye gulped down five glasses at each meal one day. By nightfall, he was in bed with stomach pains so bad, he never tasted milk again.

Ndiaye felt no racism. But people sometimes stared or joked at his height. When they did, he turned their comments into a conversation-starter, winning instant friends with a capacious smile and a warm personality.

He deciphered the world by looking and listening. He barely spoke English, and history class sounded more like gibberish. After a few months, though, he began to understand, and excel.

He won a basketball scholarship to Providence, which recruited him to play center. Wanting more time on the court, he transferred to Delaware in his sophomore year.

By the time he graduated in 2000 with a degree in business administration, he was good enough to take a shot at the NBA.

He signed for a two-week training camp with the San Antonio Spurs. It paid $25,000, and put him "right up there in heaven," he said.

The NBA dream, however, quickly crashed. Ndiaye was cut and for a time, crushed. But he settled for the next-best thing: the minor-league American Basketball Association. He helped the Detroit Dogs to victory in the nascent league's first-ever championship, and realized second-best wasn't so bad.

"I was doing something I loved, and getting paid for it," he said.