Latest news with #Traoré
New York Post
11-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Post
Speedy Nets rookie Nolan Traore off to fast start in summer league
LAS VEGAS — The Nets added an NBA-record five first-round picks last month, four of whom suited up and made their summer league debuts Thursday. It's no surprise the one who adjusted the quickest is the one who plays the quickest: lightning-fast Nolan Traoré, one of the highlights in an opening 90-81 loss to OKC. The French point guard was the only Nets rookie to crack double figures with 13 points, three assists, three rebounds and several quick bursts into the lane. Advertisement 3 Nets guard Nolan Traore handles the ball during the first half of summer league action against the Thunder on Thursday in Las Vegas. AP He was even fighting through an early ankle injury while shaking off first-game jitters. 'That was a little bit hard because I rolled my ankle really early. … It took awhile. You've got to go into it quickly and be ready. So it wasn't that long,' Traoré said. 'I was a little bit [sore] on the break with the ankle. But it's all right. I'll be right back on Sunday.' Advertisement Traoré twisted his ankle and gave way to Ben Saraf with 6:22 remaining in the first quarter and the Nets down 8-4. By the time he came back in for the Israeli guard, they trailed 24-18 with 8:20 left in the half. The speedster finished as the only Net with a positive plus-minus. 'I think his speed translates very well,' said Nets assistant Steve Hetzel, who is coaching summer league. 3 Nolan Traore of the Nets drives to the basket during summer league action against the Thunder on Thursday in Las Vegas. NBAE via Getty Images Advertisement 'We definitely put him in some actions where he could throw it and get it back and try to attack the rim. I thought he handled himself well with the physicality. I think, for all of our rookies, that's something that's gonna come over time. Getting in the weight room and their bodies maturing. So I look forward to that.' While Egor Demin was the Nets' first lottery pick since 2010 and played point guard at BYU, it was Traoré who found himself largely shouldering lead guard duties. 'It was just game flow. So whoever gets the ball, whoever is the closest is going to get it,' Traoré said. 'And we don't mind if it's me or him. We just play. 'I don't care who brings the ball up. We just want to play because, as you say, there's multiple guys who can handle the ball, so we don't care who. We just play through it.' Advertisement Dariq Whitehead isn't playing in summer league. He told The Post it was the result of a discussion that his agents at Excel Sports had with general manager Sean Marks in an effort to get him through his injuries and 100 percent ready for the regular season. 3 Toronto Raptors center Orlando Robinson (21) chases Brooklyn Nets forward Dariq Whitehead (0) during the second half at Barclays Center on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Brooklyn, NY. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST 'Absolutely, me coming to play, obviously at the end of last season I was getting ready to prepare for summer league,' Whitehead said. 'And then with the way I finished last season, it was just something that I guess my agent talked to Sean about and they were [thinking] more so get my body ready and prepare for training camp and next season.' The Nets renounced the free agent rights to Day'Ron Sharpe and Ziaire Williams, per Spotrac. Advertisement They'll be re-signed, either both via cap space or one via the room exception. The Nets have $22.3 million in cap space and could create more by using the room exception, or waiving non-guaranteed players.
Boston Globe
10-07-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Boston Legacy adds second player, signing forward Aïssata Traoré
The 27-year-old forward, who hails from Mali's capital city of Bamako, debuted with the Mali senior women's national team in 2018 and appeared in the Women's Africa Cup of Nations that year, helping Mali advance out of the group stage to semifinals. She is the first player from Mali to sign with an NWSL team. Advertisement 'Aïssata is a versatile striker who can play multiple positions close to goal,' Related : Traoré joins Karich, who is playing in Mexico's Liga MX Femenil, spent the last two seasons with Germany's Frauen-Bundesliga team SC Freiburg and signed with Boston as a free agent. Related : The Legacy will begin play in the NWSL in March 2026, playing Advertisement The team recently Emma Healy can be reached at
USA Today
05-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Nets sign 19th overall pick Nolan Traoré to rookie scale contract
French guard Nolan Traoré, the 19th overall pick in the 2025 NBA draft, signed his rookie-scale contract with the Brooklyn Nets on Friday, the team announced. Traoré was the Champions League Best Young Player after averaging 12.2 points, 4.7 assists and 1.9 rebounds in 44 appearances with Saint-Quentin in France. He registered seven 20-point games, including a 25-point effort on May 9. He will make $3,811,560 next season, according to Spotrac. The 19-year-old put himself on the radar after a great offseason last year, representing France in the Nike Hoop Summit and FIBA U18 EuroBasket. He averaged 14 points, 9.3 assists and 3.6 rebounds on 42.9% shooting from 3-point range as France finished fifth in Finland. Traoré was highly touted entering the draft because of his potential to be an elite playmaker at the next level. He plays with excellent court vision, often flourishing by running offenses against high-level competition due to his instincts and passing ability. The 6-foot-4 standout is among a crowded draft class for the Nets, joining Egor Demin (eighth pick), Drake Powell (22nd pick), Ben Saraf (26th pick) and Danny Wolf (27th pick). With the exception of Powell, who is pending a trade with Atlanta, they have each signed their contracts. Traoré will suit up with the Nets for at least five games in the NBA Summer League, beginning on July 10 against the Oklahoma City Thunder (5:30 p.m. EDT, ESPN2).
Otago Daily Times
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Seymour criticises Waititi for 'insane views' on African leader
Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour has labelled Te Pāti Māori a threat to democracy after its co-leader Rawiri Waititi declared a West African military ruler to be his "modern day hero". Burkina Faso's leader Ibrahim Traoré has grown in popularity across Africa and beyond, since seizing power in a 2022 coup, with many praising him as a symbol of resistance to the West. Earlier this year, Waititi shared a video of Traoré on Instagram, along with a comment labelling the president his "modern day hero!". "Tino Rangatira is not only a domestic commitment, it is an international determination. Our fight for political, economic, social and cultural independence and liberation is not a dream, it's a decision!" Waititi wrote. The post provoked the ire of the ACT Party's leader, who cited it as evidence of Te Pāti Māori's "insane views". "Rawiri Waititi once said he's not a fan of democracy. We need to take him seriously," a spokesperson for Seymour said in a statement. "His hero is a Marxist dictator who has delayed elections and banned homosexuality... [Te Pāti Māori is] not in Parliament to uphold democracy, but wreck it." Te Pāti Māori declined RNZ's request for a response: "We will not be commenting on this". Ahead of the 2023 election, Waititi told Newshub he was "not a fan of democracy", describing it as "a tyranny of the majority". Who is Ibrahim Traoré? Traoré took power in Burkina Faso in September 2022, ousting a fellow military officer amid growing frustration at ongoing jihadist violence. Since then, he has styled himself as a pan-African revolutionary and pledged to restore security and national sovereignty. A BBC profile in May said Traoré had built the "persona of a pan-Africanist leader determined to free his nation from what he regards as the clutches of Western imperialism and neo-colonialism". While Traoré commands strong support among some youth and rural communities, rights groups have raised alarm over increasing authoritarianism, human rights violations and media suppression. Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch accused the Burkina Faso government forces and allied militia of massacring more than 130 civilians in March. Under his leadership, the country has shifted away from former colonial power France and drawn closer to Russia. A researcher at South Africa's Institute for Security Studies, Enoch Randy Aikins, told the BBC that Traoré's radical reforms had buoyed his popularity. "He is now arguably Africa's most popular, if not favourite, president," Aikins said. Traoré initially promised to hold elections in 2024 but subsequently delayed them until at least 2029. In July 2024, the military junta announced a ban on homosexual acts, but it does not yet appear to have been enacted into law.
Mint
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
The coup leader who's become an anti-Western hero in Africa and beyond
Three years ago, Ibrahim Traoré was a junior army officer in Burkina Faso's armed forces. Today, he has emerged as a surprising anti-Western hero preaching self-reliance and resilience with fans across Africa and beyond. Since toppling the West African country's previous military leader in 2022 and making himself president, Traoré has won the kind of glowing admiration from people across the continent that has eluded African leaders since the days of antiapartheid icon Nelson Mandela and the generation that led the independence struggles. 'Many Africans are disillusioned with the West," said Ayotunde Abiodun, an analyst with SBM Intelligence, a Nigeria-based geopolitical research consulting firm. Traoré, he said, has become the anti-imperialist face of that sentiment. Russia has tried to court him, seeing him as a way to accelerate the decline of France's influence across the arid countries of the Sahel, the wide band of land bordering the southern reaches of the Sahara. But Traoré has his own agenda of reviving the Pan-African movements of the past. Whether he succeeds in putting Burkina Faso on a stronger footing and pushing back a long-running Islamist insurgency could influence what happens elsewhere across the region. The 37-year-old appears to be genuinely popular as people across the region tire of a generation of aging leaders widely seen as corrupt and beholden to the West. In April, thousands of Burkina Faso citizens poured into the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital city, in solidarity with Traoré after an alleged counter-counter-coup failed to oust him from office. The protesters were also incensed by comments by Gen. Michael Langley, head of U.S. Africa Command, accusing Traoré of misusing the country's gold reserves. Traoré partisans saw Langley's comments as a pretext for Western intervention, and members of the African diaspora held solidarity marches to show their support for him. In London, Traoré supporters held banners that read, 'Hands off African resources, Hands off Ibrahim Traoré." In Jamaica, demonstrations took place outside the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, and on the north coast in Montego Bay, where protesters sang, played drums and hailed Traoré as a 'Black liberator." Motorized rickshaws, a common mode of transport among working people, display photos of the beret-wearing Traoré in Nairobi, a city on the opposite side of the continent. Part of Traoré's appeal comes from how he styles himself after his countryman and Pan-Africanist leader Thomas Sankara. Often called 'Africa's Che Guevara," Sankara renamed the Republic of the Upper Volta as Burkina Faso, or 'land of the upright people," and set about making the country more self-sufficient before he was assassinated in 1987. In taking a leaf out of his book, Traoré has revived interest in Sankara and his pan-Africanism. Last month, a newspaper published by the Nation of Islam, the Black religious and political movement of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, featured side-by-side photos of Traoré and Sankara on its front page. Traoré primarily came to power on a promise to improve security, however. As a captain, he ousted Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself overthrown a civilian government eight months earlier. Both Traoré and Damiba had justified their actions by accusing their predecessors of failing to quell dual insurgencies by Islamists affiliated with al Qaeda and Islamic State. Traoré has since surfed a wave of public discontent with France, the former colonial power, whose continued involvement in the political and economic lives of its former West African colonies created resentment, according to analysts. In a popular move, Traoré expelled French troops, who had also been unable to tame the insurgencies. U.S. Green Berets, who had arrived to train local commandos shortly before the coup, suspended military aid after the putsch. Donning the populist mantle, Traoré renegotiated international gold-mining contracts to guarantee the government a greater share of the revenue. He distributed tractors and cheap fertilizer to farmers and built factories, such as a tomato-processing plant and the country's first gold refinery—efforts to keep value-added businesses at home. A survey by Afrobarometer, a Ghana-based pollster, found last year that a majority of Burkina Faso's people supported military rule as the best way to combat corrupt civilian elites. The survey showed that across the continent, more than half of Africans were willing to tolerate military intervention in politics if 'elected leaders abuse power for their own ends." Two-thirds, however, rejected military rule as the default system of government. Analysts say Traoré has gained strong support from the country's rural poor by placing land under state control, nullifying previous land allocations that favored agribusinesses and recognizing customary rights of rural communities. Supporters see the measures as an attempt to undo decades of land policies that favored corporate investors over smallholder farmers, said Burkina Faso analyst Luc Damiba. The new land policies have also gained him favor from young people, who have cheered his promise of land and agricultural training. Analysts say sections of Burkina Faso's urban, educated classes, including academics, journalists and civil‑society activists, worry that Traoré doesn't intend to return the country to elected civilian government. Traoré has postponed elections scheduled for last year until 2029, saying voting will take place when the military has wrestled enough territory from jihadists to allow all citizens to vote. Like the African liberation leaders of the 1960s, Traoré has cozied up to Moscow. Last month, he attended a Moscow parade celebrating the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany. Russia has launched an influence operation in Burkina Faso involving pro-Moscow local radio stations as well as sports and musical events, says the nonprofit African Digital Democracy Observatory. Paid content lauding Traoré also began to appear across pro-Russian social-media platforms after he seized power, according to a 2023 report by the Paris-based watchdog All Eyes on Wagner. 'Allowing Burkinabé to sleep peacefully and live without hunger. These are his ambitions. This man deserves the greatest respect," read a caption on one Traoré portrait. The posts were disseminated widely across the continent by the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary force active in Africa, the watchdog said, though only a fifth of Burkina Faso's population has internet access and only 12% use social media, limiting the domestic influence of online campaigns. Russia has a clear interest in getting on Traoré's good side. Hobbled by Western sanctions, it needs gold to shore up its struggling economy and has expanded its presence around West Africa through resource‑for‑security pacts, providing military trainers, mercenary units and media campaigns in exchange for mining rights. Burkina Faso, a major gold producer, struck a deal with the Russian company Nordgold, which took an 85% stake in a gold-mining project. The government, which retained 15% of the ownership, expects the project to contribute $101 million to its coffers over an eight-year span. However, unlike in countries like Mali or the Central African Republic, where Moscow's mercenaries play a key role in protecting local regimes, Traoré has been reluctant to accept Russian boots on the ground. A 400-strong contingent of Russian mercenaries, who arrived in Ouagadougou with much fanfare last year, departed within three months, according to current and former French and Burkinabé officials. 'Traoré feels the army is the guarantor to preserve his country's sovereignty," said a former minister in the Burkina Faso government. 'Russian mercenaries are not his cup of tea." Traoré's Achilles' heel, however, may be the very issue he used to sell his power grab: security. Violence has gotten worse since the military seized power. More than 17,000 people have been killed in insurgent violence since the takeover—more than triple the death toll from the final three years of civilian rule, according to an analysis by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, part of the Pentagon's National Defense University. The center analyzed data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit monitoring service. In August, jihadists massacred hundreds of villagers in Barsalogho, a remote town in north-central Burkina Faso. Rights groups report that the Burkina Faso military has committed extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions during Traoré's time in power, and has used an emergency law to forcibly conscript civilians, including critics and activists, to quell dissent. Burkina Faso officials didn't respond to requests for comment. 'There's a possibility for this symbolism and popular legitimacy that he enjoys right now to erode if there's no improvement in the security situation and economic condition of the Burkina Faso people between now and then," said Abiodun, the Nigeria-based analyst. Write to Caroline Kimeu at and Benoit Faucon at
