‘It would mean everything’: La Salle basketball player Mamadou Doucoure takes to GoFundMe to help his mother

La Salle University basketball player Mamadou Doucoure knows the sacrifices his mother kept making for him, basically from his birth, back home in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. Djeneba Doucoure worked to keep Mamadou with her, then let him cross an ocean away from her in West Africa.

Doucoure can’t spell it all out on a GoFundMe page, can’t pour his whole heart into a few paragraphs. He’s just trying to do what he can for his mother right now, which is where the GoFundMe comes in.

“My mother has been living in the same home for 20 years where the living environment has become unsafe and unsanitary due to the uncontrollable mold and crowded living space she shares with a family of 15 to make ends meet and survive,” Doucoure wrote on a GoFundMe page he recently started.

Sitting inside Tom Gola Arena one recent morning, Doucoure took things back further.

“My mom has been a single mom — she and my dad got divorced when I was young,” Doucoure said. “There were four children. Technically, in our culture, when the divorce comes, the man is the one who is supposed to take all the kids.”

Except Mamadou was a baby, he said, “so my mom fought for me to be with her. … She didn’t have a home after the divorce. We were going between people’s houses.”

She worked various jobs to feed her growing son … who kept right on growing. He’s 6-foot-9 now, full of muscles. Basketball became his sport. Eventually, he was spotted at a camp, and an opportunity came to move to New York, age 14.

Was his mother even aware such a path existed in basketball?

“She didn’t have a clue,” Doucoure said. “My mom has never seen me play basketball.”

Since it was just the two of them, letting him go obviously was tough.

“I was young, but she knew it was a good decision for me to come,” he said. “She said, ‘You know what, I can’t shut you down here, so go ahead. But you’ve got to man up and be a grown man.’”

The path led to Our Savior New American School on Long Island. Doucoure eventually joined the PSA Cardinals on the high-powered Nike Elite Youth Basketball League circuit. All this led to a scholarship from Rutgers, where Doucoure played for three seasons and part of another. He transferred to La Salle last season, starting 13 times, then decided to come back for another season of eligibility provided by the pandemic.

The whole time, if he got a couple of bucks, even in high school, he sent them home when he could.

“Ever since I got here for high school, I was, you know, providing for her,” Doucoure said, explaining that his mother has diabetes, making it impossible for her to work.

It’s not hard, he said, for him to do without extras.

“I can’t live good here knowing [his mother could use the money],” Doucoure said. “I’ve skipped so much because as a young kid — she did her time. When she could work, she worked. I’m going to be fine after because I’m still young.”

Upon arriving home this past summer, he saw exactly how much her living conditions had deteriorated.

“She doesn’t tell me everything,” Doucoure said. “She doesn’t want me to over-worry.”

They talk basically every other night via WhatsApp, although the night before this interview, he couldn’t reach her, he said, because it was raining at home. “The WiFi connection is up and down.”

The more important connection never wavers.

“She wants to know everything,” Doucoure said. “Even when my voice is low, she’s like, ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong?’ If we don’t talk for two days, that means she’s not doing well. I know that automatically. If she’s OK, every other day, we’re going to speak.”

One of the children died young, but the siblings have stayed close. Mamadou’s older brother, around 40 years old, works as a driver for a man who had a plot of land he offered to donate if they wanted to build a house on it.

“It’s always been a dream of mine,” Doucoure said. “Since I started college, I’ve always thought of this.”

He realized that the NCAA relaxing rules on name, image, and likeness compensation offered an opportunity. A month ago, Doucoure started the GoFundMe page and began spreading the word. The first donation came from former Rutgers teammate Ronald Harper Jr.

Another anonymous donation came in for $2,000.

Cole Anthony, a teammate with Doucoure for years on the PSA Cardinals, donated $1,000, as did Anthony’s mother. “He also reposted on his IG story to help out,” Doucoure said of Anthony, now with the Orlando Magic. “It meant a lot to me.”

As of Monday, more than $23,000 had been donated by 94 donors, with three separate $5,000 donations coming in a two-day period toward a goal of $46,000. That’s the amount for which a builder agreed he could construct the house. His mother knows he and his brother have hopes.

“I didn’t tell her the full story,” Doucoure said of the GoFundMe page and the talks with the builder.

His own hope is to keep playing basketball professionally after La Salle, somewhere in the world. He can’t predict where he’ll wind up settling down. But helping his mother is a more immediate goal, Doucoure said, and if they can pull it off, this whole journey he’s been on would have paid off.

“It would mean everything to see my mom smile,” he said.