From Columbia to Berlin: The Journey of Basketball Star Maodo Lo

At Columbia University they called him “Chairman Maodo”. No one knows how the nickname came about. The first to use it was the “Columbia Spectator”, the university’s student website. He liked it and was offered again later during Maodo’s career at the Lions. Then it was refreshed at other times even after his return to Europe. Thus we have “Chairman Maodo” a clear dialectical reference to “Chairman Mao Zedong”, the influential president of the People’s Republic of China. Despite his undeniable role in the history of the world, not only Chinese, only in an academically high institution like Columbia could they think of such a culturally important reference.

The name Maodo actually owes it to his Senegalese father in whose dialect “Maodo” means “Great” and refers to a religious deity. Her German mother, on the other hand, is a great artist, Elvira Bach whose post-modern paintings are shown in all the best art galleries in the world, including the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York. Lo was born with a passion for basketball but in Berlin strangely he was not recruited by Alba and in the end to try to make a change in his prospects he decided to move to the United States, first to a high school in Springfield, the homeland of Hall of Fame, near Boston, a cultural shock for a boy coming from a multicultural city like Berlin. Coach Kyle Smith wanted him in Columbia, at the suggestion of a scout who had seen him in Germany during a scouting trip. Columbia is in the heart of New York. It is part of the Ivy League, the League of the most academically prestigious colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia with its wonderful campus located in the upper part of Manhattan, on Broadway, a 10-minute walk from Central Park North.

Columbia was founded in 1754 and has never lost its identity. But in sport she was never the best. The roll of honor talks about three national titles at the beginning of the 20th century, awarded retroactively, but we are talking about another era. The only real flare-up came at the end of the 1960s when coach Jack Rohan relied on the great Jim McMillian, future star of the Lakers, also a protagonist in Italy, to reach the top 10 in the rankings and play in the NCAA Tournament. But since 1968 it has never returned to those levels.

But the coach, Kyle Smith, had big ideas. It was he who recruited Maodo Lo and brought him to Manhattan and taught him the game that would complete him. He is fast, good at running, but Columbia played the “Princeton Offense”, a system based on size, passes and outside shots, which often ate up at least 30 of the 35 seconds allowed at NCAA level to shoot. In practice, Coach Smith paid close attention to shooting drills. Maodo Lo became a great shooter in those years. After his second year in the Lions, with his numbers constantly growing, all the German clubs offered him to return home. But he stayed. He wanted to play in the NCAA Tournament. To do that he would have to win the Ivy League. In 2015, he scored 37 points against Princeton, but lost. He didn’t even make it in 2016 when “Chairman Maodo” led Columbia to success in the CIT, one of the post-season tournaments that might seem consolatory but for a college it has its weight.

In four years, Maodo Lo became the third scorer ever in the university’s history as well as first in steals and three-point baskets. He got a lot of satisfaction, for example, when he scored 16 points away from home against Kentucky, which was then number 1 in the rankings. The 24 points scored in Connecticut, which was defending the title won the year before. He was a two-time first-team starter in the Ivy League and once a second-team starter. His Lions career ended with 12 straight games in double figures and he was named MVP at CIT. But standing out in Columbia can give you an edge in your professional life only as long as it doesn’t involve sports. Maodo Lo was not selected in the NBA draft even though the Philadelphia 76ers took him to the summer league. He could have tried the NBA with a partially guaranteed contract, but opted to return home.

Maodo Lo against Mike James, back when he played for Bayern Munich

He chose Bamberg where they still played the EuroLeague at the time, and among his teammates he also found Nicolò Melli (as well as Daniel Theis, another world champion, Fabien Causeur and the future NBA player, Darius Miller). “I had a minor role, especially defensive,” he explained. In the following seasons his role expanded especially when he arrived in Berlin, his city. Maodo played for all three top German teams of the last decade going from Bamberg to Munich and from Munich to Berlin where he won two Bundesliga titles, but four in total. He won the championship in Bamberg in 2017, in Munich in 2018 and in Berlin in 2021 and 2022. In 2022 when he also won the German Cup he was MVP of the competition. In the meantime, he was a pillar of the national team. In 2021 in the Pre-Olympic, with Denis Schroder absent, he was the one who injured Croatia to gain access to the Tokyo Games where he had 14.3 points per game, scoring 24 against Italy in a match won by the Azzurri. Last year he won European bronze and this year he became World Champion, the highest and most fulfilling point of his career. He scored 20 points in a crucial win against Australia and put up a 6-for-6 ballistic display against Georgia

Lo spent his last years at Alba Berlin, his hometown team

As a professional he has only ever played in Germany, winning a lot. He could have left other times, but there was always a reason not to, including the fact that Alba was his home. “We would have wanted him in the past, but he didn’t feel like leaving,” admitted Coach Ettore Messina during the team presentation. This year he thought the right time had come. He only played professionally in Germany, but spent five years in the United States. Now all his athletic and scoring talent (remember the 6/6 three-point game at the World Cup) will be at the service of Olimpia.

Source: olimpiamilano.com

2023-09-17 10:01:43
#Chairman #Maodo #story #world #champion #Milan