By Jeff McDonald, Staff writer | San Antonio Express-News (SAEN), 2025-01-21 23:26:00
由生成式人工智能翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准。
法国巴黎 - 8月10日：2024年巴黎奥运会第15天，在巴黎贝西体育馆举行的男子篮球金牌争夺赛中，法国队的维克多·文班亚马(Victor Wembanyama) 32号球员的反应。
巴黎——在巴黎郊区长大的塔里克·阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德(Tariq Abdul-Wahad)还是个大块头孩子时，在未来的体育道路上，他面前摆着两个选择。
“要么你当足球场的守门员，到处跳来跳去，”阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德说。“要么就是打篮球。”
对于当时还叫奥利维尔·圣让(Olivier Saint-Jean)的年轻的阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德来说，这根本不是一个选择题。
“我宁愿待在室内，”阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德笑着说。
阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德早年放弃自己国家的国民运动而选择一项更舒适的室内运动的决定，其影响至今仍然存在。
共有53位法国出生的球员穿过NBA球衣。当萨克拉门托国王队在1997年的选秀大会上以第11顺位选中阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德时，这位曾经被称为奥利维尔·圣让的球员成为了第一个。
回顾过去，阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德并不认为自己是一个开拓者。
“你要么是试管婴儿，要么是碰撞测试假人，”阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德说，他曾在国王队、奥兰多魔术队、丹佛掘金队和达拉斯小牛队效力了六个NBA赛季，担任角色球员。“成为第一很酷，但随之而来的是很多误解。”
在阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德从法国史无前例地跃入NBA近三十年后，再也没有误解了。
法国人会打球。
本周，由崭露头角的21岁法国超级巨星维克多·文班亚马领衔的马刺队来到巴黎，在雅高体育馆与印第安纳步行者队进行周四和周六的两场展示赛。
这将是NBA在巴黎举办的第四场和第五场常规赛，标志着联盟首次在同一赛季在法国首都进行多场比赛。
门票在开售后24小时内售罄。
“这两场比赛肯定会感觉像主场比赛，”文班亚马说。“我知道这会很疯狂。”
几十年来，法国和NBA之间的人才输送管道为联盟提供了源源不断的人才。近年来，这条管道已经变成了喷涌的泉水。
本赛季，有14名来自法国的NBA球员，创下了北美以外国家球员数量的纪录。马刺队阵中就有两位，文班亚马和替补前锋西迪·西索科(Sidy Cissoko)。
过去两年的状元秀——2023年的文班亚马和去年夏天的亚特兰大老鹰队的扎卡里·里萨切(Zaccharie Risacher)——都是法国人。除了里萨切，去年六月的选秀大会上还有两位法国出生的球员进入了前十名——亚历山大·萨尔(Alexandre Sarr)，他在第二顺位被华盛顿奇才队选中，以及蒂贾尼·萨劳恩(Tidjane Salaun)，他在第六顺位落户夏洛特黄蜂队。
2024年11月13日，星期三，在德克萨斯州圣安东尼奥市的弗罗斯特银行中心，华盛顿奇才队前锋亚历山大·萨尔（20号）和华盛顿奇才队后卫比拉尔·库里巴利（0号）在上半场防守圣安东尼奥马刺队后卫斯蒂芬·卡斯尔(Stephon Castle)（5号）。
这是美国以外的国家首次在同一届选秀中产生三名进入前十顺位的球员。
再加上法国国家队在八月巴黎奥运会上获得银牌，该国在世界篮球格局中的地位显而易见。
“毫无疑问，”NBA欧洲和中东地区董事总经理乔治·艾瓦佐格鲁(George Aivazoglou)说。“我们正在见证法国篮球的黄金时代。”
法国的花衣魔笛手
问问今天的法国NBA球员，他们的国家是如何成为国际比赛的中心的，有一个名字比其他任何名字都被提及得更多。
托尼·帕克(Tony Parker)。
“他就是那个人，”20岁的华盛顿奇才队后卫比拉尔·库里巴利(Bilal Coulibaly)说道，他在2023年选秀大会上比文班亚马晚六个顺位被选中。“在法国每个人都认识他。我就是这样开始打篮球的，从看他打球开始。”
像大多数在法国长大的孩子一样——包括文班亚马——足球是库里巴利的初恋。
一个夏天，当他当地的足球俱乐部招满了球员时，他才转向了篮球。
“我报名晚了，没有名额了，”库里巴利说。“我就是这样开始打篮球的。”
帕克很快就成为了库里巴利和法国篮球爱好者的榜样。
2013年9月22日，星期日，在斯洛文尼亚卢布尔雅那的斯托日采竞技场，法国队在欧洲篮球锦标赛决赛中战胜立陶宛队后，法国队的托尼·帕克拿着比赛的MVP（最有价值球员）奖杯。法国队以80-66获胜。（美联社照片/Thanassis Stavrakis）
帕克在2001年以第29顺位被马刺队选中，成为了NBA全明星球员、五次总冠军，并最终入选名人堂。
2014年，当帕克带领马刺队夺得最近一次总冠军时，文班亚马才10岁。
“当我开始打篮球时，托尼正处于他的巅峰时期，”文班亚马说。“你永远不能低估NBA球员对法国年轻人的影响。”
帕克是那一代法国球员的领军人物——其中还包括马刺队的冠军成员鲍里斯·迪奥(Boris Diaw)以及尼古拉斯·巴图姆(Nicolas Batum)和罗尼·图里亚夫(Rony Turiaf)等人——他们在2000年代和2010年代将他们的国家带到了世界篮球地图上。
由于这些球员的成功，跟随他们脚步的法国孩子们有了一条跨越大西洋的既定道路。
“托尼和鲍里斯，所有这些人向美国人，向NBA展示了我们可以在这个联盟中占据主导地位，”32岁的明尼苏达森林狼队中锋鲁迪·戈贝尔(Rudy Gobert)说道，他的时代介于帕克和文班亚马之间。“现在，孩子们不再害怕梦想NBA了。”
库里巴利看到帕克在一些最重要的比赛中驰骋在NBA赛场上，便告别了他的足球梦想。
“一开始，我的梦想是足球，”库里巴利说。“然后我们看到所有这些伟大的球员，像托尼·帕克、鲍里斯·迪奥，所有这些人都在拿冠军戒指，我就想，‘哦，天哪，我也想这样做。’”
帕克本人早就意识到自己作为法国花衣魔笛手的身份。
“我从没想过像我这样的人能有这样的职业生涯，所以现在发生的一切都像一场梦，”帕克说。“看到法国篮球发展成这样，我认为我们不应该认为这是理所当然的，而应该珍惜现在。”
历史的悠久影响
然而，法国是如何主宰世界篮球舞台的故事，比帕克早了大约400年。
像许多在17世纪一心想扩张自己足迹的帝国主义全球强国一样，法国开始在世界各地建立殖民地，包括非洲部分地区和加勒比海西印度群岛。
与当时所有此类努力一样，法国的殖民化项目是野蛮和残酷的。奴隶贸易在法国殖民地肆虐了200多年，直到1848年才被废除。
法国殖民地的原住民最终获得了完整的公民身份。经过几代人的努力，许多人移民到了法国。
四个世纪后，法国的殖民化产生了意想不到的效果，将该国的篮球运动员库扩展到了欧洲边界之外。
“我们非常独特，因为我们融合了不同的文化，”戈贝尔说。“我们有运动能力强的孩子，这有助于在最高水平上打篮球。”
一位NBA球探说得更直白。
2024年12月29日，星期日，在明尼阿波利斯举行的NBA篮球比赛下半场，明尼苏达森林狼队中锋鲁迪·戈贝尔（27号）突入圣安东尼奥马刺队中锋维克多·文班亚马（1号）。（美联社照片/Matt Krohn）
“如果你看看来自法国的球员，”这位球探说，“他们看起来与来自西班牙和塞尔维亚的球员大不相同。”
文班亚马的家族有刚果血统。库里巴利的父亲来自马里。
萨尔和西索科的根在塞内加尔。戈贝尔和萨劳恩的父母都出生在加勒比海的瓜德罗普岛。所有这些都是以前的法国殖民地。
据阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德说，法国篮球联合会并没有立即欣赏这种文化熔炉式的篮球。
“他们对篮球的看法非常欧洲中心化，非常白人化，”阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德说，他的母亲是法国人，父亲是非洲裔美国人。“在90年代中期，当他们意识到必须朝着另一个方向发展时，情况发生了转变。为了竞争，他们不得不与非裔欧洲球员妥协。”
国家联合会开始将各种各样的有潜力的球员纳入其强大的训练计划。法国篮球革命开始了。
一台运转良好的机器
1975年，法国在巴黎成立了国家体育、专业技术和表现研究所。
该组织，即INSEP，开始对包括篮球在内的众多体育项目的运动员进行培训。
每年，INSEP都会从法国及其各地招募36名顶尖的潜力新星，经过某种形式的选拔后，这个数字会减少到每年大约20名。INSEP类似于一所高中——学生学习数学、科学和其他科目——但重点放在体育运动上。
“这是一个世界级的机构，”负责NBA欧洲业务的NBA高管艾瓦佐格鲁说。“经过它的人在场上和场下都培养了技能。”
在过去的25年里，INSEP一直在批量生产篮球运动员，就像福特汽车公司曾经生产T型车一样。
在2007年与马刺队一起被评为NBA总决赛MVP的十年前，帕克就在INSEP打球。
该研究所还将迪奥、图里亚夫、萨劳恩和埃文·富尼耶(Evan Fournier)列为其毕业生。文班亚马早期效力过的一家俱乐部球队，巴黎南泰尔92队，偶尔会把他租借给INSEP队。
“其他地区肯定也有很好的篮球项目，”艾瓦佐格鲁说。“但没有像INSEP这样的机构。”
从法国到NBA最常走的路线多年来已经发生了变化。
阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德在被国王队选中之前，在美国的两所大学——密歇根大学和圣何塞州立大学——打过球。帕克改变了这个模式，他直接从法国的一家俱乐部球队被选中。
文班亚马为自己的旅程增添了另一抹色彩，他经历了俱乐部赛事的磨练，参与了国家队的项目，还将自己的私人教练加入到他的发展组合中，包括一位来自达拉斯的美国人，名叫蒂姆·马丁(Tim Martin)。
法国的体系似乎正在发挥作用。国家队——被称为“Les Bleus”（蓝衣军团）——在过去两届奥运会上都获得了银牌。
取决于卫冕冠军美国队如何在2028年改组一支老化的阵容，法国队可能会被认为是洛杉矶奥运会的有力金牌争夺者。
“我为我的国家感到高兴，我们正在变得越来越好，”帕克说。“连续两届奥运会进入决赛，这很酷。拥有维克多，他可能在两三年内成为NBA最好的球员，这将使法国篮球在很长一段时间内都处于一个非常好的位置。”
在文班亚马看来，法国篮球要等到在国际舞台上开始赢得冠军才算真正到来。
他也相信那个时刻即将到来。
“我很荣幸能成为这波来到（NBA）的球员浪潮的一部分，”文班亚马说。“我们现在缺少的是法国篮球的国际冠军头衔。这是一次伟大的冒险，但我们现在还没有接近我们的全部潜力。”
“我们真的做到了”
2023年6月22日晚，文班亚马创造了历史，成为第一个在NBA选秀大会上以状元身份被选中的法国人。在马刺队做出联盟历史上最显而易见的选秀决定大约一个小时后，文班亚马走进布鲁克林巴克莱中心地下室一个拥挤的采访室，作为一名NBA球员举行了他的第一次正式新闻发布会。
当他穿过门口时，有消息称印第安纳步行者队通过与华盛顿奇才队的交易，以第七顺位选中了他的朋友库里巴利。
这就是为什么文班亚马作为马刺队球员的第一个正式词汇是一个法语专有名词的原因。
“比拉尔！”文班亚马走进房间时对着不知名的人喊道。
库里巴利和文班亚马从十几岁起就认识了，他们在巴黎及其周围的对手球队中打球。即使在那时，文班亚马就已经是一个名副其实的高个子了。
“他身高6英尺6英寸，已经会扣篮了，”库里巴利说。“我们当时想，‘我们才11岁。他怎么就已经会扣篮了？’”
最终，库里巴利认为加入文班亚马比试图击败他更有成效。
两人第一次一起打球是在13岁。在2023年选秀之夜的前一个月，他们作为大都会92俱乐部的队友一起参加了法国季后赛。
“我们两人都被早期选中，这太疯狂了，”库里巴利说。“那是一个特别的夜晚。”
但这与一年后发生的事情相比根本算不了什么，当时法国队主导了早期的乐透秀选择。先是里萨切，然后是萨尔，然后是萨劳恩。
对于现在遍布NBA球队的法国人来说，每个夜晚都感觉像某种家庭团聚。
“每次我去一个城市，我都会想，‘哦，天哪，这里有个法国人，’”库里巴利说。“感觉就像我们真的做到了什么。”
尽管过去两届NBA选秀都充满了法国风味，但人们感觉这波入侵还没有结束。
“今天很多孩子都说，‘我想去NBA，’这变得有点正常了，”戈贝尔说。“而在我那一代，你说‘我想进入NBA’会被认为是疯了。我想每一代人都会激励下一代人。”
无论联盟的未来如何，它肯定至少会部分用法语书写。从法国到NBA的输送管道还远未枯竭。问问第一个打开水龙头阀门的法国人就知道了。
“还有更多的人会来，”阿卜杜尔-瓦哈德说。“肯定的。”
Victor Wembanyama (32), of France celebrates after scoring a basket against United States during a men’s gold medal basketball game at Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
French fans hold up signs during the game between France and United States during a men’s gold medal basketball game at Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Victor Wembanyama (32), of France dunks during a men’s gold medal basketball game at Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024, in Paris, France. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP)
PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 10: Jayson Tatum #10 and Kevin Durant #7 of Team United States box out Victor Wembanyama #32 of Team France during the Men’s Gold Medal game between Team France and Team United States on day fifteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Bercy Arena on August 10, 2024 in Paris, France.
Washington Wizards forward Alexandre Sarr (20) dunks over San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama (1) during the second half at Frost Bank Center on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in San Antonio, Texas. The Spurs defeated the Wizards, 139-130.
Atlanta Hawks forward Zaccharie Risacher (10) reacts after making a three-point shot during the first half against the Brooklyn Nets at State Farm Arena, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, in Atlanta.
Denver Nuggets guard Tariq Abdul-Wahad (9) goes up for a shot past San Antonio Spurs forward Tim Duncan in the first quarter in Denver’s Pepsi Center Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2000.
点击查看原文：How Tony Parker sparked a French basketball revolution
How Tony Parker sparked a French basketball revolution
PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 10: Victor Wembanyama #32 of Team France reacts during the Men’s Gold Medal game between Team France and Team United States on day fifteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Bercy Arena on August 10, 2024 in Paris, France.
PARIS – As an oversized kid growing up on the outskirts of Paris, Tariq Abdul-Wahad was offered two options when it came to his future athletic endeavors.
“Either you’re the goalie on the soccer field, just jumping around,” Abdul-Wahad said. “Or else it’s basketball.”
To the young Abdul-Wahad – known then as Olivier Saint-Jean – the choice was no choice at all.
“I’d rather be indoors,” Abdul-Wahad said with a chuckle.
Abdul-Wahad’s early decision to eschew his country’s national sport for something a little more air conditioned has ramifications still felt to this day.
There have been 53 French-born players to wear an NBA uniform. When the Sacramento Kings made Abdul-Wahad the 11th pick in the 1997 draft, the artist formerly known as Olivier Saint-Jean became the first.
Looking back, Abdul-Wahad does not view himself as a trail blazer per se.
“You’re either the test tube baby or the crash test dummy,” said Abdul-Wahad, who played six NBA seasons as a role player with the Kings, Orlando, Denver and Dallas. “Being first is cool, but it comes with a lot of misconceptions.”
Nearly three decades after Abdul-Wahad made the unprecedented jump from France to the NBA, there are no more misconceptions.
The French can ball.
Led by burgeoning 21-year-old French superstar Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs are in Paris this week to play a pair of showcase games against the Indiana Pacers on Thursday and Saturday at Accor Arena.
The contests will be the fourth and fifth regular-season games the NBA has staged in Paris, marking the first time the league will play multiple games in the French capital in the same season.
The games sold out within 24 hours of tickets going on sale.
“Both games are definitely going to feel like home games,” Wembanyama said. “I know it’s going to be crazy.”
The pipeline between France and the NBA has provided the league with a steady stream of talent for decades. In recent years, that pipeline has transformed into a gusher.
This season, there are a record 14 NBA players who hail from France, the most of any country outside of North America. The Spurs roster two of them, Wembanyama and reserve forward Sidy Cissoko.
The past two No. 1 overall draft picks – Wembanyama in 2023 and Atlanta’s Zaccharie Risacher last summer – are Frenchmen. In addition to Risacher, two other French-born players were selected in the top 10 of last June’s draft – Alexadre Sarr, who went to Washington at No. 2 and Tidjane Salaun, who landed in Charlotte at No. 6.
Washington Wizards forward Alexandre Sarr (20) and Washington Wizards guard Bilal Coulibaly (0) guard San Antonio Spurs guard Stephon Castle (5) at the net during the first half at Frost Bank Center on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in San Antonio, Texas.
It was the first time a country other than the United States produced a trio of top-10 picks in the same draft.
Add that draft largesse to the French national team’s run to a silver medal at the Paris Olympics in August, and the country’s place in the basketball world order is clear.
“There is no doubt,” said George Aivazoglou, managing director of the NBA for the Europe and Middle East regions. “We are witnessing the golden era of French basketball.”
The French Pied Piper
Ask any of today’s French NBA players how their country became the epicenter of the international game and one name comes up more often than any other.
Tony Parker.
“He was The One,” said Bilal Coulibaly, the 20-year-old Washington Wizards guard selected six spots after Wembanyama in 2023. “Everybody knew him in France. That’s how I started basketball, from watching him.”
Like most kids raised in France – including Wembanyama – soccer was Coulibaly’s first love.
He turned to basketball one summer when his local soccer club filled up its allotment of players.
“I was late signing up and there were no more spots,” Coulibaly said. “I started playing basketball that way.”
Parker quickly became the role model for Coulibaly and basketball aficionados in France.
France’s Tony Parker poses with the MVP (most valuable player) trophy of the tournament after the EuroBasket European Basketball Championship Final match against Lithuania at the Stozice Arena, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013. France won 80-66. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
Drafted by the Spurs 29th overall in 2001, Parker became an NBA All-Star, a five-time champion and eventually a Hall of Famer.
Wembanyama was 10 years old in 2014, when Parker helped guide the Spurs to their most recent title.
“Tony was in his prime when I was starting basketball,” Wembanyama said. “You can never underestimate the impact of NBA players on the youth in France.”
Parker was a ringleader of a generation of French players – a list also including Spurs champion Boris Diaw and others like Nicolas Batum and Rony Turiaf – who put their country on the global map in the 2000s and 2010s.
Because of those players’ success, the group of French kids who followed had an established path to follow across the Atlantic.
“Tony and Boris, all these guys showed Americans and showed the NBA that we could dominate this league,” said Rudy Gobert, 32-year-old Minnesota center whose generation falls between Parker’s and Wembanyama’s. “Now we have kids who aren’t scared of dreaming about the NBA.”
Coulibaly took one look at Parker zooming around an NBA court on some of the sport’s biggest stages and bid adieu to his soccer aspirations.
“At first it was soccer for me,” Coulibaly said. “Then we see all these greats like TP, Boris Diaw, all these guys getting rings and it was like, ‘Oh man, I want to do this too.’ ”
Parker, for his part, has been long aware of his status as a French Pied Piper.
“I never thought somebody like me could have a career like this, so everything that’s happening is like a dream,” Parker said. “To see French basketball going like this, I think we should not take it for granted and appreciate it now.”
The long reach of history
The story of how France came to dominate the worldwide basketball scene, however, predates Parker by about 400 years.
Like many empire-minded global powers hellbent on expanding their footprint in the 17th century, France began establishing colonies throughout the world, including parts of Africa and the Caribbean West Indies.
As is uniformly the case with such efforts at the time, the French colonization project was brutish and cruel. The slave trade ran unabated in French colonies for over 200 years, until being abolished in 1848.
Natives of the French colonies eventually gained full citizenship. Over the course of generations, many immigrated to France.
Four centuries later, French colonization has had the unforeseen effect of expanding that country’s pool of basketball players beyond its European borders.
“We’re pretty unique because we have a mix of different cultures,” Gobert said. “We have kids that are athletic and that helps to play basketball at the highest level.”
One NBA scout put it more bluntly.
Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert (27) drives into San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama (1) during the second half of an NBA basketball game Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Matt Krohn)
“If you look at the players coming out of France,” the scout said, “they look a lot different than the players coming out of Spain and Serbia.”
Wembanyama’s family has ancestral roots in the Congo. Coulibaly’s father is from Mali.
Sarr and Cissoko trace their roots to Senegal. Gobert and Saluan both have parents born on the Caribbean island of Guadalupe. All were former French colonies.
According to Abdul-Wahad, the French Federation did not immediately appreciate the cultural melting pot basketball became.
“Their vision of basketball was very Euro-centric, very white,” said Abdul-Wahad, whose mother is French and father African-American. “It took a turn in the mid-90s, when they realized they had to go in another direction. To compete, they would have to compromise with Afro-European players.”
The national federation began plugging a diverse array of prospects into its robust training program. The French basketball revolution was on.
A well-oiled machine
In 1975, France opened the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance in Paris.
The organization, known as INSEP, began training athletes across myriad sports including basketball.
Each year, INSEP brings in 36 of the top prospects throughout France and its territories, whittling that number to approximately 20 per year after a form of tryouts. INSEP is akin to a high school – students study math, science and other subjects – but with an intense focus on athletics.
“It’s a global-caliber institution,” said Aivazoglou, the NBA executive who oversees the league’s European operations. “People who go through it have developed skills on and off the court.”
In the past quarter century, INSEP has been churning out basketball players the way the Ford Motor Company once produced Model-Ts.
Ten years before being named NBA Finals MVP in 2007 with the Spurs, Parker was playing at INSEP.
The institute also counts Diaw, Turiaf, Salaun and Evan Fournier among its graduates. One of Wembanyama’s early club teams, Paris’ Nanterre, loaned him to the INSEP team on occasion.
“There are certainly good basketball programs in other regions,” Aivazoglou said. “There’s not another institution like INSEP.”
The most-traveled route from France to the NBA has changed over the years.
Abdul-Wahad played at two U.S. colleges – Michigan and San Jose State – before the Kings drafted him. Parker changed the formula, selected directly off a French club team.
Wembanyama added another tweak to his journey, matriculating through the club circuit, participating in the national program and also adding his own personal trainers to his developmental mix, including a Dallas-based American named Tim Martin.
The French system seems to be working. The national team – known as Les Bleus – has earned a silver medal in each of the past two Olympics.
Depending on how the defending champion U.S. squad overhauls an aging roster in 2028, France might be considered a strong gold-medal favorite at the Los Angeles games.
“I’m so happy for my country and we are getting better and better,” Parker said. “Back-to-back Olympic Finals, that’s pretty cool. And to have Victor, who can maybe in two or three years be the best player in the NBA, it just puts French basketball in a very good place for a long time.”
The way Wembanyama sees it, French basketball will not have fully arrived until it begins winning on the international stage.
He also believes that time is coming.
“I’m very proud to be part of this big wave of players coming (to the NBA),” Wembanyama said. “What we lack now are international titles for French basketball. This is a great adventure, but we are not near our full potential right now.”
‘We really did something’
On the night of June 22, 2023, Wembanyama made history as the first Frenchman to go No. 1 in the NBA draft. About an hour after the Spurs made one of the most obvious draft-night calls in league history, Wembanyama walked into a congested interview room in the bowels of the Barclay Center in Brooklyn for his first formal news conference as an NBA player.
As ducked through the doorway, word circulated that Indiana had selected his friend Coulibaly with the seventh pick as part of a trade with Washington.
That is how it came to be Wembanyama’s first official words as a Spur were a French proper noun.
“Bilal!” Wembanyama bellowed to nobody in particular as he entered the room.
Coulibaly and Wembanyama had known each other since their pre-teen years, playing on rival teams in and around Paris. Even then, Wembanyama was already a literal tall tale.
“He was 6-6 and already dunking,” Coulibaly said. “We’re like, ‘We’re 11. How can he already dunk?’ ”
Eventually, Coulibaly figured joining Wembanyama would be more productive than trying to beat him.
The pair first played together at age 13. A month before draft night in 2023, they were in the French playoffs together as teammates with the Metropolitans 92 club.
“Both of us getting drafted early was crazy,” Coulibaly said. “It was a special night.”
It was nothing compared to what happened a year later, when France dominated the early lottery selections. First Risacher, then Sarr, then Salaun.
For the Frenchmen who now pockmarking NBA rosters, every night feels like some sort of family reunion.
“Every time I go to a city, I’m like, ‘Oh man, there’s a French guy,’ ” Coulibaly said. “It’s like we really did something.”
Despite the past two Franco-flavored NBA drafts, there is a sense the invasion is not over.
“A lot of these kids today are like, ‘I want to be in the NBA,’ and it’s becoming kind of normal,” Gobert said. “Whereas in my generation, you were crazy saying, ‘I want to make it to the NBA.’ I guess every generation inspires the next.”
Whatever becomes of the future of the league, it is sure to be written at least partially in French. The France-to-NBA pipeline isn’t close to running dry. Just ask the Frenchman who first turned on the spigot.
“There’s more where that came from,” Abdul-Wahad said. “Definitely.”
By Jeff McDonald, Staff writer, via San Antonio Express-News