🤺 Paris 2024: France Has Become An Unlikely Basketball Powerhouse 🏀⛹️♀️⛹🏾
The Men's and Women's teams had to settle for the silver medal, but French basketball's fortunes are clearly on the rise.
The French Men’s Basketball Team needed to play a perfect game to defeat the U.S. Men’s Team on Saturday night to win the Gold Medal. They did not. Missed easy shots. Clanked too many free throws (10-17). Let Steph Curry transform into Steph Curry during the last two minutes as he hit 4 shots beyond the 3-point line. Each one a tiny dagger into the dreams of gold for the French.
The roster of the U.S. Men’s Team was heavily favored to win their 5th consecutive gold medal. Though it had some close games, the lineup packed with future Hall of Famers who have collectively earned more than $2.5 billion during their careers remains an inevitable force of nature.
Still, the French believed.
In the hours before the match, thousands gathered in the plaza in front of Paris City Hall to cheer for their team, a joyful atmosphere as fans sang the Marseillaise and prayed for the upset. In the stands during the game, President Macron sat with wife Brigitte and VP First Husband Doug Emhoff and later took a selfie with Jimmy Fallon.
In losing the game and winning their second consecutive silver medal, the French men’s team had no reason to be embarrassed. The defeat was nonetheless painful, coming on their home turf. Cameras caught French superstar Victor Wembanyama — who was the No. 1 NBA draft pick in 2023 — crying and hugging his mother.
After the French team received their silver medals, the crowd burst into a spontaneous Marseillaise to honor them, making for an electrifying moment.
Video via Twitter.
Round 2
France had a chance for revenge on Sunday when the Women played the US Women’s Team for the gold. While the French team has received less global attention than the men, they are also making an impact with four players who are currently on WNBA rosters:
Valériane Ayayi - San Antonio Stars
Marine Johannès - New York Liberty
Gabby Williams - Los Angeles Sparks
Iliana Rupert - Atlanta Dream
Once again, the Paris City Hall Plaza was filled with screaming fans, hoping for the best. Inside the arena, players from both men’s teams sat in the stands to cheer for their respective teams.
This time, the French women fought harder and played better, only to lose on an absolute heartbreaker. Down by 3 with three seconds left, France rushed the ball down the court and into the hands of Gabby Williams who launched an off-balance shot that went in at the buzzer.
Alas, her foot was on the 3-point line, and so the basket only counted for 2 points. Final score: US 67 - France 66.
Le Basket
Beyond NBA rookie of the year Wembanyama, France had four other NBA players on its roster: Rudy Gobert, Minnesota Timberwolves; Nicolas Batum, Los Angeles Clippers; Bilal Coulibaly, Washington Wizards; and Evan Fournier, recently with the Detroit Pistons. Three more players had prior NBA experience.
Canada (10) and (Australia (9) had more NBA players than France. But France’s place in the basketball world is on the rise.
In the 2024 NBA Draft, France became the first country outside the United States to produce three of the first top 10 picks since 1966:
1st Overall Pick: Hawks select Zaccharie Risacher
2nd Overall Pick: Wizards select Alex Sarr
6th Overall Pick: Hornets select Tidjane Salaun
They were joined by Pacome Dadiet and Melvin Ajinca who went respectively at No. 25 and No. 51 to the New York Knicks.
The NBA has made internationalization a key part of its business strategy, an effort that was catalyzed by the 1992 Olympic Dream Team and has now transformed the league. The last six MVP winners came from outside the U.S.
France’s emergence as a major center of basketball talent has become more evident over just the past few years.
Looking ahead to next year, France’s 2025 draft class is projected to include at least one high pick in guard Nolan Traore, plus two more players who have the potential to be drafted in the first round: forward Noa Essengue and guard Noah Penda.
Many of these players were inspired by French legend Tony Parker, who won four NBA titles with the San Antonio Spurs and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year. In this past season, Minnesota center and veteran Rudy Gobert was selected as the NBA Defensive Player of the Year.
The surge of interest can be seen across the country, which has been primarily known for success in football (Soccer) and rugby at the international level. (Also, Judo, where the French have won 10 of their 65 medals so far this year, but that’s another story.)
As for basketball in France, the Associated Press reported: “There are about 750,000 people registered with basketball clubs in France — nearly 70,000 more than two years ago and an increase of 170,000 since 2014. And that’s just the official count. Like in the United States, plenty of hoopers just grab a ball and find a court to shoot around or play in a pickup game.”
This trend is no random accident. In the mid-1970s, France’s National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance (INSEP) started an aggressive program to identify and train elite athletes in several sports, including basketball. Parker is an alumnus of this program.
France’s professional leagues also boost development. Young players don’t play at universities. Instead, they begin playing on youth teams that feed professional leagues at young ages. Wemby, for instance, began playing for a professional team at the age of 15, an experience that observers say prepares the best players for the transition to the NBA.
Beyond playing, the NBA is a cultural phenomenon in France (and in much of the world). The average person in France might not know Tom Brady, but they certainly know Michael Jordan.
That cultural currency is evolving in other ways. Sorare, a French startup that has developed an online fantasy sports league platform, struck a high-profile partnership two years ago with the NBA and the WNBA.
Le NBA À Paris
The French enthusiasm for basketball was on full display last January when the Brooklyn Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers arrived to play a regular season game in Paris. It was the third such NBA match in Paris, and one of two international matches last season (the other was in Mexico).
The teams flew to Paris three days before the game, and their every move caused a media sensation. They organized basketball clinics, visited local youth teams, and posed for photos with fans throughout the week.
“It is a market that loves its sports and loves basketball in particular,” NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum said in an interview with USA Today that week. “I will tell you, the Commissioner (Adam Silver) and I had meetings last year with the president of the country, Emmanuel Macron, who is a huge fan.”
In advance of the match, the NBA announced a partnership with the French Basketball Federation to launch new programs for developing elite players. The NBA also disclosed that viewership of the league in France was up 23% over the previous season, including a 26% increase in NBA League Pass subscriptions, and a 70% increase in weekly viewers of the NBA app. In addition, the NBA sells more merch in France than anywhere else in Europe and the Middle East.
"Outside of the U.S. and Canada, France has delivered more players into the NBA than any other place around the world," Tatum said in his interview. "And then you couple that with the excitement around this young fellow Victor Wembanyama who is taking the world by storm, quite frankly, I would say that we're going to Paris when interest in basketball and the NBA is at an all-time high.”
Eight months later, France’s Olympic run confirmed this progress. The reactions of the French players after the game suggest that they are not content with being also-rans to the Americans.
That young fellow Wemby reaffirmed his belief that France should be considered at the top of the world’s basketball ranks.
“The only weight on my shoulders is the responsibility to my teammates,” Wemby said in an interview on Sunday. “The weight of ambition."
“We must stop putting [the US team] on a pedestal all the time," said teammate Nando de Colo, who believes France will have the weapons in the coming years to compete with the USA for Olympic Gold.
That may be more than an idle boast.
Chris O’Brien
Castelnau-d'Aude, France
Great overview, Chris, and exactly what "Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA" (Bloomsbury, 2023) gets at in taking the deeper dive into how and why France became a main pipeline to the North American leagues (haha and predicted the gold medal matchups). Happy to chat further. Game on!
I love this post so much! It is so fun to see happy French NBA players and Olympians, too!