Luke Richard Mbah a Moute was selected by the Bucks with the 37th overall pick in the second round of the 2008 draft.
He had never been a highly touted star. Even during his NCAA days, his numbers had hardly been spectacular.
In 2008, compared to dazzling names like Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Love, he was utterly ordinary, buried in the long list of rookies.
Though he successfully made it into the NBA, he remained largely unknown.
His poor offensive ability earned him almost no attention, and his team's terrible record meant he could not make a name for himself through defense in the playoffs like Tony Allen had.
And so Mbah a Moute wandered from team to team around the league. He played for several franchises, and fans of many of them forgot him completely the day after he left.
After all, not every player in the NBA could become a superstar. The view from the top of the pyramid was certainly beautiful, but ordinary players were needed to set it off.
And Mbah a Moute was one of the most unremarkable among those ordinary players.
If he had not joined the Clippers this year and landed in Los Angeles, a major market with enormous exposure, Mbah a Moute might have been even less well known.
Yet this obscure blue-collar worker in the league was a true basketball hero in his homeland of Cameroon.
"I just want to be a role model and tell Cameroon's children that they have more choices." Mbah a Moute said this in an interview, and that was the positive impact his arrival in the NBA had on Cameroon.
Cameroon was a unitary republic in west-central Africa. Its economy was decent, but many areas remained relatively underdeveloped. Many of Mbah a Moute's childhood