Pop's Mensah Bonsu

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Basketball player
Pop's Mensah Bonsu
Mensah bonsu in the jersey of CB Sevilla
Player information
Full name Nana Papa Yaw Dwene Mensah Bonsu
Nickname Pops
birthday 7th September 1983 (age 36)
place of birth Tottenham, England, UK
size 206 cm
position Power Forward / Center
college George Washington
Clubs as active
2002–2006 GWU Colonials ( NCAA ) 2006–2007 Fort Worth Flyers 2007 Dallas Mavericks 2007–2008 Benetton Treviso 2008 CB Granada 2008 Joventut de Badalona 2009 Austin Toros 2009 San Antonio Spurs 2009 Toronto Raptors 2009 Houston Rockets 2009–2010 Toronto Raptors 2010 PBK ZSKA Moscow 2010–2011 New Orleans Hornets 2011 ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne 2011–2012 Beşiktaş Milangaz 2013 Cajasol Sevilla 2013 EA7 Milan 2013–2014 Galatasaray Istanbul 2014 Hapoel Jerusalem 2014–2015 AEK AthensUnited StatesUnited States
United StatesUnited States
00000 United StatesUnited States
ItalyItaly
00000SpainSpain
00000SpainSpain
00000United StatesUnited States
00000 United StatesUnited States
00000 CanadaCanada
00000 United StatesUnited States
CanadaCanada
00000RussiaRussia
United StatesUnited States
00000FranceFrance
TurkeyTurkey
00000SpainSpain
00000ItalyItaly
TurkeyTurkey
00000IsraelIsrael
GreeceGreece
National team 1
2008-2015 United KingdomUnited Kingdom Great Britain 42
1 As of July 1, 2012

Nana Papa Yaw Dwene "Pops" Mensah-Bonsu (born September 7, 1983 in Tottenham , Greater London ) is a former British basketball player of Ghanaian descent. After studying in the United States , Mensah-Bonsu played mostly with short-term contracts in the most highly endowed US professional league, the NBA . He also played in almost all major European leagues in Italy , Spain , Russia and France . In the 2011/12 season he played almost an entire season for the Turkish club Beşiktaş Milangaz from Istanbul , with which he won the European club competition EuroChallenge in addition to the first national double in the club's history , the only second title win by a Turkish club team in a European competition. Mensah-Bonsu has been named MVP of the Final Four final tournament.

Career

Mensah-Bonsu moved to the USA in 1999 at the age of 16 and, like his later British national team captain Andrew Sullivan, qualified at the “St. Augustine College Preparatory School ”in Richland , New Jersey for study. While his older brother "Kojo" (* 1976), also a national player for England, studied on the US West Coast at Washington State University and played basketball, Pops studied on the East Coast in Washington, DC at George Washington University , whose sports teams Colonials are organized in the Atlantic 10 Conference of the NCAA and for which the legendary basketball coach Red Auerbach was once active. In 2005 they won the championship tournament of this conference and in 2006 the regular season. In these two years you were then also qualified for the national finals of the NCAA . After a first round defeat in 2005 you reached the second round in the following year, in which you lost to the top seeded Blue Devils of Duke University .

Although not selected in the NBA Draft , Mensah-Bonsu got a contract with NBA runner-up Dallas Mavericks before the start of the NBA 2006/07 season . For the final season squad, he was then not taken into account, but given to the neighboring Texas farm team Fort Worth Flyers in the NBA Development League (D-League). For the premiere of the All-Star-Game of the D-League as part of the NBA All-Star Weekend 2007, Mensah-Bonsu, who played a double-double for the Flyers in the D-League in 2007 , was nominated for the Team of the East, which he led to victory with 30 points and seven rebounds and with which he was named MVP of the game. Then Mensah-Bonsu was called back to the Dallas Mavericks team, where he played twelve games until the end of the season. For the following season Mensah-Bonsu initially left the USA and switched to the Lega Basket Serie A for the Italian cup winner Benetton from Treviso . In the 2007/08 season he narrowly missed another double-double with 9.2 points and 8.3 rebounds. The season was disappointing, however, as the club missed the play-offs for the championship, whereupon Mensah-Bonsu completed another game in the Spanish ACB league at the club from Granada . With the two-point home win, in which Mensah-Bonsu scored 22 points and 9 rebounds, on the last match day against fourth-placed TAU Cerámica from Vitoria-Gasteiz in Basque , the club was just able to secure relegation.

For the following season 2008/09 Mensah-Bonsu was then committed by Granada's league rivals and Spanish cup winner Joventut from Badalona . On the second match day in the highest European club competition ULEB Euroleague 2008/09 he was named MVP of this match day. After only five appearances in the championship, Mensah-Bonsu suffered a shoulder injury and the contract was terminated in early December 2008. He then moved back to the D-League in Texas , where he played eight games in 2009 for the Austin Toros, the farm team of the San Antonio Spurs, before he was brought up by the Spurs for three games in the NBA in late February 2009. In early March 2009 he was released from Spurs and signed by league rivals Toronto Raptors, for which he marked another 19 games this season. During the summer break of 2009, he took part in their first European championship matches with the British national team , which had been reformed three years earlier for the 2012 Olympic Games in Mensah-Bonsu's hometown of London . After three defeats in the first round against the later semi-finalists Slovenia , Spain and Serbia , they were eliminated early. For the 2009/10 season he was then committed by the third Texas NBA club Houston Rockets, where he was released after four games two weeks after the start of the season and was then taken up again by the Toronto Raptors. 16 missions later, the Raptors ended in early January 2010. For the rest of the season, Mensah-Bonsu got a contract with the Russian series champion PBK CSKA from Moscow , with whom he won the national double . In the ULEB Euroleague 2009/10 he mostly came only to short appearances and was then no longer used in the final victory in the game for third place at the Final Four tournament in the Palais Omnisports in Paris .

After Mensah-Bonsu was initially traded as a new addition to Caja Laboral, the new sponsor name of the Basque club from Vitoria-Gasteiz, for the 2010/11 season, this club refrained from further contract negotiations, so that Mensah-Bonsu signed another contract in the NBA signed, this time with the New Orleans Hornets. This contract did not last a whole season either; after seven inserts the Hornets released him in early January 2011. Then played Mensah-Bonsu from end of February 2011 the French champions from ASVEL Villeurbanne in the LNB Pro A . At ASVEL he was voted the best Pro A player of March 2011. After another shoulder injury in the playoffs for the French championship, in which ASVEL was eliminated in the semi-final series against the eventual champion SLUC Nancy Basket , Mensah-Bonsu missed the European Championship finals in 2011 , where the British national team again in the first round after two Wins in five games was the end of the line. In the 2011/12 season he joined Beşiktaş Milangaz on the ninth game day of Türkiye Basketbol Ligi in early December 2011, and this contract lasted until the end of the season. Together with Carlos Arroyo and Zoran Erceg , Mensah-Bonsu achieved the greatest success in their history for the club's basketball team, when they won a triple from a national double and won the title in the third European club competition, the EuroChallenge . While the national title successes were the first for Beşiktaş, the success in the EuroChallenge was only the second title win by a Turkish club team in a European club competition after Efes Pilsen Istanbul won the Korać Cup in 1996 . Mensah-Bonsu came up with eight double doubles in eleven European Cup games and scored 26 points and 20 rebounds in the final, while his teammate in the front court Zoran Erceg contributed 25 points and 15 rebounds in the 91-86 final victory over Élan Chalon . With the British national team as host, Mensah-Bonsu then took part in the Olympic basketball tournament in his hometown of London during the summer break of 2012, but again they were eliminated early after only one preliminary round win in five games.

For the 2012/13 season, Mensah-Bonsu signed a contract with the dominant Israeli serial champion Maccabi Electra from Tel Aviv , but because of a knee injury sustained at the Olympic tournament, the contract was terminated before the start of the season because the recovery was not progressing quickly enough. It was not until March 2013 that Mensah-Bonsu signed a new contract with Cajasol from Seville in the Spanish ACB league, where he represented the injured Latavious Williams . After a month he left the club again and moved to the Italian Serie A to EA7 Olimpia from Milan , which, however, was eliminated in the Italian championship play-offs early in the first round after seven games against defending champion Montepaschi Siena . At the beginning of the following season 2013/14 Mensah-Bonsu returned to Istanbul, but to Beşiktaş 'local rivals and reigning champions Galatasaray SK.

In December 2014 he signed a contract with AEK Athens . In April 2015 he was tested positive for amphetamines after a league game in the doping control and subsequently banned from all competitions for two years. After participating in a basketball tournament in the United States, Mensah-Bonsu announced in October 2015 that he had retired from his career.

Web links

Commons : Pops Mensah-Bonsu  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Mensah-Bonsu, Mr Double-Double, Is MVP. FIBA Europe , April 29, 2012, accessed on August 17, 2012 .
  2. ↑ Top of the Pops! Tottenham Hotspur , August 29, 2007; accessed August 17, 2012 .
  3. ↑ archive.fiba.com: Players - Kojo Nana Kwadwo MENSAH-BONSU (ENG). FIBA , accessed August 17, 2012 (English, official international games).
  4. ^ Kojo Mensah-Bonsu Stats - Washington State Cougars. (No longer available online.) Statsheet.com, formerly the original ; Retrieved August 17, 2012 (English, NCAA Div I statistics).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / statsheet.com  
  5. ↑ a b Pops Mensah-Bonsu D-League Statistics. Basketball-Reference.com, accessed on August 17, 2012 (English, player statistics).
  6. ^ Matthew Brennan: Mensah-Bonsu, East Team Come Out On Top. NBA , February 21, 2007, accessed August 17, 2012 .
  7. ↑ Legabasket: Nana Mensah-Bonsu. Lega Basket Serie A , accessed on August 17, 2012 (Italian, profile on statistics pages).
  8. ↑ ACB: CB GRANADA - TAU CERÁMICA 89 - 87th ACB League , accessed on August 17, 2012 (Spanish, match statistics).
  9. ↑ ACB.COM: Mensah-Bonsu, P. Liga ACB , accessed on August 17, 2012 (Spanish, player profile).
  10. ↑ Week 2 MVP: Pops Mensah-Bonsu, DKV Joventut. ULEB Euroleague , October 31, 2008, accessed August 17, 2012 .
  11. ↑ DKV Joventut y Pops Mensah-Bonsu rescinden el contrato que les unía. Liga ACB , December 4, 2008, accessed on August 17, 2012 (Spanish, media info DKV Joventut).
  12. ^ A b Pops Mensah-Bonsu NBA & ABA Statistics. Basketball-Reference.com, accessed on August 17, 2012 (English, player statistics).
  13. ^ Pops Mensah-Bonsu no jugará en el Caja Laboral 2010-11. Liga ACB , September 12, 2010, accessed on August 17, 2012 (Spanish, media info Caja Laboral).
  14. ↑ Pops Mensah-Bonsu - Lyon-Villeurbanne - Joueurs - Pro A. LNB.fr , accessed on August 17, 2012 (French, player statistics).
  15. ↑ Remise du Trophée pour Pops Mensah Bonsu! LNB.fr , April 19, 2011, accessed on August 17, 2012 (French).
  16. ^ Rob Dugdale: Pops Mensah-Bonsu to miss EuroBasket through injury. BBC , June 15, 2011, accessed August 17, 2012 .
  17. ^ Pops Mensah-Bonsu - Turkish Basketball League Player. TBLStat.net, accessed on August 17, 2012 (English, player statistics).
  18. ↑ Besiktas Milangaz - Elan Chalon / EuroChallenge 2012. FIBA Europe , April 29, 2012, accessed on August 17, 2012 (English).
  19. ↑ Maccabi, Mensah-Bonsu part ways. ULEB Euroleague , September 19, 2012, accessed on September 20, 2012 .
  20. ^ El Cajasol se hace con los servicios del pívot británico Pops Mensah-Bonsu. ACB League , March 4, 2013, accessed March 4, 2013 (Spanish, media info Cajasol Sevilla).
  21. ↑ Pops Mensah-Bonsu è arrivato! Olimpia Milano , April 18, 2013, accessed April 19, 2013 (Italian, media info).
  22. ↑ GALATASARAY brings in Mensah-Bonsu. (No longer available online.) ULEB , October 28, 2013, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 29, 2013 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.euroleague.net  
  23. ↑ AEK Athens signs Pops Mensah-Bonsu sportando.com December 27, 2014
  24. ↑ Mensah-Bonsu tested positive at spox.com May 22, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Mensah bonsu, pops
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mensah-Bonsu, Nana Papa Yaw Dwene (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British basketball player
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1983
PLACE OF BIRTH Tottenham , London Borough of Haringey, Greater London, England