Boniface N'Dong (born September 3, 1977) is a Senegalese retired

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

player and current coach. Currently, he is the head coach of the

Senegal national basketball team The Senegal national basketball team ( French: ''Équipe de basketball du Senegal'') represents Senegal in men's international basketball and it is overseen by Federation Senegalaise de basketball, five time a gold medallist (in 1968, 1972, 19 ...

. Born in

M'Bour M'Bour or Mbour ( ar, مبور; Wolof: ''Mbuur''), is a city in the Thiès Region of Senegal. It lies on the Petite Côte, approximately eighty kilometers south of Dakar. It is home to a population of nearly 233,000 (2013 census). The city's m ...

, Senegal, he also holds

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Professional career

N'Dong had previously planned to enter the

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with an American college in hopes to gain major exposure. However, due to his weight being under what American colleges were looking for at the time, those plans were ultimately aborted. Instead, as a 21-year-old, N'Dong had to look into an alternative plan for increasing his talents due to Senegal's professional leagues performing less-than-par of expectations for him. During that time,

Dallas Mavericks The Dallas Mavericks (often referred to as the Mavs) are an American professional basketball team based in Dallas. The Mavericks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Western Conference (NBA), Western Conferenc ...

agent Amadou Fall recommended that he trained in

Dirk Nowitzki Dirk Werner Nowitzki (, ; born June 19, 1978) is a German former professional basketball player who is a special advisor for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Listed at , he is widely regarded as one of the gr ...

's former club and improve his skills there. Sometime in early 1999, N'Dong signed with the SpVgg Rattelsdorf in Germany for one-and-a-half seasons of play there. After being undrafted in 1999, he continued training for the next three years in the TSV Tröster Breitengüßbach to further improve his game. In 2003, he would finally improve his skills to play in the

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professional league with the TSK uniVersa Bamberg. After playing a season there, he would sign a two-year deal with the Dijon Basket out in the

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. During this time, he would gain further exposure from NBA scouts. The

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would be the first and only NBA season for the 28-year-old 7 ft 0 in

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to play in the

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(NBA) with the

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. During this season, N'Dong barely played any notable parts with the team, appearing in 23 games with a 7-minute per game average, starting only once for them. However, the Clippers would ultimately have a surprising season under their belt in his sole season there, making it to the Western Conference semifinals for the first time in franchise history, barely upsetting the

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in the process. In December 2006, he signed with the Russian club Spartak St. Petersburg. N'Dong moved to the Spanish ACB league later that season and signed with

Unicaja Málaga Unicaja is a Spanish savings bank based in Málaga and chartered as a caja de ahorros providing retail banking services. The banks full name is ''Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Ronda, Cádiz, Almería, Málaga y Antequera'' after th ...

for the 2006–07 ACB League Play-Offs to replace the injured

Daniel Santiago Daniel Gregg Santiago (born June 24, 1976) is a Puerto Rican former professional basketball player. A center, he had a collegiate career in the NCAA and NAIA. His professional career saw him play in the NBA, the Baloncesto Superior Nacional of ...

. On July 14, 2007, he re-signed with Malaga on a one-season contract. He has also played with the

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NBA Summer League The NBA Summer League, also known as the Las Vegas Summer League, is an off-season competition organized by the National Basketball Association. NBA teams come together to try out different summer rosters instead of their regular season line-ups ...

squad in 2007. In 2009, he signed a two-year contract worth

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3.2 million

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with the Spanish league club

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. In 2011, he signed a one-year extension contract with Regal Barcelona. In the summer of 2012, he signed a one-year contract with Galatasaray Medical Park. On June 16, 2013, the day after Galatasaray won the

2012–13 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

league championship, he announced that he was going to retire.

National team career

N'dong helped the Senegal national team get the silver medal at the

FIBA Africa Championship 2005 The 2005 FIBA Africa Championship was the 23rd FIBA Africa Championship, played under the rules of FIBA, the world governing body for basketball, and the FIBA Africa thereof. The tournament was hosted by Algeria from August 15 to 24 2005 and took ...

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, a competition he won the MVP award.

Coaching career

From 2015 until 2019, N'Dong was an assistant coach for

. In the fall of 2020, N'Dong took over as the head coach of the

during the qualifiers for

AfroBasket 2021 FIBA AfroBasket 2021 was the 30th edition of the FIBA AfroBasket, a men's basketball continental championship of Africa. The tournament was hosted by Rwanda for the first time. It was originally scheduled to take place between 17 and 29 August 2 ...

References

External links

Euroleague.net ProfileNBA.com Bio
@ Basketball-Reference.com
Spanish League Profile

A report in German about N'Dong
{{DEFAULTSORT:N'dong, Boniface 1977 births Living people Baloncesto Málaga players Senegalese basketball coaches BC Spartak Saint Petersburg players Centers (basketball) FC Barcelona Bàsquet players Galatasaray S.K. (men's basketball) players German men's basketball players German people of Senegalese descent People from M'Bour Liga ACB players Los Angeles Clippers players National Basketball Association players from Senegal Senegalese expatriate basketball people in France Senegalese expatriate basketball people in Spain Senegalese expatriate basketball people in the United States Senegalese expatriate sportspeople in Russia Undrafted National Basketball Association players