Hamidou Diallo Rumors
All NBA Players
Position: G
Born: 07/31/98
Height: 6-5 / 1.96
Weight:188 lbs. / 85.3 kg.
Salary: $1,416,852
Born: 07/31/98
Height: 6-5 / 1.96
Weight:188 lbs. / 85.3 kg.
Salary: $1,416,852
Thunder coach Billy Donovan warned that Bazley, like all young players, will have ups and downs during the season. OKC saw that with Hamidou Diallo in his rookie year last season. Diallo was averaging 5.4 points in 12.7 minutes per game through December, but as opposing teams got to know his tendencies better, Diallo fell out of the rotation. That’s normal. “He’s experiencing a lot of different things,” Donovan said of Bazley. “My biggest thing for him is, as he learns and grows and gets better and has some success, he needs to stay really, really humble. … And he’s got to stay eager to work and eager to learn. He’s got all the challenges, the difficulties, the adversities that come with being a young player. He’s going to have to have the resiliency to work through those things. If he keeps that kind of attitude, he’s going to really improve.”
Diallo said his elbow is great following surgery in April and a four-game run at the Las Vegas Summer League in which he averaging 14.8 points and 4.3 rebounds per game. “I haven’t even noticed that I had surgery,” Diallo said. “I was just speaking with the medical staff about it. Pretty much don’t even feel it anymore, so it’s doing well.”
The highlight of Diallo’s first season was winning the 2019 Slam Dunk Contest at All-Star Weekend in Charlotte. But the soft-spoken Diallo is looking to follow that up with more assertiveness despite his age and inexperience. “Now that I’m in Year 2 just try to lead, be outspoken,” Diallo said. “Last year, I was pretty much just coming in and soaking it all in. This year, I’ll definitely soak some in, but this year I can speak my opinion.”
Second-year guard and Queens native Hamidou Diallo found out about his team’s off-season moves the same way the rest of the world did: on social media. When the Oklahoma City Thunder traded Paul George to the Clippers for a treasure trove of draft assets, then subsequently moved Russell Westbrook to the Rockets for Chris Paul, Diallo didn’t know any of it was coming. “No. No idea at all. That really hit home base,” he said after a visit to the National Basketball Players Association summer youth basketball camp on Thursday.
Hamidou Diallo: “I didn’t know anything. And, I mean, it’s the NBA. That happens. Different players move, sometimes bigger players, sometimes small players. It’s the NBA; it’s a business and you’ve got to look out for yourself.”
