CHARACTER COUNTS
Suns’ Biyombo honors late dad by donating salary for hospital in Congo
Phoenix Suns center Bismack Biyombo will be donating the entirety of his 2021-22 salary to help build a hospital in his homeland of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Biyombo is doing so to “give hope to the hopeless at home” in honor of his late father Francis, who died at the age of 61 in August 2021.
“I want to give these people better conditions by building a hospital that would be named after my dad,” Biyombo said in the video.
“The reality is I wanted to give them something that can continue to serve people under his name.”
Biyombo chose to wear No. 18 with the Suns this season to honor his dad, who was born on June 18, 1960.
Prior to signing with Phoenix, the center spent 45 days with his father in the Congo and Turkey after putting him on a medical plan and moving him to Europe for medical treatments.
“Every day when I went to the hospital back home to take care of him, what I thought about was what about these people that can’t take their family members out?” he said.
“I wanted to make this year about my dad because my dad spent most of his life making his life about me, my brothers, my sisters and servicing people,” he added.
“This year I really had a desire to want to make it about him.”