France, a team more known for its football players rather than its basketball players are suddenly making other traditional basketball powerhouses sit up and take notice.
The French Men's team, led by NBA superstar Tony Parker and a host of other NBA players like Nicolas Batum, Boris Diaw, the French Jordan (remember this monicker?) Michael Pietrus, Kevin Seraphim and Ronnie Turiaf, have managed to secure second place in Group A, ahead of Argentina and Lithuania.
Argentina and Lithuania, of course, are expected to make it this far but not so with the French team. In fact, the loss of Joakim Noah was supposed to make the French Team a lot less dangerous as Noah formed the linchpin of the French Defense.
However, after an initial jittery loss to Team USA, France has settled into a nice rhythm that features penetrations (Parker, Pietrus, Batum), kickouts to shooters (De Colo, Diaw) and hardcore defense plus rebounding (Turiaf, Seraphim).
At the rate they're going, they have a more than decent chance of upsetting Spain, which has been underwhelming lately. Which is beside the point. France being this good simply was unexpected.
And if you take into consideration the fact that the French women did not even qualify for the 2004 and 2008 Olympic games, topping their group in London is a hell of an accomplishment.
Is this the rise of French basketball? Will they finally take their place among the world's best?
Well, if the men make it to the semifinal round (which means beating Spain), then they're making a pretty good case. Same thing for the women.
Which makes things very interesting in Europe once again. Now if only Greece, Germany and Italy can get their act together.
No comments:
Post a Comment