Born to African immigrants Bakary Traore and Rouguiatou Kaba, Traore grew up in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. He commuted two hours each way to Matignon High School, where he participated on the football and basketball teams.
Badara Traore, born March 12, 1997, is an American football offensive tackle for the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at LSU.
At Brooklyn, New York’s ASA College, Traore participated for two seasons. In order to continue playing collegiate football, he transferred to Louisiana State University in 2018 and declined offers from 26 other institutions, including Oklahoma, Auburn, and Texas.
He participated in all 13 of his first season at LSU, starting two of them, and was hailed by head coach Ed Orgeron as “one of the most improved guys on the team.”
Traore took turns playing on special teams and backing up Austin Deculus at right tackle heading into his senior season. He participated in 13 games and made three starts against Georgia Southern, Ole Miss, and Arkansas during his last season at LSU (one at left tackle and two at right tackle).
In 2020, Traore earned an interdisciplinary studies bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University. Boubacar, his younger brother, is a defensive end for Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and has verbally committed to play for Notre Dame in the class of 2023.
Meet Bakary Traore and Rouguiatou Kaba
His father, Bakary Traore, was born in Bamako, a rapidly growing city in southwest Mali with more than 2 million people; and his mother, Rouguiatou Kaba, grew up in Conakry, Guinea, a coastal city with beaches lapped by the Atlantic Ocean.
When Bakary and Rouguiatou first met as immigrants in the early 1990s, they shared a desire for their son, Badara Traore that would push him above the all-too-visible drug use and criminality that surrounded him in the Boston suburb of Hyde Park, where they settled to establish a family.