The ABA didn't pay enough, though, so Ndiaye sought more lucrative salaries with professional teams outside of the U.S., "living out of a suitcase" in countries as far-flung as Japan, Lebanon, France, Syria, Tunisia, Angola and Saudi Arabia. The pay was much less than NBA standards but still allowed for a comfortable living.

"Basketball was the same everywhere, but every country was a new experience," he said. "You play a few hours a day and the rest of the time you learn about a new culture, a new religion, how to live with other people. That's where I really grew up as a person."

And most important, perhaps, Ndiaye felt he had become a man.

He could take care of himself, so he bought himself clothes, shoes, a gold necklace.

He could take care of others, so he sent money home.

In 2001, he built an eight-bedroom house for his mother and family. A year later, he got married to a Senegalese woman he met through a friend and started a family

Pro sports is a young man's game, and after one last pro stint in Saudi Arabia, Ndiaye finally moved home in February to settle down.

His countrymen, he noticed, regarded him differently than before.

"When you come back with money in your pocket, people expect that now you can help them out," he said. "You have a certain status in your family. You have respect. People love you more."

These days, Ndiaye sits in the living room of his small Dakar apartment on a brown leather couch. There is a large flat-screen TV, a Persian rug, gold-colored curtains, and in his hand, a small, sweet cup of coffee.

A poster on the wall shows him staring fiercely ahead with the Japanese team Fukuoka Rizing, who he played with in 2007-08. He had enjoyed a special status there — he was the league's tallest player.

At home, Ndiaye exudes an American-style, can-do spirit of entrepreneurialism.

He keeps an apartment in Delaware. And the apartment he owns in Dakar is part of a complex he is building to rent out.

He fiddles with his cell phone and pulls up the number of Senegal's most popular traditional wrestler, a muscle-bound man named Tyson, and says he wants to promote him stateside.

He recounts Senegal's woes — corruption, trash, lack of development — and expounds on improving agricultural production.

He's gotten involved in politics and goes to opposition party meetings, something he never thought he'd do.

"We are not a poor continent. But we live very poorly because of the way we behave and handle things," he said. "I want to see what I can do to help, and I think the best way is to change people's mentality."

He marvels at the American concept of personal responsibility, the unity of Japanese society, and wonders why there is so much trash in Dakar's streets.

Basketball "opened my eyes and allowed me to see things from a different perspective," Ndiaye said. "I've seen how other people live, how other governments function, and I always say, why not us?"

A few years ago, Ndiaye spotted the legs and head of a young mechanic sticking out from under a car in the Senegalese town of Thies