Two brothers in basketball
Bamba, UCF’s Doumbia thrive thanks to tight bond
When the Orlando Magic selected Mohamed Bamba with the No. 6 pick in the NBA draft in June, he had no idea his little brother would soon live so close to him and pop over to do his laundry.
Technically, Ibrahim Famouke Doumbia is not related to Bamba by blood and he’s older than Bamba, the Magic rookie firmly believes Doumbia is his little brother.
“A lot of people don’t know that we are really that close. They think we’re just close friends,” Doumbia said. “But we are really like brothers. We’re that close.”
Doumbia, a 6-foot-7 forward who is sitting out this season after transferring to UCF from South Carolina in the spring, loves to tell the story of how he got to play college basketball so close to Bamba, a 7-footer who is a year younger than him.
“When I transferred, I didn’t want to tell him anything because I knew he was busy with NBA draft and everything. I didn’t want to bother him. I knew I was going to tell him later,” Doumbia said. “But then I’m sitting there watching NBA draft and they came up to No. 6 player and it comes across TV saying, Mohamed Bamba, Orlando Magic … I was like, ‘Am I dreaming? This is crazy. I just transferred here and then Mohamed is coming here?’
“I was like, ‘This is crazy. God works a miracle.’ I couldn’t believe it. Then I posted on my Instagram, ‘Man this is so crazy. My brother is coming here.’
“After that he said, ‘Ibrahim, how far are you from downtown Orlando?’ And I said, ‘20 minutes,’ and he was like, ‘Wow.’ I don’t think he knew UCF was in Orlando. … I still don’t believe he is here.”
Bamba is thrilled to be close to Doumbia as well.
“It’s awesome,” Bamba said. “I didn’t even realize it at first, but he was hoping and praying that I ended up in Orlando. Then once I did, he was like, ‘Did you forget?’ and I was like, ‘Oh, shoot.’ ... Now I try to see him as much as I can on every off day. … He’s at my place quite often.”
Doumbia actually played a big part in Bamba even entering the NBA draft after just one year at the University of Texas. Bamba’s mother, Aminata Bamba, was not keen on the idea at first.
“Last year before he went to the NBA draft, he had to call me to talk to his mom because she didn’t want him to go to the NBA draft. She was like, ‘No, I don’t know,’ because she’s African. She don’t know anything about like the NBA draft,” said Doumbia, who could talk to Bamba’s mother in her native tongue of Bambara. “So he was like, ‘Please, call Ibrahim. Have Ibrahim explain it to you that it’s OK for me to go to the NBA draft.’
“She called me and I told her, ‘Listen, mom, don’t worry. This is clean. He’s going to go to the NBA and later he’s going to come back, finish school and everything’s going to be OK.’ She was like, ‘You sure, son?’ and I said, ‘Yes I am, 100 percent. Everything is going to be good. Don’t worry. It’s not like it’s fake. He’s really going to NBA.’ ”
Bamba acknowledged Doumbia’s role in explaining the situation to his mother.
“She didn’t really understand the NBA draft or any of that stuff,” Bamba said. “But it didn’t take long at all for her to understand.”
Bamba and Doumbia became friends on the AAU circuit in New York during the summer months when the players were 14 and 15 years old. Bamba met Doumbia and found out he was from Mali, which is where Bamba’s mother is from originally.
“He was like, ‘You know what, I gotta take you home because I told my mom about you, that you are from Mali,’ and I didn’t have family here. So we went to his house and his mom got to see me and since that day, she just treated me as her son,” Doumbia said. “Where we’re from, that’s how things are. I don’t have family here and she’s from where I’m from, so she treats me as her son.”
Doumbia played his first two years of high school basketball at Jacksonville’s Country Day School after moving the United States from Mali. He eventually ended up at Country Day School in Miami, graduated and decided to play college basketball at South Carolina.
That, however, didn’t quite work out for Doumbia and he remembered another AAU friend, Tacko Fall, was at UCF. He Bamba followed Fall to Orlando.
What Doumbia looked forward to most in his younger years, however, was the times he got to spend during the summer in Harlem, N.Y., playing AAU ball and staying with the Bambas.
“In AAU, we get really close to each other and like at the hotel, they always put us together because Mohamed could understand our language,” Doumbia said of his native Bambara language. “He could speak a little bit, but not really fluent, but he understood 100 percent. My English is still not good, but at the time it was worse, so I talked to him and he understood me really better than the other guys. We got really close. We just had that connection.”
Their relationship has grown over the years and it certainly seems far more than a coincidence that both have landed in Orlando.
“On the weekends, when I don’t have nothing to do or on our days off, I’ll call him to pick me up. I’ll go wash my clothes at his house when I don’t want to do it here,” Doumbia said. “It’s like I have family here. It’s crazy. He lives in downtown near the arena.”
Doumbia still remembers the AAU days with Bamba.
“I remember when Mohamed first came to our team and we were playing against DeAndre Ayton,” Doumbia said of the player who was the No. 1 pick in the draft this summer by the Phoenix Suns. “I went to the coach and I told him, ‘I cannot guard this guy. This guy is way too long for me. Put Mohamed in the game.’
“I think that was the first time for people to really get to know Mohamed. I think DeAndre Ayton scored only like three or four points. Mohamed stopped him. People were like, ‘Remember this name.’ ” Doumbia
Now Doumbia says he goes crazy watching him play for the Magic, especially when he goes to the game in person.
“When I watch him now is like, ‘Wow.’ I can’t even go to the games, I get too emotional,” Doumbia said. “I’m always like, ‘Do this. Do that.’ I wish I could push him. It’s emotional to me. I just want to say, ‘Come on. Let’s go.’ It’s crazy.
“I’m still like, ‘Is this Mohamed?’ ”
Doumbia credits Fall for helping him land at UCF, setting him up for his reunion with Bamba.
“Tacko is a big reason I came to UCF. When I thought about transferring I ask Tacko, ‘How’s UCF?’ and he told me, ‘Great people. They are going to love you no matter who you are,’ ” Doumbia said. “I knew Tacko personally. He’s from Senegal. I’m from Mali. We’re close. We speak French. Tacko is a great human being.
“And then when Mohamed came here, I said, ‘Tacko, we have to go and see Mohamed play.’ … Now Mohamed is like a student here. He’s here all the time. The only thing is, I just don’t like him coming here all the time because him and Tacko, everybody’s like, ‘Picture, Picture.’ Too much pictures.”
Doumbia has one other pet peeve when it comes to Bamba.
“The song, you know, ‘Mo Bamba, Mo Bamba,’ everybody has to turn to the song [Mambo No. 5] when they see us. He asked me how I like that song and I tell him, ‘That song is bad, Mohamed,’” Doumbia said. “We don’t walk around like that too much. We try to go to the mosque together because we’re Muslim, but we don’t do much.”
The support both players have enjoyed off the court has helped them on it. They’re always pushing each other to get better.
“I’m just blessed, it’s crazy. From what I went through last year until now,” Doubia said of transferring and landing close to Bamba and Fall. “I have people here. It’s like family.”