At 6’9″ and 210 pounds, 17-year-old Sekou Doumbouya is already considered a lottery pick in the 2019 NBA draft. He only started playing five years ago, but already has sound fundamentals. Doumbouya and 66 other teenagers from 36 countries were at the All-Star Weekend as part of the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders Global Camp. For him, it was a journey that began with an eight-hour flight, but it would help being more successful than Doumbouya could have ever hoped. He stepped into the NBA arena for the first time and he met his NBA idol. He is also walking away with the confidence that he someday could be an NBA All-Star. Doumbouya was born in Conakry, Guinea, but moved with his mom and three siblings to France when he was just a year old. At 12, a friend introduced Doumbouya to basketball, and he slowly became obsessed, though he has said, “I wasn’t very good at first.” He moved to the highly regarded French National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (INSEP) at age 14 and signed with Poitiers Basket 86, a pro team in France’s second tier, in the fall of 2016. Doumbouya posted 6.8 points and 3.3 rebounds in nearly 17 minutes per game and he helped lead the French national under-18 team to a European championship in Turkey.
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