Queens product Diallo hopes to take big step up with OKC
Second-year guard and Queens native Hamidou Diallo found out about his team’s offseason 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.
“That really hit home base,” he said after a visit to the National Basketball Players Association summer youth basketball camp on Thursday. “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.”
That’s the way today’s NBA works. The top players call their own shots, and everyone else has potential to be caught in the cross-fire. Promising, young point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, for example, was thought to be a Clippers building block after his first season led to Second Team All-Rookie honors. Instead, he and Danilo Gallinari were the highlight of the trade package that pried George from the Thunder.
Diallo and Alexander played together as freshman at Kentucky before each declared for the NBA Draft last summer. Alexander went in the first round and Diallo went to Brooklyn in the second, before he was eventually dealt to Oklahoma City. He is excited about reuniting with his college teammate.
“I feel like it’s going to be great. He’s a well experienced guy, he’s been in the league, he’s been starting,” Diallo said of Alexander, who averaged 10 points and three assists on 37 percent three-point shooting last season. “We’re both competitors. I know him pretty well and I can’t wait to get out there on the court with him.”
Diallo, though, only appeared sparingly in 51 games on the Thunder his rookie year, when he averaged just 3.7 points on 17 percent shooting from three. He also played six games with the Thunder’s G-League affiliate Oklahoma City Blue team. Diallo says he didn’t get the playing time he envisioned as a rookie, but he’s preparing for his moment this season.
“Last year coming in, I was still looking for minutes and still felt like I deserved more minutes, but things hap
pen, things occur, and it’s basketball,” he said. “This year I’m coming in and I just trust my work.”
Diallo says he hasn’t spoke to Paul since the trade, but he has a relationship with Paul after attending Paul’s youth basketball camp and working out with the All-Star guard in the past. He’s ready to get on the court with one of his idols, but until then, Diallo wants to improve in every area of his game, specifically his basketball I.Q.
“I feel like that’s the biggest gamechanger, just knowing the game and seeing out the floor, and sniffing things out before they can happen,” he said.
Diallo grew up in Queens, but he didn’t realize he had NBA potential until he transferred to Putnam Science Academy in Connecticut. There, he says, he began to see his game develop. Basketball helped Diallo get through his childhood and avoid problems in the streets. “It was my outlet,” he said.
That’s why he attends youth camps like the NBPA’s, and why he’s hosting his own camp later this month.
“Being a kid from Queens,” he said, “I’m trying to give these kids hope and trying to do what I wish someone would’ve done for me when I was in their shoes.”