He did not pick up a basketball for the first time until he was 12 years old.

Luc in Africa in 2009 with Basketball Without Borders.

By the time he turned 15, he was one of the best youth players in his native Cameroon. Three years later, he catapulted one of the most prestigious college basketball programs in America into the NCAA championship game. At 21, he was a starter in the NBA.

That Luc Richard Mbah a Moute reached the ranks of professional basketball’s elite speaks to his tremendous natural ability. It is also a tribute to his unsurpassed determination and work ethic, and an uncommon intelligence that he brings to the game.

A decade after being introduced to basketball, Luc is emerging as one of the most talented young defenders in the game today, eager to improve and to use his success to give back to communities in the U.S., Africa and around the world.
 

A Princely Progeny

Luc was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on September 6th, 1986, with his twin brother, Emmanuel Bidias a Mouté, two of eight eventual children. Though raised in Yaoundé, a metropolitan city with over a million inhabitants, Luc and his family had close ties to the village of Bafia, where his father was a chieftain, and by extension, Luc was a prince. The Mbah a Moute clan would make the 20-minute drive to rural Cameroon whenever his father’s presence was needed, which was largely for ceremonies, celebrations and holidays.

Growing up in Cameroon, Luc – like most boys in his country – played soccer, but as a teenager, his brother Emmanuel learned about basketball.

Luc and Dikembe Mutumbo in more recent years.

“[Emmanuel] went to a different school than I,” Luc explained, “and he would come home at night and I guess try to teach me how to play because he needed someone to play with. And my Dad, he saw we were into it and he started bring us DVDs, you know, a magazine of Michael Jordan and stuff like that. So that’s how I fell in love with the game.”

On a hoop attached to a street lamp, Luc taught himself the basics of basketball. His lanky frame was perfect for the sport, and with the relentless effort that would come to define him, he rapidly improved. Just two years after first touching the leather, Luc was playing on Cameroon’s national youth team. Not long after, he was chosen to travel to the NBA’s inaugural “Basketball Without Borders” camp in South Africa.

“There [were] a lot of kids playing at the time,” said Luc. “I was just good enough to be selected to be one of those kids because of my work ethic. I got better real quick, and once I started playing, that was the only thing I did. Play all day and keep working.”

Fifteen-hundred miles across the continent, Luc learned the game from some of the NBA’s top African players.
Dikembe Mutumbo, who’d left the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a basketball career, took a shining to the young talent from Cameroon. Meeting Mutumbo, along with fellow Africans DeSagana Diop and Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, showed Luc that dreams of a career in professional basketball were possible.

Within months, a whirlwind set of events took place, and Luc was headed to a high school in Florida to play basketball and pursue an education. The educational opportunities that Luc might have in the United States were ultimately what convinced his father that leaving was a good thing; at this point, playing professional basketball was more than a distant dream than anything else.

“Everyone thought I was a little crazy, everyone didn’t know what I was doing,” Luc remembered. “It wasn’t really until I got selected to go to that camp, when my brothers and sisters started realizing. ’hHe’s really serious about this basketball thing and he might be really good, too.’ I got back and said ‘by the way guys, I’m going to the United States in a couple of weeks. Everyone thought it was a joke, but my dad was convinced because I could go to school. Every time I tried to pursue basketball, he would insist I get a good education.”

Leaving left Luc with mixed emotions.

“It was really exciting when I decided to leave,” he said, “but at the same time, the closer that day got, I got more sad. I was going to a new country, having to learn a new language, leaving my friends, leaving my family, everybody, everything behind, so it was kind of a bittersweet feeling.”
 

Man of Monteverde

Luc enrolled in Montverde Academy, a tiny school nestled between two big lakes in the middle of southern Florida. His English was somewhat limited.

“All I knew,” he said, “was how to say ‘Good morning,’ ‘My name is Luc,’ and ‘Good night.’ That’s it.”

Everything was foreign to him.

“It was very different,” Luc explained. “The culture was so different. Everything, even the way I would talk to teachers was different. Back home a teacher was the master, here you would talk to teachers like they were your friends. That was just one example, but everything was different.”

The culture on the court was completely different too.

“Coming from Cameroon,” said Luc, “we play that European style, very slow, very systematic. When we came here it was just run, run, run. Push the ball. I was just running and jumping.”

But as had been the case in Cameroon, Luc rapidly picked up the style of American basketball, too, earning a starting spot on the team by the time the season kicked off. Though he played well his first year, averaging 12 points a game, it wasn’t until he spent a full offseason playing AAU and pick-up basketball that he felt comfortable on the court.

Once he got comfortable, Luc was a force. He started all over the floor for the Montverde Eagles, even running the point at times for the team. He excelled in the diverse roles, leading the team in scoring (nearly19 ppg) and rebounds (8.3 rpg). That season, Montverde, in just the second of year of its program, finished 21-6. Despite being a Class 1A school, the smallest designation in Florida, they beat 6A Edgewater, who at the time was ranked first in the state.

It was as while he was dominating better competition that Luc caught the interest of UCLA coach Ben Howland. On a recruiting trip one summer afternoon, Howland noticed how relentless the Cameroonian was in the humid Florida heat, watching him practice for over two hours without slowing a bit.

“It was a very, very sunny and hot and humid afternoon in Florida, in the middle of July, and I had one of my better workouts,” Luc recalled. “We didn’t have air conditioning, so you would walk into the gym and you’d already be drenched, covered in sweat because it was so hot in there. I was used to it, because that’s what we did all summer.”

Howland was thoroughly impressed.

“I remember him looking at me like I was some kind of monster,” Luc said. “He was so impressed about how hard I went through that workout.”

The next day, Luc’s high school coach called him into his office. UCLA had offered him a scholarship.
 

Wizard of West Africa

At UCLA Luc thrived almost instantly. He earned a starting spot at forward before the season began, and rewarded his coach’s faith with eight rebounds and six points in the openeras UCLA rolled over New Mexico State. That started a season in which the Bruins would roll all the way to the national title game, before falling to Florida in the championship.

The Bruins finished the regular season at 24-6, and Luc started every game except Senior Night. For his efforts, Luc was named the Pac-10 freshman of the year. On the season, Luc averaged 9.1 points and 8.2 rebounds.

UCLA began the NCAA tourney by walloping #16 seed Belmont by 35 points, Luc scoring a game-high 17. Things got tight the rest of the way through the bracket, as the Bruins won their next three games by an average of 3.3 points. Including in that run was a spectacular come from behind win over Gonzaga, which Luc considers the best game he was part of in his entire college career.

Luc was one of a handful of players in the history of UCLA to reach three Final Fours.

In the next round, the Bruins would best Memphis to reach its first Final Four since 1995 and then beat LSU, with Luc shutting down future Celtic Glen Davis to reach the championship game.

The following year, despite losing starters Cedric Bozeman and Jordan Farmar to the NBA, the Bruins were nearly as good, finishing first in the Pac-10 regular season, this time losing just three games in conference play. While they fell in the first round of the Pac-10 tourney, Luc once again led the Bruins to the Final Four before losing again to eventual champion Florida. Luc was strong throughout the tourney, averaging over five rebounds a game.

Returning for his junior year, Luc had an opportunity to do what no UCLA player had done since Bill Walton: start in three consecutive Final Fours. Not only had no Bruin done it since the John Wooden era over 35 years ago, no player in the NCAA had done it since 1991.

UCLA had once again lost a guard to the NBA in Aron Afflalo, but Luc and the Bruins got off to another hot start, winning their first seven before falling to No. 8 Texas, despite a 14-point, seven-rebound night from Luc. The Bruins were again one game better in conference play, falling to only two to Pac-10 opponents en route to the prince’s third straight Pac-10 regular season crown.

The Bruins opened the NCAA Tournament in record-breaking fashion, holding Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils to a record-low 29 points. They then skirted past Texas A&M and Western Kentucky to set up an Elite Eight matchup with Xavier.

Behind Luc’s best performance of the tournament, scoring 13 points and collecting 13 rebounds, the Bruins blew out Xavier, won the West bracket and Luc made history.

“It feels good to be a part of history. A lot of people go through college, without going anywhere near the championships or the Final Four, so to do that for three straight years at a program like UCLA it something that I will never forget, something I will cherish for the rest of my life."
 

Milwaukee Calling

After the season ended Luc made the difficult decision to turn pro, joining UCLA’s two best prospects, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love in the draft, With the 37th pick in the NBA Draft, Luc became a member of the Milwaukee Bucks.

“I never doubted it because I always knew it was the right decision from the day I made it,” Luc said.”It was the right time for me, I had great advice from my agent, when I decided to stay in the draft and I had really good work outs, all that, along with my confidence in myself, I never doubted that.”

Luc began the season spelling Charlie Villanueva off the bench, and had no trouble adjusting to the NBA. He scored six points in his first pro game and by just the fourth game of the season, he recorded his first ever NBA double-double when he scored 11 points and hauled in 13 rebounds in a win over the New York Knicks. And that wasn’t a fluke.

Luc, a rookie, gets tips from Michael Redd (Getty).

He dropped 17 points the very next game as the Bucks beat the Washington Wizards, and then just five games later recorded his second double-double and best game as a pro when he went off for 19 points and 17 rebounds in a Milwaukee win over Memphis. That was during a four-game stretch in which Luc went for eleven or more points per contest.

Fifteen games later, he bested that with a five-game stretch of double-digit points, as the Bucks went 3-2. Three times during that run, Luc fell just a rebound short of a double-double.

Along the way, Luc earned a reputation as a stellar defender, matching up against rangy jump shooters on the perimeter and mixing it up with bangers down low. Luc could go, in a single play, from running a full court press on another team’s starting point to putting his body up against a center posting up.

His head coach, Scott Skiles, said there was almost no learning curve for Luc when it came to playing defense.

“One week into his rookie year," said Skiles, "he was already an NBA defender.”

It took only nine games for Luc to move into the starting rotation, and he stayed there for most of the season, hearing his name introduced before nearly two-thirds of Milwaukee games.

In his first year, he averaged 7.2 points and 5.9 rebounds. He averaged more rebounds that all but two of the rookies taken in the top ten of his draft class. The Bucs finished the season 34-48, only five games out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the East. It was an eight-game improvement over the 2007-2008 season.
 

Back in the Future

While his career in the NBA is just beginning, Luc has already started to think about what he can do off the basketball court. He hopes to return to his native Cameroon and use his resources to improve the education of many of his fellow Cameroonians.

“Kids are the future of tomorrow and what I want do is help those kids get an education,” said Luc.” lot of them don’t have parents who can pay for school and don’t have anyone to take care of them, so sometimes they end up dropping out and going to the streets and to find something to eat instead of getting an education. I’d like to try and get kids back in school so they can go somewhere with their life.”

Cameroon, explained Luc, is where his heart lies.

“I’d like to move back there and be an ambassador for my country to teach everyone how beautiful it is.”