LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – At University of Louisville men’s basketball media day last week, I decided to ask every player I talked to what his favorite practice drill was, just to see if I heard anything interesting.
Aboubacar “Kader” Traore was interesting.
His favorite drill is called “perfection.” It’s the drill Louisville opens practice with most days. There’s nothing innovative about it. If you’ve played organized basketball, you’ve run some variation of it. Full court passing drills that lead to layups. Two-man passing, three players passing, cutting behind. It's a warm-up.
The goal is that every pass is precise, every layup is made, everything is perfect. It’s a good starter. But that Traore said it was his favorite, and the favorite of a few others, says something about him. He takes great joy in the little things.
“It just gets you up," he said. "It gets you to lock in from the jump.”
Traore is a player to watch for Louisville. Last year, playing for Long Beach State in the Big West Tournament, he turned in the first triple-double in the tournament’s history. That was the game after coach Dan Monson announced he’d been let go by the school, and it kicked off a magical run to the NCAA Tournament, which Traore says is his greatest accomplishment in sports. And it left him hungry for more.
Here's another thing to know about Traore. As a freshman, Traore topped the 20-rebound mark in multiple games. Only four other players in the nation did that in that season, Kentucky’s national player of the year, Oscar Tshiebwe, was among them, as was North Carolina center Armondo Bacot and Utah Valley’s Fardews Aimaq.
Louisville's Aboubacar "Kader" Traore leaps over teammate Aly Khalifa during the slam-dunk contest at Louisville Live.
Those players are centers. Traore is 6-5. The natural question is how does a guy his size rebound so far beyond it? His nickname, Kader (Ka-DEER) means "power." Maybe that's a part of it. But a bigger part would seem to be desire.
“A lot of guys see a shot and think, ‘I’ve got a 50 percent chance of getting it, or 30 percent,’” Traore said. “I don’t think about that. I just want to go get it.”
Every ball that comes off the rim, in other words, Traore thinks, “I’m getting that.”
“For me, it's like, you’ve got to go get your bread, you know?” he said. “That's money, right there. You have to go get it. Defense or offense. I just want to go get my money. That's how I see it.”
Did I mention I expect Louisville fans to love watching this guy?
Traore grew up in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire, on the West Coast of Africa. Soccer was the predominant game. That’s the same town that produced Didier Drogba, one of the greatest African players of all time. (Trivia note: Drogba’s final professional game was played at Lynn Family Stadium in Africa in a USL Cup Final loss to Louisville City.)
His basketball story went like this.
“It was pretty random, you know?” he said. “I was just coming out of school, and then one of my friends was going to practice playing basketball. And he said, ‘What you doing?’ I had just got done with class, I was going home. He said, ‘You want to come with me? I'm going to practice up with basketball? I didn’t know, because in my country, we mostly play soccer. So, basketball wasn't like a big thing. But I didn’t have anything to do, so I said, ‘I'll come with you.’ So I ended up going with him, and then just watching how organized they were, I had never been around that kind of structure. I just got passionate about it. So, the next day after practice, I told him, ‘I want to do it too.’ The next day I came, I talked to the coach, started practicing. To this day, I never went, like, more than a week without playing basketball. I'll be playing, literally, every day.”
For all his love of structure, Traore defies traditional positional definitions. He can guard any position. He rebounds like he’s possessed. The last piece of his game was scoring, but that was unlocked while playing at Long Beach State, where Monson encouraged him to work on his shooting, then to not be shy about shooting.
Traore plays total basketball. For him, every statistical category is “money.”
“I just trying to hustle on every play,” he said. “I want to win. So bad. Like, I'm ready to do whatever it takes. Some people call it the dirty work. Like, go get the rebound, block shots, those little things that not a lot of people want to do. I literally have fun doing that. I want to score, of course. Everyone wants to score, but it's not my main focus. My main focus is what this team needs to win. What do I need to do for my team to be successful? And a lot of it, I think, is just that kind of stuff that not a lot of people like to do.”
Traore was an early call for Louisville coach Pat Kelsey, even if he is not a prototype plug-into-a-position type of player.
“One of the best rebounders in the country,” Kelsey said when I asked him about Traore earlier this summer. “’Kader’ is, not-so-quietly, one of the most productive players in college basketball. He’s come up big in pressure situations, be it extensive high-level international competition or leading his previous team to an improbable NCAA Tournament run. Kader's versatility is what makes him so special. He's tough enough to guard a five but athletic enough to defend a point guard and has a great feel for the game.”
Traore said that Kelsey told him that versatility would have a place in Louisville.
“One of the main thing that I discussed with Coach PK when I was coming here, he said they can't sign me in a specific position because I do so much on the court,” he said. “Like, they can't say you're going to be this because if they put me in one specific position, they will stop me from doing a lot of stuff that I do naturally. So, he said, I will be as free as I was in Long Beach to play. However, whatever the games just gives me, basically is what I will take.”
And what does he expect to take?
“Everything,” he said. “Everything is the money. The money is everywhere, so you have to go get it, on the boards, on the steals, on the blocks, scoring.”
Traore and his teammates will begin chasing it against Young Harris College in an exhibition game on Monday night at 7 in the KFC Yum! Center.
In the press box during Saturday’s football game, someone told me, “It may be a layup line.”
If it is, you’ll know that Traore still will be looking for perfection.
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