NBA Veteran Bismack Biyombo Donates Entire Salary To ‘Give Hope To The Hopeless’
By Movieguide® Staff
NBA center for the Phoenix Suns, Bismack Biyombo, recently announced that he wants to give his $1.3 million paycheck to help construct a hospital in his home country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Biyombo announced the decision on his YouTube channel, the “Bismack Biyombo Foundation.”
“The Bismack Biyombo Foundation exists to activate the potential of human lives through athletics, education, and health, the Foundation creates opportunity for game changers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),” the YouTube bio reads.
Biyombo was drafted into the NBA in 2011 but took a short break from basketball last season due to his father’s illness and eventual death.
“While I was trying to figure out how to find something that would motivate me this year, I remember one day, I pick up the phone and called my agent,” he said. “And said the only way I would do it this year was if we find a situation — one, that I fit in and two, that I would play for something.”
“I wanted to make this year about my dad, because my dad spent most of his life making his life about me, my brothers and sisters, and servicing people,” he added. “What I told my agent was my salary for this year would be going for the construction of a hospital back home to give hope to the hopeless.”
Biyombo said that while his love for basketball will never leave, his father’s death made it more challenging to play with purpose.
“This is the best way I [think] that this year will be meaningful to me,” he said. “It’s not just the desire to go for a championship, but also the desire to save lives,” he said. “And at the end of this season, I really want to be able to look back and say, ‘I dedicated this season to my dad.'”
In an interview from 2012 with HoopsHype, Biyombo shared the difficulties of his journey from DRC to playing in Yemen, and his eventual move to the United States.
“I left my country and I got there [Yemen] and it was another world for me,” he explained. “It was my first time out of my country and I missed my family and friends. My father and my brothers, they gave me the strength to succeed there and then go to Spain.”
“I had to fight a lot everyday, facing difficult challenges there. Things that I haven’t experienced in my life. It helped me a lot to grow as a person,” he continued. “There were difficulties because of my religious beliefs. I’m a Christian, and sometimes Christians and Muslims don’t get along… But at the end it was a great experience.”
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