WASHINGTON DC (USA) - Things are going very well for France's Olympic rookie Bilal Coulibaly, one of the country's silver medal winners this summer.
The second-year NBA shooting guard of the Washington Wizards poured in a career high 23 points in a game against Cleveland on Saturday and then locked down Atlanta superstar Trae Young on Monday, helping limit him to just 2 of 15 shooting from the floor.
"He's a really good player," Young said.
"He has long arms, a long defender. If you don't get screens on him, he's fighting over and you got to try to use different tricks to get the ball around him ... deflections. He's a really good defender."
On Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the Wizards' 121-119 win over the Hawks, Washington exercised the third-year rookie scale team option on Coulibaly.
Two days later, against the Hawks again, the 20-year-old Coulibaly celebrated by scoring another career high of 27 points. After 5 games, he's averaging impressive numbers: 19.4 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game.
What happened over the summer? The French National Team happened. Coulibaly played his first event with France, joining his former Boulogne coach, Vincent Collet, and former teammate, Victor Wembanyama. L’Équipe recently weighed in on how the entire experience was highly beneficial for the young player's development.
The paper wrote: "His Olympic experience this summer with Les Bleus (the French national team), where he won the silver medal and played his best game in the final against the United States (scoring 6 points in 21 minutes), has played a big role in the new approach he’s shown since the start of the season."
"I wasn't playing that much (in the Games), but I was working incredibly hard," Coulibaly said. "I worked on my dribbling, my catch-and-shoot, and I really took the time for it. I learned a lot from players like Nicolas Batum, who still writes to me even now, and Rudy Gobert."
Coulibaly had already impressed as a rookie, averaging 8.4 points and 4.1 rebounds per game. He was sixth among first-year players in total steals and blocks and was in the top 10 for points (ninth) and rebounds (eighth).
He fractured his wrist in March, though, and missed the rest of the season.
Making the French Olympic team and experiencing the highest level of international basketball helped him rediscover his rhythm. Now he's once again one of the many French national team stars causing a stir in the NBA.
He is definitely in a good place.
"Basketball is for me, probably 60% basketball skills and 40% confidence, for real," he said. "I considered that right now because I'm really confident right now and I'm playing well."
Many NBA players gained confidence and comfort playing for their national teams this summer.
Among them, Coulibaly is arguably the player to have shown the most improvement. He is emerging as a dominant player in just his second NBA season.
His progress is truly impressive.
FIBA