[Scottoant93Participant]

Bobcats’ rookie Biyombo’s journey to the NBA anything but typical
By Scott Fowler
[email protected]
Posted: Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012
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Scott Fowler
Scott Fowler
Scott Fowler is a national award-winning sports columnist for The Charlotte Observer.
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Charlotte’s Bismack Biyombo puts up a shot over Miami’s Chris Bosh, left, at Time Warner Cable Arena on Dec. 28, 2011. Biyombo, 19, is the youngest player in the NBA and has drawn comparisons to hall of famer Hakeem Olajuwon. David T. Foster III – [email protected]
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Bismack Biyombo is the youngest active player in the NBA. He also seems to be one of its oldest souls.

Biyombo, 19, has taken one of the strangest routes ever into the league — from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Yemen to Spain to Charlotte. The Bobcats selected him No. 7 overall in the NBA draft in June — trading up to get a teenager hardly anyone had heard of six months before — and have bet millions that the 6-foot-9 post player with the 7-foot-7 wingspan will become one of this struggling franchise’s cornerstones.

For now, Biyombo is a backup center on a Bobcats team that may be the worst in the NBA. But Bobcats owner Michael Jordan has compared Biyombo to a young Hakeem Olajuwon. General manager Rod Higgins believes Biyombo could one day play defense and block shots like Ben Wallace.

“It’s just crazy when I look back now,” Biyombo said. “I have come a long way. A long, long way.”

Biyombo can seem young. His infectious laugh can often be heard bouncing off the walls at Time Warner Cable Arena. He gets a kick out of locker room horseplay and often bounds around at practice like a puppy.

And he can seem old. He is the eldest of seven children and speaks longingly of his brothers and sisters — he hasn’t been back to Africa since before the June NBA draft. He is the rare NBA player who doesn’t like video games because he believes he has outgrown them.

“I cannot play video games anymore,” Biyombo said. “I’d rather look something up on the Internet and learn something. Or read a book.”

Rich Sheubrooks, now an international scout for the Utah Jazz, worked for the Bobcats in a similar capacity when he discovered Biyombo playing in Spain a year ago.

“When I first saw him,” Sheubrooks said, “I thought he looked like Dwight Howard. His muscle definition is similar. He was on a junior-level team at one point in Spain, and that looked like Shaq playing on a high school team. What I didn’t know then was that he also has this maturity that just isn’t typical — certainly not among American players. Bismack has some special qualities you just don’t see much at his age. He wants to reach out and bring people together. He’s always going around telling people ‘Thank you’ for what they have done for him. It’s refreshing.”

At age 16, Biyombo had already dropped out of school and was playing professional basketball in Yemen. He lived alone. When he wasn’t at the gym, he spent time at the movies, on the Internet and trying to learn Arabic (he speaks four languages fluently but could never master that one).

Biyombo got homesick then — and still gets homesick occasionally now. But his determination has always been a defining characteristic.

When I called the Congo and asked Biyombo’s father in a telephone interview to describe his son, Francois Biyombo kept coming back to one word in French. ” Combattant,” he said.

Bismack Biyombo had to translate for most of his father’s interview, but I knew what that word meant.

Fighter.

Building from scratch

The Bobcats need that fighting spirit right now, but Biyombo has been of limited help so far.

It is true that Biyombo is the Bobcats’ toughest player, but he is incredibly raw. He had one great game against Orlando and Howard this month — 11 points, 10 rebounds, four blocks — but has also shown a number of offensive deficiencies. His per-game averages are modest: 13 minutes, 3.1 points, 3.6 rebounds and 1.6 blocks.

The team is trying to take his natural talent and build his basketball knowledge starting almost from scratch. Much of that task has fallen to assistant coach Rob Werdann, a former St. John’s collegiate star and longtime NBA assistant who has taken on Biyombo as his project.

“He’s such a genuine guy,” Werdann said. “He’s blatantly honest. He knows what he knows, and what he doesn’t know, he doesn’t try to pretend. There’s this purity about him. He’s so young, and he likes goofing around with his buddies. But he also talks to me about trying to somehow provide the same opportunity for the kids of the Congo that he had after basketball is over. That’s not something you usually hear from a 19-year-old kid. They’re not thinking about those sorts of things.”

Werdann does individual drills with Biyombo where Biyombo has to repeatedly catch the ball one-handed in the paint from a variety of angles. The two also sometimes stand only two feet away and stare each other in the eye. Then Werdann repeatedly flicks basketballs at Biyombo, who has to use his peripheral vision to catch them one-handed.

Defense is less of a problem, but Biyombo needs help there, too. “One on one, he can defend anybody in this league because he’s got such great timing,” Werdann said. “But understanding help defense — what to do and when to move on the weakside — that’s a whole different story.”

Said head coach Paul Silas: “Biz had to learn the plays first. The defensive concepts. Where am I supposed to be? That kind of thing. But I think in a couple of years he’s going to be a really good player for this team. He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve seen.”

‘Unless you kill me’

When Biyombo was born, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was still called Zaire. The oldest of Francois Biyombo and Francoise Ngoiy’s seven children, he grew up in a two-parent, middle-class household. The family still lives in Lubumbashi — a large city of 1.7 million people in the heart of Africa that is known for copper mining.

Francois Biyombo has worked for the government and now works for various charities in the area. He loves the letter “B,” as evidenced by the names he gave his children: Bismack, Billy, Biska, Bikim, Bimeline, Bikeline and Bimela. The first four children were boys — one is almost as tall as Bismack at age 14 — and the last three are girls. Bimela, the youngest, is now six years old.

Bismack at first was drawn to soccer, the country’s No. 1 sport. He was, of course, a fine defender. But as he grew taller, he grew more interested in basketball.

When his oldest son was nine, Francois Biyombo put up a homemade basketball goal in the backyard — it had no net and a wooden backboard cobbled together from 13 thin pieces of wood. “People were saying, ‘That’s a crazy family,'” Francois recalled. “They kept asking, ‘Why did you put a basket up there?'”

Biyombo eventually got hooked by the sport and that backyard goal looming over the uneven ground below. “I would get up sometimes at 6 a.m., go outside and start dribbling,” he said. “My dad would wake up and yell outside, ‘Go back to sleep!’ Then my Mom would say, ‘You are the one who put the goal in. Let him have fun.'”

Biyombo said his father was hard on him as a youth, intent on his son forging a better life. He made him take extra English classes after school, for instance. “I cannot thank my parents enough for that now,” Biyombo said. “But I did not like it at the time.”

Biyombo mostly was a good student, he said, but was once temporarily kicked out of school for concentrating too much on basketball and not enough on schoolwork. His father went to the school and worked out a deal where Biyombo would take a summer class and return to his studies.

By the time he was 14, Biyombo was good enough at basketball to be playing not only for a school team but also for a semi-pro team in the area. He was the youngest player on the pro squad and some of the other players resented him.

“Guys started fighting me,” Biyombo said. “Guys got fined for that. Guys got suspended for that. And I never quit. I was like ‘Man, you can kick me today. You can fight me today. And the next day I’m going to come back and you’ll have to fight me again. I’m coming back unless you kill me.'”

That was also the year Biyombo was first asked to go play in Yemen for money. His father said no — he was too young.

Two years later, his father said yes to the same offer. Biyombo told no one he was going except for his family and traveled to Yemen.

A lottery pick in one night

Biyombo played well during his one season in Yemen, but he was lonely. “I lived by myself,” Biyombo said. “I had the cinema, the Internet and books. That was it.”

Biyombo’s talent was again noticed at a youth tournament. At age 17, he was hired to play by the Spanish team Fuenlabrada.

Biyombo moved up relatively quickly in the Spanish team’s farm system — from a youth team to the fourth-division squad and, finally, to the club’s top team. It was there in a game near Barcelona that Sheubrooks, the scout, saw Biyombo play for the first time.

“He was really aggressive and did a lot of things I thought would transfer to the NBA with the rebounding and shot-blocking,” Sheubrooks said.

Through his longtime connections with Nike, Sheubrooks each year helps build the international youth squad that takes on an American all-star high school team each April at the Nike Hoops Summit. The 2011 game was held in April in Portland, Ore. About 100 NBA scouts and front-office officials looked on, including then-Portland general manager Rich Cho (now the No. 2 man in the Bobcats’ front office).

Biyombo was dominant inside in the game, posting the first triple-double in the event’s history (12 points, 11 rebounds and 10 blocks). He was no secret to anyone anymore. Some NBA scouts privately questioned to Sports Illustrated that week if Biyombo was actually older than 18, since his body was more fully developed than most of his peers. Biyombo has long insisted his birth date is Aug. 28, 1992, and no proof has ever been offered to contradict that.

Biyombo went from a scouting secret to a surefire first-round pick in that one night. He impressed people with his maturity — observers say he naturally became the leader of the World squad within two days — but mostly with his defense.

“Bismack kind of blew up in that game with the triple-double,” Bobcats general manager Rod Higgins said. “I’m sure before that game all the rest of the league knew about him, but after that game he became a lottery prospect.”

73 dunks… and counting

Biyombo worked out for only three NBA teams before the draft — Detroit (No. 8 pick), Toronto (No. 5 pick) and Charlotte (at the time holding the No. 9 and No. 19 picks).

In the Bobcats’ workout, he was asked to dunk the ball as many times as he could in a row. Most big men can do it about 30 times before they exhaust themselves. Biyombo did it 73 times until Silas finally told him to stop.

“He could have gotten to 100,” Silas said.

The Bobcats wanted to acquire an extra draft pick and get a big man — either Biyombo or Lithuanian center Jonas Valanciunas.

“The rumors we heard were that Toronto at five and Detroit at eight had interest in Biyombo,” Higgins said. “We decided to try and acquire that seventh pick to get ahead of Detroit.”

By the morning of the draft, Higgins and Jordan had in place one of the biggest trades in Bobcats’ history — a three-team deal that got them the No. 7 pick and forward Corey Maggette but shipped out their No. 19 pick, backup point guard Shaun Livingston and the team’s leading scorer, Stephen Jackson.

The Bobcats made more calls the day of the draft, wondering if the No. 7 and No. 9 picks could be packaged for an even higher selection. But they found no other deal they wanted. Toronto took Valanciunas at No. 5 and Charlotte took Biyombo at No. 7 and guard Kemba Walker at No. 9.

“We were very happy,” Higgins said.

There remained one legal entanglement — Biyombo was still under contract to his Spanish team. That situation was complicated by the NBA lockout, which didn’t allow the Bobcats to get involved early.

Biyombo changed agents during the process, and it seemed for awhile that he might be in danger of sitting out the season. But eventually, a settlement was reached. Fuenlabrada accepted a $1.5-million settlement, with $525,000 to be paid by the Bobcats and the rest by Biyombo.

Biyombo was just glad to get the matter behind him and said he doesn’t regret the lost money. “I’m living my dream,” Biyombo said. “Plus I’m getting paid. Which is crazy.”

‘Where is all the trash?’

Biyombo is something of a one-man Rosetta Stone. We conducted multiple interviews in English for this story — he speaks it fluently, just like he speaks French, Spanish and an African dialect.

He translated my interview with his father, who speaks French. He also speaks French with teammate Boris Diaw and Spanish with teammate Eduardo Najera.

Biyombo is an admitted neat freak who tidies his own place every day. He said he loves Charlotte for one reason above all, which he remembers every day when he walks from his uptown apartment to Time Warner Cable Arena to go to work.

“Charlotte is so clean!” Biyombo said. “I keep wondering, where is all the trash? It is beautiful.”

Biyombo’s selection in the draft was an out-of-the-box choice that could ultimately make or break the Bobcats. The Bobcats have made some horrible lottery picks before (Sean May and Adam Morrison), which is a big part of the reason the team has never won a single playoff game.

But if the Bobcats add a couple more pieces and Biyombo becomes a standout, things could be different. Very different.

When I asked Biyombo “How good can you be?” he laughed. It appeared as if he was going to say something brash, then thought better of it.

He wanted us to wait a moment. So we did, just like the Bobcats will do as he grows into the player and man he will become.

“I can’t really promise people it’s going to be like this or that,” Biyombo said. “The only thing I can tell people is keep watching games. I will keep working.

“Let time talk.”

Youngest players in the NBA

At age 19 and five months, Charlotte’s Biyombo is the youngest active player in the NBA. The five youngest:

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/28/2967795/anything.html#storylink=cpy
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/28/2967795/anything.html

[GottaBeTheShoesParticipant]

This article makes me want Biyombo to succeed in the Nba now.  I didn’t really much care before.

[Scottoant93Participant]

Yeah i agree i will admit though i was calling him hasheem thabeet 2.0 before the draft(never seen him play now or before just an assumption). but this was an interesting story and makes you want him to succeed as you said.. Interesting to see him develop

[NashyMingParticipant]

As a Raptors fan, I was mildly disappointed that we didn’t get Bismack Biyombo with the 5th pick.

I am certainly happy with Jonas Valanciunas, but I just really liked Biyombo and at the time I expected the Cavs would take Valanciunas with the 4th pick so I read a lot about Biyombo.  When the Cavs picked Tristan Thompson (whom I also liked), I was 49:51 deciding between JV and Bismack but I liked Biyombo more.

Anyway, it’s already history and I think Rich Cho is a good GM who knows how to rebuild a team.  Hiring Rich Cho was probably the best decision MJ had ever made for the Bobcats.  I think they got two of the best players in the draft in Bismack Biyombo and Kemba Walker.  With two more years of Rich Cho and some luck, the Bobcats could turn into the OKC Thunder of the East.

[GottaBeTheShoesParticipant]

I wouldn’t be too worried about the raptors.  Jonas really lit it up after the draft even though it was against weak competition.  It still showed what he was capable of.  Plus with not getting Jonas this year you always have a great top 5 pick or so.  In this draft thats about as good as it gets for a struggling team.

[MJ FOR LIFE 23Participant]

Hope he turns out to be a player of an Ibaka calibre wouldn’t that be exciting complementing with Kemba who, by the way finally showing what he’s capable of getting that trip-dub the other night.

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