Khaman Maluach the latest success story from NBA Academy Africa

PRETORIA, South Africa – Franck Traore was watching a video from one of his scouts scattered across Africa in 2021 when he was drawn to this tall South Sudanese kid working out on an outdoor red clay court in Kampala, Uganda.

Standing 6-feet-9 and still growing, the 14-year-old displayed intriguing potential with his unique running and athletic ability at his size despite limited basketball skill. Traore, the NBA Africa associate vice president, invited the teenager to try out for the NBA Academy Africa in Saly, Senegal, for a potentially life-changing roster spot.

Three years later and now 7-1, heralded Duke commitment Khaman Maluach is a key example of how the NBA Academy Africa can locate and develop Africans to be potential NBA stars of tomorrow. The NBA Academy Africa team, including Maluach, arrived in Pretoria on Tuesday to play in BAL exhibition games after Burundi Dynamo BBC withdrew from the league over the refusal to display the “Visit Rwanda” sponsorship on the front of their jerseys.

“Immediately, when I saw the video of Khaman, I said, ‘I want to see this kid in person,’ ” Traore told Andscape before the first game of the Basketball Africa League 2024 season on Saturday. “‘Let’s put him on the list immediately.’ He was young, could run and showed glimpses of coordination. The movement was already kind of there. But I wasn’t sure and I wanted to see him in person to see if we could really support him …

“One thing I saw from Khaman is he just put the ball between his legs in the air and dunked the ball. He did a 360 dunk. He is doing everything, joking around and a big smile. He didn’t even know what he did and the magnitude of it. He was just having fun on the floor. But that caught the attention of myself and the coaching staff. We were very excited for him, but we knew we had to work.”

The NBA Academy Africa is an elite basketball training center that opened in November 2018 for the top male and female prospects from Africa. The academy has two indoor basketball courts, a multidimensional activity center, a swimming pool, a weight room, conference rooms, dormitories, and educational facilities where English is taught. The program includes academies in Australia, India, Mexico and Senegal for top prospects from their respective countries and continents. NBA Academy Africa’s technical director is Roland Houston, a former longtime college basketball assistant coach who played in college and professionally overseas.

The NBA Academy Africa has stood tall of late due to its abundance of talent. It had its first NBA player, center Ibou Badji, who went undrafted in 2022. He was signed by the Portland Trail Blazers this season as a two-way player. The first draft selection is expected to arrive this year. Cameroonian center Ulrich Chomche is expected to enter the 2024 NBA draft, according to a source. NBA Africa Academy alums Thierry Darlan (Central Africa Republic) and Babacar Sane (Senegal) are playing for the NBA G League Ignite and are considering entering the draft. Efe Abogidi (Nigeria) is also an academy alum playing for the Ignite. NBA scouts also appear fond of up-and-coming academy forwards Modou Thiam and Khadim Mboup, who are from Senegal.

NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum recalls attending the opening of the NBA Academy Africa in 2017. And to see a player potentially get drafted this year is “incredibly rewarding,” he said.

“It would be a full circle to say we started this thing with these aspirations and now kids are walking across the stage with their names being called to be drafted from the seeds that we planted,” Tatum said to Andscape from the BAL on Saturday.

“It will be a big thing. We will celebrate. We will have fun. It will be the beginning of players getting drafted from the academy, but it won’t be the last ones,” Maluach said in a phone interview with Andscape on his “brothers” getting drafted this year.

Traore envisions NBA and college scouts soon spending more time in Africa scouting players due to their talent. Traore said a Duke coach came to see Maluach at the academy facility in Senegal. About 30 American college scouts and 11 NBA scouts came to Senegal in April 2023 to attend NBA Academy Africa showcase with teams from the United States, Canada and Cameroon.

There have been more than 30 NBA Academy Africa alumni, boys and girls, who have gone on to play college basketball in the States. There are more than 15 current American college basketball players from the NBA Academy Africa, including Kentucky’s Ugonna Oyenso (Nigeria), New Mexico’s Nelly Junior Joseph, (Nigeria), Washington State’s Rueben Chinyelu (Nigeria), Cincinnati’s Aziz Bendigo (Senegal) and Baylor’s Joshua Ojianwuna (Nigeria). Several current academy players have also been offered scholarships from American colleges, including Angolan guard Aginaldo Neto, who is playing in the BAL for Petro de Luanda.

“It means that it’s possible and we’ve mentioned that the NBA would one day get a player straight from the academy. What’s important is the basketball world will understand when we, [Toronto Raptors president] Masai [Ujiri] and [BAL president] Amadou [Fall] say, ‘Africa is now,’ it’s true,” Traore said.

Neto, who is considering Loyola-Chicago, Iona, San Diego and Fresno State, said, “The next step for us is getting guys into the draft. My brother, Babacar Sane, is ready for the draft, Thierry Darlan, Ulrich. It’s a pleasure for me to work with them knowing they’re going to the NBA. I’m very proud of them and happy for them.

“Sometimes, I can’t believe we are here. We are blessed 100%.”

Maluach has a lot of basketball ahead before the 2025 NBA draft. He will take his talents and his 7-foot, 4½-inch wingspan to the BAL Uganda City Oilers this season and South Sudan in the 2024 Paris Games before heading to Duke. ESPN NBA draft analyst Jonathan Givony recently described him as “the best big man in the 2025 class, a competent shooter and emphatic finisher who displays coveted versatility defensively covering ground and blocking shots with excellent timing.”

For Maluach, who will be in South Africa on Tuesday, being a part of the NBA Academy Africa has been life-changing. And while signing with Duke brought major attention to him, he remains humble and focused on what it will take to get to the NBA.

“Going to Duke is a big thing. I’m excited,” Maluach told Andscape in a phone interview. “I’m going to a great place. A great program. But at the same time, I got to stay humble and stay low-key. I stay committed to my goal. At the end of the day, I have to do my job. And my job is to get better every day in the gym, work hard, play well at Duke and the next level in the NBA …

“[The academy] changed everything. Not until I came to the academy could I realize my whole potential, my goals and how I am seeing myself.”

Coaching, development and facilities for basketball players are scarce in Africa, whose residents favor soccer and rugby. Without the NBA Academy Africa, African prospects like Maluach may have never been discovered. Traore said the NBA Africa Academy trained 15 scouts who are stationed all over the continent to find prospects. NBA Africa Academy scout Wal Deng, based in Uganda, discovered Maluach in South Sudan.

Traore says he has about 15 fully employed scouts who are also trained coaches looking for prospects across Africa between the ages of 9 to 14. The scouts put the prospects through a taped and photographed combine workout. The most talented are either signed immediately or flown to a tryout in Saly. Maluach recalled trying out and qualifying for admission to the academy. Traore added that an excited Maluach told him he couldn’t sleep the night before his tryout.

“I was just happy that I’m going somewhere different where the basketball level is so high,” Maluach said. “I’ve seen other guys from the academy who are from South Sudan when they came back home. I was so excited to see what was happening there, what kind of players are there and what does the process look like.

“I told my mom that I made it through the academy. I told her that I was going to work now. My brain clicked. I was going to work to get better every day.”

Traore says he is in a “bittersweet position” to pick some Africans over others. The former Manhattan College forward said he still recalls what it meant to go to play college basketball in the United States and to meet such NBA African legends as Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo.

“You are meeting people that you never thought you would meet in person or become friends with, but Hakeem and Dikembe are friends of mine now,” Traore said. “The one thing that the NBA has done for Africa, has truly done for us, is putting together Basketball Without Borders in Africa, opening the Academy and BAL. It is truly changing the lives of so many.

“For Khaman, it’s an entire village, a country, a continent that relies on him, that wants him to be successful. It will open doors and make many more Africans believe that it is possible straight from Africa. In the past, they had to find a way to get to the States.”

Playing for the NBA Academy Africa has also allowed the players to travel all over the world for competition, including Paris; Orlando, Florida; Las Vegas; Johannesburg; Atlanta; and Indianapolis over the past year. NBA Academy Africa players are also participating with BAL Elevate, where they are added to BAL teams. Maluach played in the BAL twice and participated in 2023 Basketball Without Borders Africa in July 2023, where he was tutored by Miami Heat All-Star center Bam Adebayo. Maluach and his teammates participated in the Global Games during the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis in February.

Before the 2024 NBA All-Star Game, Maluach met briefly Milwaukee Bucks All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo, his favorite player, and took a photo with him. The two-time NBA MVP is a Greek Nigerian.

“It was very fun. I was so happy when I met Giannis. I was smiling,” Maluach said. “It was my first time seeing him. Before I only saw him on TV, but finally I got to meet him and talk with him. All he told me was, ‘Work on your ballhandling and you’ll be here one day.’ I said, ‘All right, I got you.’ ”

Traore strongly dislikes the stereotype that African players are always considered to be “raw” and are not known as shooters, and wants that to change now. Traore said the NBA Academy Africa is proud of teaching his players all the fundamentals and skills such as shooting and dribbling.

Maluach certainly dispels that notion because he is adept at both skills. Darlan, a point guard, could also change the perspective of Africa only producing big men. Traore also said that Maluach is one of the best overall shooters and clutch shooters at the academy after working diligently.

“Every game we play in we’re tall, we’re athletic, we run the floor well,” Traore said. “But I hated it because they always call us ‘raw.’ But let’s cross the word raw out in red. We’re not raw here. I don’t want to hear any American kids coaches calling our academy kids raw, because they’re not.

“One thing we are doing is shooting. Eighty percent, we’re a shooting academy. They are already big and athletic. They have God’s gifts. They can learn to rebound and block shots in a week. But the game now is can you shoot consistently? Can you finish around the rim? If we can’t shoot and put the ball in the basket, we will never be at the level we want to be when compared to the rest of the world.”

Basketball Africa League president Amadou Gallo Fall, who hired Traore, also sees a major shift in how African players are discovered now as opposed to the days of Olajuwon and Mutombo to current players Joel Embiid and Pascal Siakam.

“All the talent has always been here. We know it,” Fall told Andscape. “But that talent was almost by chance of luck in it was Hakeem or Dikembe. There was no predictable pathway for young talent in Africa to start playing the game dreaming about going at the highest level, having an opportunity to get the world-class training that they get today.

“So, the academy players now are in the family. They have the opportunity to travel the world and play against their age groups.”

The NBA Academy Africa is still in its infancy. Sources close to the academy have been worried about the long-term stability of the program. The concern spiked last month after staff members were asked to take a pay cut, according to a source.

But based on the excitement generated by Maluach’s recent commitment to Duke and the other players who could soon be in the NBA, Tatum is very excited. Tatum told Andscape on Saturday that the NBA has a long-term commitment to the academy.

“These guys are going to be playing in the NBA in the next year and in the next two years,” Tatum said. “And these were kids that we identified. In the case of Maluach, he was 14 years old, born in South Sudan, raised in Uganda, grew up inspired by watching Giannis highlights and he had the chance to meet him at All-Star. And now this kid’s going to Duke University, he’s going to be put on his national stage and he will be a lottery pick from the Basketball Academy Africa.

“You can’t make it up. That’s a fairy book story in terms of how life-changing basketball has been to a kid like that and so many other countless kids in Africa.”

Maluach called his NBA Academy Africa teammates his “brothers for life.” After his experience, Maluach said, it is his duty to help aspiring basketball players from South Sudan and the rest of Africa. He says he plans to return to the motherland to train and mentor future basketball stars with hopes that they carry on the growing African basketball legacy.

“The academy isn’t just going to change one life, it’s going to change the lives of so many people,” Maluach said. “When one of us succeeds, they represent their country and the continent on the next level and their families. It’s a big thing for the future and the next generation. It’s impacted my life and will impact others again.”