LAWRENCE
Cheick Diallo hated basketball. He can admit that now. The sport seemed foreign, he says, the movements were new and awkward. In his home country of Mali, where Diallo grew up in the capital city of Bamako, young women excelled at basketball, Diallo says. Young men played soccer.
Diallo was one of those boys, a lanky defender who could run all day. Diallo, though, didn’t stop growing, which presented a problem. So five years ago, when Mamadou Diallo asked his 6-foot-5 teenage son to give basketball a shot, Diallo tried the sport for two weeks.