How France became a global basketball powerhouse

Basketball is expected to be one of the most popular sports at the Paris Olympic Games, which begin July 26 and run through Aug. 11. The French are huge fans, and French players can be found on the rosters of the NCAA and NBA in the United States. At the NBA draft in June, Zaccharie Risacher and Alex Sarr of France were the top two picks. They follow fellow countryman Victor Wembanyama, who became the first Frenchman to earn the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 2024 and is considered one of the best players in a generation. 

It has taken decades of exchanges – both cultural and athletic – between France and the U.S. for players like Mr. Wembanyama to enjoy NBA success. To help readers understand how France became a powerhouse in the sport, I spoke with Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, author of “Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA.”  The interview has been edited and condensed. 

France and the U.S. have enjoyed a love-hate cultural relationship. How has that affected the basketball relationship?

If you go back more than 200 years, there’s this cyclical, mutual fascination with each other, but also certain elements of disgust or frustration. We don’t really have the same sort of bilateral cultural relations with most other countries.

You also have an overall cultural influence between the two countries [that has infiltrated basketball]. We’ve got French rap music being played in NBA locker rooms, as well as this larger global basketball identity. It’s an amalgamation of things related to the culture, lifestyle, music, fashion, and sneaker culture of basketball.

One thing that’s been repeated to me is that the French are the most like the United States in Europe. That’s not to say Americanized, but the most like the United States, both in terms of culture and style of play.

We’re at a point where we’re seeing large numbers of French players in the NBA. Did it all happen organically or was it due to conscious decisions by coaches and teams?  

It’s an accumulation of things. The French have long been influential in global sport. Look at Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, or Jules Rimet, longtime FIFA president who created the first FIFA World Cup in 1930. So you have examples like that, and of certain international French athletes who are legends in their own right, like soccer player Zinedine Zidane and basketball’s Tony Parker.

But it’s also thanks to generations of cultural, technical, and knowledge exchanges. Americans often went to play in France as a way to work their way up. And in the 1990s, you had French players who [received] Division I scholarships in the U.S. and went from the NCAA into the professional leagues.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad, who played for the University of Michigan, was the first Frenchman to be drafted by Sacramento in 1997. A few months before that, there were two Frenchwomen who were drafted into the WNBA: Isabelle Fijalkowski and Yannick Souvré, who played NCAA basketball Division I on scholarship.

But Tony Parker changed the equation as the first French player to be drafted to the NBA directly from the French pro league. So he was not the originator, but he made everything afterwards possible, simply because he was able to call attention to the fact that you can be French and an NBA all-star and you can get all those accolades. Once he broke through the NBA, scouts started looking more seriously at France. 

How have these cross-cultural basketball exchanges affected France’s ability to face its colonial past or its questions about race, identity, and belonging?

It’s a complicated question but an important one. If you look at the [rhetoric coming out of the far right], I think France is very clearly still grappling with its colonial past and complicated legacies. I think sports have been one way to start that conversation. Is it finished? No, not at all.

But one thing that I observed around [France’s] 2018 FIFA World Cup win was that whole conversation in the U.S. kick-started by the comedian Trevor Noah about the French being Africa’s team. For a variety of reasons, the footballers [soccer players] remained relatively quiet. But the French NBA players actually took to their social media platforms to say that’s not the case at all, that they are very proud of their mixed cultural heritage, many with African cultural heritage. But they were born in France, they’ve been trained and raised in France. They were pretty much trying to say, “Stop this conversation. We might have dual or triple cultural heritage, but we are French.”

You also had French players who went to play in the U.S. over the years and came back with a different experience of racism. Oftentimes, it didn’t look the same as what they were used to at home.

We can see how the U.S. game has influenced the French game. But how has French basketball influenced the American game?

The three-point shot was kind of a hallmark of the American Basketball Association in the U.S. in the 1970s. Then it kind of went away with the ABA’s merge into the NBA but remained a feature of the game in Europe. So when the European cohort started being firmly implanted in the NBA, around the mid-2010s, you start to see what they call the three-point revolution or evolution, where that becomes a key trademark of the game and it remains true today.

The French also have a slightly different approach to the game. There is a focus on teamwork and having your performance be for the greater good, rather than the individualism that American players are known for. Coach Doc Rivers [of the Milwaukee Bucks] kind of laid down the gauntlet early in the season by saying, part of why there are so many European players who are coming into the NBA and doing well is due to how they train on the technicals, the fundamentals, and the team game. They’re practicing five, six days a week and playing a game once or twice a week at most. The American players are playing games, six, seven, eight times a week and practicing maybe once or twice. And they’re focused more on being that star, making the shot, and not on a lot of the other things that facilitate an overall win.

Do you think the Paris Olympics will add a new element of excitement?

I do. The Olympic basketball tickets have been some of the hottest ones in town. I think that’s a reflection of basketball’s popularity in France, even if it’s not as visible mediawise. Certainly Paris has a superstrong basketball culture and fan base, so that also feeds into it. Everyone is clambering to see the American team and the French team. The French men’s team played a series of preparation matches in July, to get in front of their audience. The women’s team did as well. So the Olympics basketball tournament is going to be one of the biggest draws, at least for the French.