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Yakuba Ouattara, Monaco: 'I'm living a dream'

Yakuba Ouattara, Monaco: 'I'm living a dream'

Interviews

2 May 20236 Mins read

Yakuba Ouattara, Monaco: 'I'm living a dream'

For the second season in a row, AS Monaco and its swingman Yakuba Ouattara are battling for a spot in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Final Four. No Monaco player's connections with the team run deeper than Ouattara, nicknamed Billy, who first joined the club in 2015 and is in his third stint and sixth season on the team.

For a player at the age 31, it is now safe to say that his success story has been an improbable one.

Ouattara's parents are from Burkina Faso. Life first took them to Ghana and the town of Tepa, where Yakuba was born, before moving to France when he was 3 years old.

"Sometimes I think about how much courage it must have taken them to go somewhere with no link, with no connections", Ouattara said. "With nobody they knew, just trying to give a better living for their family, better chances to become somebody. They left everything they did and knew, their family, just to go to France and try to give us an opportunity for the future."

Looking up to people who defy such odds all your life probably helps you deal better with pressure situations, such as those one can find in a basketball game. Maybe that's the reason some of Ouattara's most impressive career performances have come in the EuroLeague Playoffs.

Like last season, in Game 4 at home with Olympiacos Piraeus holding a 2-1 series lead and Ouattara going a career-best 5-for-7 from three-point land and grabbing 4 rebounds in 22 minutes in a victory. Or just last Thursday, with Monaco needing a response after getting beat in the series opener 48 hours earlier, Ouattara started Game 2 with back-to-back triples and finished with 12 points in as many minutes, his highest-scoring night in more than 3 months, helping Monaco tie the series at 1-1.

"I worked harder than everybody else, and that's how I get to play professionally."

For Ouattara, France is home, Lyon is his hometown and the place where he grew up, but he and his sisters have been brought up well aware of their African roots.

"Our parents, they always remind us where we come from", Ouattara said. "They tried to teach us the way of life, the African way of thinking. So, I grew up with African culture."

Yakuba has family in both countries. Of his four sisters, one lives in Ghana and one in Burkina Faso. Unfortunately, he rarely sees them. He was in Burkina Faso two years ago and plans to go to Ghana, too. His family was there last season.

Those visits help his family keep the ties with African culture, their roots and heritage. Part of that culture and heritage, however, was not basketball. Burkina Faso and Ghana are countries with little to no basketball tradition, with Ghana not even having a national team despite some Ghanaian-born players playing at elite level, like Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade's Ben Benil, or Amida Brimah of Mincidelice JL Bourg en Bresse.

So, Ouattara's heritage is one part that makes this a Cinderella-type story. The other, an even larger part, is the way he battled his way up.

Ouattara discovered basketball on the playgrounds in Lyon's sixth arrondissement. He picked up basketball as a young teenager, but the sport was not his first choice.

"I wanted to be a boxer," he smiled. "I wanted to box. But my dad didn't want that because he said it was too violent. So my best friend was a big fan of basketball and he went into a club and I follow him."

They went to a small local club, CLAR Lyon Basket, practicing once a week and Ouattara quickly fell in love with the sport.

"From there, I knew that's what I wanted to do."

That does not mean, however, he was good at it right from the start.

"When I started, honestly, I was terrible," Ouattara laughed. "I could not do anything. But I realized that I have some quality, some physical gift, and I tried to be the best. I worked harder than everybody else, and that's how I get to play professionally."

"My dream was to play professional basketball, so I sent my CV. You know, I was kind of desperate."

That approach enabled him to get where he is today, but who knows if his basketball journey would have even happened if he did not get the idea of doing something you rarely hear players do – send his CV to all the French clubs, hoping to get a positive response.

"I was 14, 15 years old and my dream was to play professional basketball, so I sent my CV. You know, I was kind of desperate."

And he was also surprised responses did, indeed, come.

"I remember one morning my mom wakes me up. And she gave me the letter of Chalon sur Saone. I jumped out of bed, it was just amazing for me, like a dream come true, because this is something that I really wanted to do. It was something I did not know if it was possible to do, and it was amazing to see the answers of three or four teams who contacted me, where I went to do some tryouts."

In the end, he chose Chalon and started his basketball journey.

Ouattara made his professional debut with Chalon and had a one-year stop at Denain in the French second division before joining Monaco in 2015. His stay in Monaco was interrupted in 2017-18, when he spent the first part of that season in the NBA and G-League with Brooklyn and Long Island, as well as in the 2020-21 campaign when he was in Spain with Betis Seville. Ouattara has also had a dozen appearances - all since 2019 - with the French national team, and is in his second EuroLeague campaign.

For the Monaco swingman, this all still sounds pretty unbelievable.

"I think this is crazy", he said. "Every time people see me and say 'Oh, you're always smiling, you're always happy', but that's because I'm living a dream. Honestly, that was my dream. Playing basketball is a passion for me. I don't see it as work.

"I know that I'm so blessed to be able to play at this level. Especially when I know where I'm coming from and all the sacrifices that my parents did. So, for me, it's really like living a dream."