Hamidou Diallo shares his last name with another NBA player, Cheick Diallo, and many have thought that the two players are brothers or should be related in some way, but surprisingly they are not related in any way. While Cheick is a Malian-born player whose family currently resides in Mali, Hamidou was born and raised in Queens, New York, USA, but his roots go back to Guinea, a country in West Africa.
Diallo is currently playing as a shooting guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA. He was selected by the team in the 2018 NBA Draft after playing college basketball in Kentucky.
Who Is Hamidou Diallo? His Bio, Age
Hamidou was born on July 31, 1998, in Queens, New York, as the daughter of Marima and Abdoulaye Diallo. He has always loved basketball, even when he was very young. He remembers playing his game on a fenced court in the neighborhood and how he couldn’t wait to grow up to play against older boys, and that chance finally came.
He started playing with the big boys at John Bowne High School in Flushing, New York. In his second year, he averaged 6.6 rebounds, 17.1 points, and 2.7 assists. In 2015, he played with the NY Jayhawks of the AAU team – the Under Armour Association Circuit (UAA) – and averaged 5.0 rebounds and 22.5 points per game.
At the end of his second season, one of his coaches advised him to try a prep school, so he transferred to the Putnam Science Academy in Putnam, Connecticut. There, Diallo worked on both his grades and his game without the distractions of New York. As a junior in his new school, he averaged 17.0 points and 4.0 rebounds per game, leading the team with a total record of 25:7.
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Later that season he joined the New York Rens for the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) circuit and led the team with 2.1 assists and 18.6 points. He was one of the RENs who visited the White House during National Gun Violence Awareness Day 2016. However, they were unable to meet President Obama, who had another engagement at the U.S. Air Force Academy on the same day.
As a senior, he led the Mustangs to a 38-3 record after averaging 3.0 assists, 19.0 points, and 6.0 rebounds. Rivals.com, ESPN, and Scout.com named him one of the top players in the 2017 recruiting class, and he has received scholarship offers from several schools, including the University of Connecticut, Indiana University, University of Arizona, Syracuse University, University of Kentucky, and the University of Kansas. In January 2017 he declared his commitment to Kentucky.
He began training with the team but did not play a single game with them due to his late entry in the 2016-17 season. He later agreed to play in the 2017 NBA Draft, although he has not yet played a college game. He later dropped out and returned to Kentucky to play in the 2017-2018 season. The Draft Scouts predicted that he would have been selected in the first round of the year if he had not been eliminated.
NBA Career
After spending his 2017/2018 season in Kentucky, Hamidou Diallo re-enrolled for the NBA Draft and was ranked 45th by the Brooklyn Nets. That same night he was sold to the Charlotte Hornets, who would later resell him to Oklahoma City Thunder.
Hamidou Diallo also played for his national team. He was a member of the U.S. junior basketball team that represented the country at the October 2015 mini-camp in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In 2016, he was a member of the U-18 team that played in the FIBA Americas U-18 Championship in Valdivia, Chile. The team won the gold medal. In 2017, he was invited to join the U.S. men’s U19 world championship team. He was part of the team that won bronze at the FIBA U19 World Under-19 Basketball Championship, which was held in Egypt in 2017.
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His Family
Although born in the USA, Hamidou Diallo has an African root that goes back to Guinea, a country in West Africa. His parents (Marima and Abdoulaye) moved to the USA decades ago and settled in Lefrak City, a high-rise apartment block in the Corona district of Queens, New York.
His father worked as a cab driver and his mother as a hairdresser to support her four children. Diallo is their third child. He has two older siblings (a brother and a sister) and a younger brother.
His Height And Weight
The NBA Shooting Guard stands at a height of 6 ft 4 in (1.96 m) and weighs 198 pounds – 90 kg. Although his weight cannot compete with that of his colleagues, it has supported his flexibility on the court.