The Rise Of Basketball In Mali

Without looking, could you name an NBA basketball player from Mali?

It is not impossible, but it sure is difficult. Specifically, to date, there have been only two. And currently, there are zero.

While he is now playing in Japan, University of Kansas alumnus Cheick Diallo had appeared in five of the previous six seasons, splitting time between the Phoenix Suns, Detroit Pistons and New Orleans Pelicans. And after being drafted 36th overall in 2000, seven-foot centre Soumalia Samake managed a combined 47 games and 303 minutes of NBA action across four seasons.

Beyond them, though, things quickly get obscure.

If one were to count draftees, there was a third; Ousmane Cisse. The once-coveted high school prospect – who had averaged nearly a triple-double with blocks in high school, an eye-opening line which held a special allure back in a nascent internet era before the widespread dissemination of game tape – was drafted 47th overall in the 2001 Draft by the Denver Nuggets in lieu of attending college. But Cisse never played in the NBA, and spent most of his short professional career in Israel.

Thereafter, it gets very hard to find anyone who even got close. Long term French league stalwart Amara Sy recorded three summer league appearances with the L.A. Clippers (2007), San Antonio Spurs (2008) and Dallas Mavericks (2010), with a two-month D-League stint in between, but he also never made a full NBA roster. Former Arizona Wildcats forward Mohammed Tangara also went to summer league with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2009, but was cut before it started, while West Virginia graduate Sagaba Konate came close with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, appearing in training camp and one preseason game before being one of their last cuts.

There were also G-League contracts for the similarly-named national team guard Cheikh Diallo, and a few minutes in the minors for athletic swingman Boubacar Moungoro. And that is about it.

Malian men’s basketball, however, is in the ascendency. The story of Konate may be repeated in coming seasons, as there are 24 Malians currently playing Division I college basketball, most of whom are defensive-minded frontcourt players like he. And it is on the back of this up-and-coming generation that Mali pulled off one of the surprises of the century.

The Malian men’s national team has historically not been competitive on the African scene. Despite qualifying 20 times for the AfroBasket championship out of a possible 30, they have only once finished in the medals (a bronze back in 1972), they have never qualified for an Olympics nor a FIBA World Championship, and nor have they ever become especially close. And while the women’s team has had greater success – four bronzes, two silvers and a gold in their AfroBasket history, two World Cup appearances and one Olympic berth back in 2008 – the men’s team ranks a lowly 73rd on the world stage.

Having been removed from the World Cup 2023 qualifiers due to multiple forfeited games through strike action over pay, and going winless in the most recent 2021 edition of AfroBasket, things seem to be going forwards rather than backwards. Which made it all the more remarkable that in 2019, in only their fourth-ever appearance, the country’s under-19 men’s team made it all the way to the final. On the way, they beat Latvia, Canada, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and France, and while they eventually lost the final game to a USA team featuring Evan Mobley, Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green, Tyrese Haliburton and others, they held their own in doing so.

Mali’s roster in that tournament featured several of the same names that are now peppered throughout Division I. In particular, starting centre Oumar Ballo has followed Tangara’s lead and joined Arizona, where he has grown into one of the college game’s best big men and a legitimate NBA prospect. The Drame twins, Fousseyni and Hassan, are now the starting forward duo at La Salle, alongside a third Malian big, Mamadou Doucoure. And at UMass Lowell, after two transfers, Karim Coulibaly has become the best player in the America East conference.

The NCAA has become a consistent second pipeline for Malian basketball prospects, who previously almost always went through the French league system, and with NFaly Dante (Oregon), Adama Sanogo (Connecticut) and Fousseyni Traore (BYU) all becoming legitimate stars at quality programs, there is a pipeline of quality Malian prospects on American shores that has not been seen before.

Notwithstanding the politics and the disarray encompassing the senior men’s program currently, the U-19 championship silver medal need not have been a fluke. For now, there still exist only two Malian players in NBA history, or three if you opt for the more generous classification system. But where once there was only one Amara Sy, there may soon be about eight of them, peppered throughout the best non-NBA leagues in the world. And from that baseline, perhaps more NBA talent can emerge, perhaps as soon as Ballo.