Future, Kai Cenat and Chick-Fil-A: How Wizards rookie Bilal ...

Bilal Coulibaly used to be able to walk around without anyone paying him any mind.

Nearly a year ago, before the 6-foot-8 teenager was an NBA lottery pick, he could visit the local CVS store and wouldn’t be bothered. Folks probably assumed he played basketball due to his sheer size, but they never acted on their suspicion. Those were the good days.

“But now I can’t do that,” he said.

After being drafted seventh overall in the 2023 NBA draft last June, Coulibaly was almost immediately recognized when he once again went to a CVS.

People don’t know how to have small talk, Coulibaly said. It forces him to have to wear hoodies sometimes to try and blend in.

Such is life for the 19-year-old Frenchman now living in America, playing in the NBA.

“I’m not the one who’s going to say, ‘Yeah, alright now I got to go,’ ” Coulibaly said. “I just don’t like being there for 30 minutes talking to someone and I don’t even care about what he’s saying.”

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Coulibaly, who is from Courbevoie, France, and began playing professionally in his home country at 18, has only played in 53 games in his NBA career, but it’s clear that he has the upside to be a great player in the league. 

He’s averaging 8.4 points and 4.1 rebounds on 44.3% shooting in just under 27 minutes per game. Coulibaly ranks third among all rookies with a combined 86 blocks and steals on the season. He’ll play on Team Pau Gasol during Friday night’s Rising Stars game (9 p.m. ET, TNT), which showcases rookies, second-year players, and participants from the NBA G League.

If Coulibaly keeps developing from the lanky, raw prospect he was just a year ago, he could really be a problem. But that’s years away. Right now, he’s just a relatively unknown rookie on a very bad team, trying to remain positive amid so much chaos and  acclimate to a league and country that are foreign to him. 

And, again, he’s doing all this still as a teenager.

At the All-Star break, the Wizards have a 9-45 record, the second-worst in the NBA behind only the-even-lowlier Detroit Pistons. Washington has had losing streaks of six games (three times), nine games and are currently on an eight-game losing streak after Wednesday night’s loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. On Jan. 25, head coach Wes Unseld Jr. was removed as head coach and moved to a front-office role after compiling a 77-130 in two and a half seasons.

One of the more difficult parts of Coulibaly’s rookie season has been all of the losing. Coulibaly’s French team, Metropolitans 92, lost only 11 games last season. The Wizards lost their 11th game before Thanksgiving.

It’s all gotten to his head recently – that in conjunction with missing home and his family.

Coulibaly’s parents take turns visiting him from France for weeks at a time. Coulibaly’s younger sister is still in high school, so they don’t have immediate plans of moving to the United States to join him.

This is the farthest and longest he’s been away from family. While playing for Metropolitans 92 in France last season, Coulibaly had his own apartment, but it was 30 minutes away from his parents’ home. At one point during this season, neither parent had visited for “a little time,” and Coulibaly was calling home more; he concedes that he missed them “a little bit.”

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I start to tell him that mothers seem to have a more difficult time with letting their kids go, and Coulibaly cuts me off, sensing where I am going with the question.

“Exactly,” he responded. He seems to miss her as much as she does him, particularly her cooking.

“I can’t wait for her to come back here, I’m not going to lie. She’s helping me a lot.”

Coulibaly is young, far from home in a new country, all while navigating the physical and mental demands of the NBA calendar, such as games on back-to-back nights. “The first one was like, ‘Oh man that’s different,’ ” Coulibaly said. “You come to the game you feel sore and everything and you have to play.”

The team does whatever it can to make his life easier.

Aside from the obvious benefits of being an NBA player — trainers, physical therapists, unlimited gear — Coulibaly has a chef, a cleaner for his apartment, and car service due to the fact that he still doesn’t have his driver’s license. He says that learning the street signs has proven the most difficult part of driver’s education. There’s also the matter of Washington, D.C., being home to some of the worst drivers in America.

“Yeah, they told me D.C. especially [was difficult to drive in],” Coulibaly said. “People are different, that’s what they say. Got to be careful out there.”

Coulibaly says his only worry is to pay his bills on time. Which isn’t exactly true. “Somebody does that for me,” he said.

The goal for the rest of this season is to keep pushing Coulibaly’s boundaries. He gets more and more defensive reps against the opponent’s best offensive weapons: During a January game against the defending champion Denver Nuggets, Coulibaly spent time defending guards Jamal Murray and Reggie Jackson, forward Michael Porter Jr., and even 6-foot-11, 284-pound center Nikola Jokic.

Coulibaly wants to guard the best players on the opposing team. It’s what amps him up, what activates him during games. And the coaches know that, so play by play, game by game, they give him tougher assignments. 

When the Philadelphia 76ers visited in December, Coulibaly said reigning league MVP Joel Embiid was speaking to him in French on the court in between play, telling Coulibaly to “keep going.” In that same game, Coulibaly snatched the ball right out of Embiid’s hand for a steal and breakaway dunk.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I gained his respect,’ ” Coulibaly said.

Around the beginning of 2024, the staff started letting Coulibaly initiate the offense by bringing the ball up the court more in contrast to running to one of the corners to wait for a pass as he did on most possessions earlier in the season.

He’s identifying mismatches in the paint and threading entry passes to his teammates. He’s seeing cutters out of the corner of his eye. Against the Miami Heat on Feb. 2, Coulibaly had 35-year-old Kevin Love defending him on the perimeter. He simply sprinted past Love, stuttered briefly to bring Love’s body into him, drew contact, and finished the basket. The hope is for this all to become second nature for the rookie.

“He wants to be a good player. He’s diligent; he’s intentional about his work on the court, in the weight room. In every area he wants to grow, he wants to learn. That’s where his growth throughout the season has come from.”

– Brian Keefe

Like many 19-year-olds (and to be clear, Coulibaly is not ecstatic about the fascination with his age), Coulibaly is the immature one of the bunch. Not in the you-can’t-take-him-in-public sense, but the joyful willingness to be the guy that makes everyone laugh. Wizards forward Anthony Gill said you can look up  in the middle of serious moments and burst out laughing just from making eye contact with Coulibaly.

“He has an infectious way about him,” Keefe said. “He brings a joy to the room with that smile and how he is.”

But Coulibaly is a professional. He knows when to be serious and doesn’t get wrapped up in the pitfalls that seem to swallow some young athletes. Coulibaly’s enthusiasm and “get-after-it-ness” — Keefe and I decided this is a word — in getting better and better is what the team raves about the most.

While his statistics have slid over the past few months — Coulibaly averaged 8.9 points on 53.6% (47.4% 3-point field goal percentage) shooting in November compared to 7.9 points on 31.4% (25%) so far in February. — the team values process over results right now.

“He wants to be a good player,” Keefe said. “He’s diligent; he’s intentional about his work on the court, in the weight room. In every area he wants to grow, he wants to learn.

“That’s where his growth throughout the season has come from.”

His teammates have been amazed at how Coulibaly’s been able to handle it all so soon.

“He has the open mind, the willingness to learn,” said Wizards guard Jordan Poole. “He’s young and he’s wise beyond his years in terms of when to learn and when to ask questions … and it’s benefited him so far.”

Poole has served as a mentor for Coulibaly this season, moving Coulibaly’s locker next to his during training camp last fall. They talk and text frequently, and Poole even expressed a desire to learn French. The former NBA champion with the Golden State Warriors said he took Coulibaly under his wing because he sees himself in the rookie: someone authentic with a willingness to listen and grow.

Also:

“And he fly,” Poole said. “Make sure you put ‘fly’ in there.”

Gill, who along with guard Delon Wright is the oldest player on the Wizards at 31, has also taken a liking to Coulibaly. Before the rookie started receiving car service, Gill would sometimes give him rides to and from the gym, partly as a way to get to know the youngster better. Later in the season, Gill hooked Coulibaly with the stylist who does Gill’s children’s hair when Coulibaly decided to get braids. “Feel fresh, that’s when I play good,” Coulibaly said about his new hairstyle.

Gill wanted Coulibaly to have someone in his corner, as Gill knows all too well what it’s like to be a young basketball player in a foreign country.

Before signing with the Wizards in Dec. 2020, Gill spent the first four years of his professional career in Germany, Turkey and Russia. It was difficult for him to adjust to the food and not being able to hear English regularly. It can make one feel alone.

“I knew it was tough on me coming into a new country and trying to get adjusted,” Gill said of playing overseas. “And I wanted to be that outlet for [Coulibaly] as well.”

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So Gill takes it upon himself to make the adjustment as seamless as possible.

“He’s brand new to America. He doesn’t know anything,” Gill said. “He didn’t even know what Chick-Fil-A was.”

And that brings us to Chick-Fil-A.

I’d asked Coulibaly what his favorite restaurant in the district was. He couldn’t remember the name of an Italian spot over in Georgetown, but perked up when he remembered Chick-Fil-A. Apparently he’d never had Chick-Fil-A before and looked forward to trying it when he got to America.

He brings the southern fried chicken sandwich on every road trip. His order is the original chicken sandwich (“Not spicy”) with Chick-Fil-A sauce, fries and lemonade. He’s never tried the Arnold Palmer drink, but told me he’d try it after I explained the lemonade-iced tea concoction.

“He brings it every flight,” Gill said.

It’s just one of many introductions to American culture.

Coulibaly has picked up on online video streamers such as AMP, Duke Dennis, FlightReacts and one of the most popular streamers in the country, Kai Cenat (5.1 million subscribers to his YouTube page). “He’s just enjoying life. He’s doing a lot of things. Never the same concepts,” Coulibaly said of Cenat. “You’re going to see a new thing every single day. He’s funny. He has good people around him.”

And his teammates have peeped him to R&B and rap music. Poole showed him some but Coulibaly wasn’t a fan. “It was ratchet,” he said. “Nah nah nah nah.”

He’s currently a fan of Huncho, Brent Faiyez, Jacquees and Future.

“I like Future,” he says. 

I make a face. 

“You like him?” 

“It’s just funny,” I say, “because he raps about drugs a lot.” 

“I like his voice,” he says while bursting out laughing. “I don’t know about the words.”

Coulibaly is feeling better these days. He said he’s spoken with the coaches about the struggles of losing and that’s helped. He’s reminded this is all a part of a bigger goal of getting better and better.

When he was drafted, the team’s front office made Coulibaly aware that the team was in a transitional period where losing now would lead to wins later with more and better draft picks. It’s not unlike routes the Orlando Magic and Oklahoma City Thunder have taken in recent years, Coulibaly said. The Magic and Thunder combined for 43 wins during the 2020-21 season. The two teams have a combined 67 wins at the All-Star break.

“I’m just waiting on the process,” Coulibaly said. “I know it’s like that.”