Player Profile: Didier Ilunger-Mbenga aka DJ Mbenga aka Congo Cash

Some NBA players get an inordinate amount of press because they are ridiculously good at their job - Kobe and LeBron are prime examples. Other guys get written up because they're either the next big thing (John Wall, Derrick Rose) or the "best player nobody's talking about" (Kevin Durant, Brandon Roy). A subcategory of best player nobody's talking about is the defensive specialist (Bruce Bowen, Shane Battier) or the clutch role-player, like Robert Horry or Derek Fisher. At certain points these guys will all get coverage from the average NBA blogger. Also, there are the guys who just love the spotlight, like Shaq and Ron Artest, who will say whatever they can (or whatever the voices in their heads tell them to in the case of Ron or Starbury) to make sure they get that ink.

All of these different types of player will, in different doses and forms, take up the vast majority of media coverage available to basketball, and 99% of the time, I'm cool with that.

But sometimes, when it's the middle of the season and I've heard all I can stand to hear about Kobe's finger-injury or Shaq's newest self-appointed nickname, my eyes wander towards the end of the bench. I wonder what's going on in the lives of the 11th and 12th men. I wonder how they got to occupy such exalted positions (an NBA bench is, after all, the most sought after bench position in sports) and how that even though I see them on TV 50 times a year I still know next-to-nothing about them.

It's a good bet that most of these end of the benchers took a much more interesting path to the NBA than Kobe and Bron-Bron did so I thought that the HCP could investigate a bit and unearth some really interesting stories.

So today, let's delve a little bit into the past (via Wikipedia and other people's research) of the Lakers' human victory cigar, D.J. Mbenga.

The wiki page starts off normally enough:

Didier Ilunga-Mbenga, commonly referred to as D.J. Mbenga (pronounced: Benga) (born December 30, 1980), is a Belgian professional basketball player who most recently played for the Los Angeles Lakers. He also plays for the Belgium national basketball team.

But in the next section things take a turn to the tragically atypical:

Mbenga was born in and raised in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where his father was a government employee. When a new regime took over power, it sought everyone who worked for the previous leader. As unrest in the country escalated, Mbenga's father was imprisoned. Although he was eventually unable to save himself, he did manage to negotiate on behalf of his sons, who were also imprisoned and waiting to be executed. Mbenga fled the country on a plane to Belgium, where he received asylum. While living in a refugee center, he was discovered by Belgian basketball legend Willy Steveniers (ed: a man I'd never heard of prior to this but who apparently belonged to a list of FIBA's 50 greatest players as of 1991), who eventually served as Mbenga's personal basketball mentor.

Hoopsworld has an excellent piece, here, on DJ and just how fucked up his life has been compared to the average NBA player's. Also, the article has a nice aside about Dikembe Mutombo, another Congolese citizen and HCP favourite.

DJ gives a great interview to Mike Trudell and a really poignant couple of lines are highlighted by Henry Abbott here.

DJ Mbenga seems like a hell of a man. If only we could have had a one hour special on his life this past thursday at 9 pm EST instead of whatever crap ESPN was running.

Cleveland, this could be your man.