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The NBA's French Revolution
The NBA’s future is looking increasingly French, a testament to the countries continued investment in the sport and the leagues desire to be an international destination

On a Thursday night in New York City, a nineteen-year-old Victor Wembanyama sits at a table surrounded by those closest to him. Wembanyama is wearing all black for the occasion, and it is perhaps the most important day of his young life. He is about to be drafted by the San Antonio Spurs with the first overall pick in the draft. As commissioner Adam Silver says his name and confirms what many already know, he nods as he gets up. It’s a big moment for him and for the Spurs but it is also a momentous achievement for France, his home country.
The arrival of Victor Wembanyama to the NBA and becoming a superstar is the headline of a story that is currently being written. We are in the golden age of French talent making its way to the league. Since 2022, there have been seven French players drafted in the first round and that number seems likely to continue rising in the years to come. This coming draft will likely have multiple French players with potential to be first round picks. Additionally, the French Olympic team featured seven NBA players, a very high number for a non-American team. A revolution of French talent will soon be reflected in every NBA roster, a nod to how far the country has come in terms of basketball development.
A History of Hoops
The game of basketball is not a new one to the French, as the game was originally introduced in the nation in 1893, and was the first European nation to adopt the game. It was brought to France by Melvin Rideout, a student at Springfield College where Dr. James Naismith invented the game of basketball. Rideout was dispatched to Paris to introduce the game to local men to keep them active in the winter months, when it was too cold to do activities outdoors.
Rideout laid the foundation for basketball in France and Europe as a whole, but he did not gain much traction initially. This is because the YMCA, the group that dispatched him to Paris, was Protestant-affiliated and France as a nation was enforcing its policy of officialized secularization, which prevented its success in the nation. Nevertheless, the late 19th century and early 20th century marked a period of collaboration between France and the United States (it was in this period that the Statue of Liberty was gifted to the US), and the establishment of the YMCA in Paris was in the spirit of this collaborative idea.
Through the first quarter of the 20th century, basketball in France remained relatively obscure as an activity that was done in YMCA gyms. This changed in the 1930s when it was introduced as an Olympic sport for the 1936 games in Berlin. During this period, the sport started to pick up momentum in urban areas of the country and France assembled a national team to compete in the games. Despite not winning a medal in the competition, basketball seemed primed to grow in the country.
The next few decades would see the establishment of basketball taking shape in France. The Fédération Française de Basketball, France’s basketball federation, was created in 1932 and leagues began to form in the 1940s. The country also began to compete in more competitions like EuroBasket. Despite this steady growth, other sports like soccer and rugby outshined basketball and it was not at the forefront of the minds of the French public.
The 1980s and 90s marked the expansion of basketball through the surging popularity of the NBA. Stars like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan were everywhere and quickly becoming massive international celebrities. With the arrival of the NBA’s popularity in this period, many other American staples also came to be globalized such as hip-hop music and streetwear. All three of these phenomena took hold in France, and particularly Paris. The effects of this influence are seen today with Paris being a streetwear and modern fashion hub. The hip hop scene in France is also incredibly diverse and vibrant, with notable artists like Maître Gims, Niska, and MHD to name a few.
This influence of American culture that was rooted with the popularity of the NBA has led to the advancement of basketball in France, and that has directly led to an influx of French talent entering the NBA. The first to make the jump was Tariq Abdul-Wahad in 1997. Since him, we have seen great players like Tony Parker, Evan Fournier, Rudy Gobert, Nichoals Batum, Boris Diaw, and most recently Victor Wembanyama enter the league to make the presence of French basketball a substantial one.

The investment in the region by the NBA has continued to this day. The league has played three regular season games in France since 2020, and it will play another two this season. As a result, French viewership of the NBA has continued to increase year over year, which has incentivized more Americans to invest in the game in the country. What was once considered a small-time operation that would not yield results has continued to gain popularity. A big part of this is of course due to the sheer level of talented players that are becoming fixtures in the NBA.
A Tremendous Pool of Talent
There are currently 15 NBA players that are French. Of these fifteen, only two are over thirty years of age: Rudy Gobert (32 years old) and Nicholas Batum (36 years old). Twelve of these players are under 25, which tells us that the trajectory of incoming French talent is only elevating. Wembanyama, Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, and Zaccharie Risacher have all been selected in the last two Draft Lotteries and have had varying flashes of excellence this year. Wembanyama is of course the focus as he is an ascending superstar, but the other players have shown that they belong in the NBA.
Sarr and Coulibaly are logging a ton of minutes for the struggling Wizards and are providing some hope for the future. Sarr has flashed the skills of a stretch five with decent shot blocking ability. Coulibaly seems like the prototypical three and D wing who has seen an uptick in his scoring and assists. Risacher, who was taken with the number one pick in the draft, has been a consistent contributor for a surprising Hawks team that is in the mix for a Play-In spot.
This trend of young talent is not stopping any time soon either. In the upcoming draft there are four young French prospects that are projected to be drafted in the first round:
Nolan Traore
Noah Penda
Noa Essengue
Zacharie Perrin
Much of this development can be credited to INSEP, the National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance. INSEP is a sporting academy in Paris that provides housing and training for athletes in 19 sports, and basketball is one of them. Former French NBA players Evan Fournier, Ronny Turiaf, and Boris Diaw all got their start at the academy and since then it has turned into a factory of basketball talent in the country. INSEP scouts and finds athletes at a young age, recruits them to the academy, and provides professional training to harness their abilities. Due to their ability to attract the top talent, INSEP and its affiliated clubs can expose young French players to professional competition when they are teenagers, which helps to prepare them for the eventual jump into the NBA.
Frédéric Fauthoux, a coach in France’s JL Bourg club, says that this is due to the more athletic and NBA-centric style that is played in France. French players will often then play against other professional teams around Europe which employ a more deliberate and tactical game, giving these prospects the best of both worlds.
What has resulted is a golden generation of sorts, to borrow a term from soccer. In a few years, France’s Olympic team will feature Wembanyama, Risacher, Coulibaly, Sarr, and other players with years of NBA experience. They could pose a true threat to the American dominance of international basketball, which would be a huge moment for French basketball.

Yet despite all this acclaim and positive trajectory, there seems to be some hesitance to embrace these French players and to grasp the golden age that we are witnessing. Part of this is rooted in the ever-growing fear of diminished American talent. But a large chunk of this is America’s general disdain for the French.
A Resistant Embrace
We all remember the moment when the collective NBA world decided it no longer likes Rudy Gobert. It was March 9th, 2020, in a postgame press conference when Gobert was still playing for the Utah Jazz. As fears of the COVID-19 pandemic were rising in the United States, Gobert mockingly touched every microphone to try and suggest that it was not a big deal. Three days later, Gobert tested positive for the virus.
That point made Gobert public enemy number one, soured his relationship with Jazz co-star Donovan Mitchell, and eventually led to him being traded to Minnesota. Gobert has amassed awards throughout his career such as winning the Defensive Player of the Year Award four times and being selected to the All-Defense team seven times. Yet many insist that he is overrated and an overall terrible basketball player.
Some of this is simply anti-Gobert and the old-school big style that he plays with which is devoid of modern shooting skills. But some of it, it can be argued, has roots in the idea of American exceptionalism. Former FOX Sports broadcaster and general lightning rod Jason Whitlock said as much recently when discussing the NBA’s ratings struggles and blamed it on international talent. Whitlock said:
“Quite frankly, hats off to Nicola Jokic, hats off to Giannis Antetokounmpo, but too many foreign players. Again, Americans like Americans. We like American success stories. We're nationalists by nature. They've ruined that. The best players are foreigners.”
Other sports media personalities like Bill Simmons have also said that the NBA is in trouble because it lacks a true American superstar that can be the face of the league. The sports media apparatus at large has an issue with this primarily because many of the European stars are not obsessed with the idea of being an NBA star. Giannis Antetokounmpo goes back to Greece every summer in the off-season and works out with his brothers. Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic head back to Serbia and Slovenia respectively as soon as the season ends and enjoy their time away from basketball. These players, for the most part, have not fallen into the very American idea of “hustle culture”, and oftentimes we as Americans don’t know what to do with that.
So as more French players enter as prominent prospects there are the old talking points about European players being soft or weak that inevitably come up. In the context of France in particular, it can be much deeper than that. There is a hostility that comes between Americans and the French. It is common for an average American to make a mocking French accent while exaggerating the pronunciation of words like croissant or baguette.
Much of this is rooted in American ideology as far back as the 18th century shortly after America gained its independence from Great Britain. In that era, France adopted secularism in its Constitution following the French Revolution. This concept is called Laïcité and dictates that religion belongs in private life and should never be introduced in the public sphere. This was in deep contrast to the views and beliefs of the Federalist Party that was prominent in early American politics and is still vastly different from the modern pervasiveness of religion in political rhetoric.
Throughout American history there have been other inflection points that have created a hostile perception of France in the American eye. In the early 20th century being anti-French was a symbol of white supremacy, where many criticized the French for marrying Native Americans while it colonized territories throughout the country. This extended into the perception of a cowardly surrender by the French to the Germans in World War II and more recently criticisms of the French condemnation of the decision to invade Iraq. Then there was of course the silly attempted rebranding of French fries to “freedom fries” in 2003. In short, there is a lot of history when it comes to the way Americans view the French.
This hostility it would seem, has brought some wrath upon French prospects from the last decade in regard to their development. Players like Theo Maledon and Frank Ntilikina were not given the same runway of development as their American counterparts. Guerschon Yabusele was drafted by the Celtics in 2017 and was given very limited playing time before being released, a somewhat unusual decision for someone that was drafted just outside of the Lottery.
Yabusele continued to develop overseas and had a great showing in the Olympics and has turned that into a second chance with the 76ers. He has been a beacon of consistency for the team averaging 10 points and 5 rebounds in 25 minutes per night. Yabusele is an example of the need for NBA scouts to pay more attention to France, and they are starting to. But it can also be said that it is long overdue, as the country has been churning out NBA talent for over twenty years.
As Victor Wembanyama continues to gain popularity and ascend into superstardom (he is currently fourth in jersey sales), one has to wonder if he will fully be embraced as the face of a league. The talent is certainly there as is the intrigue, plus Wembanyama has dabbled in the world of fashion which makes him infinitely more marketable as well. As more players enter the league and develop it will be increasingly impossible to ignore the level of talent coming from France, especially if the players in this year’s draft develop into All-Star caliber players.
The NBA years ago committed itself to international expansion, to be the basketball multicultural equivalent of the Premier League in soccer. We have seen players from various Eastern European countries, one great Greek player, and a few excellent players from Spain. But the amount of talent that is pouring in from France is elevating to new levels. There is a French revolution happening in the NBA, and American fans that are clamoring for a homegrown face of the league may be in for an especially long wait.