How France Basketball is using the FIBA World Cup 2023 to prepare for Paris 2024
With Paris 2024 Olympic Games less than a year away, France’s men’s basketball team are taking advantage of the upcoming World Cup to fine-tune their preparations ahead of their ultimate goal: winning Olympic gold on home soil. "It's not just a World Cup, it's also a big preparation for next summer,” Nicolas Batum told Olympics.com
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"I think for us, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games start today. It's not just a World Cup, it's also a big preparation for next summer,” Nicolas Batum said with unwavering certainty.
The first training camp for the World Cup in Pau had barely begun and still, the captain of Les Bleus, speaking to Olympics.com from a practice session, made no bones about tying the upcoming FIBA showpiece event to next year’s Olympic Games.
He knows that the intense preparations required for a World Cup, including improving team chemistry, playing tune-up games, and analysing fine margins, will more than hold their worth for next summer.
And while not all his teammates share the same foresight, they all have the same desire: to bring home France its first-ever world title.
"Let's be serious, we've got the team to go for gold,” Nando De Colo said, gesturing to the belief in the wider squad.
Nicolas Batum: "We have to show the world that we're a team to be reckoned with"
Questing for the World Cup just one year before they host the Olympic games as silver medallists, of course, has its benefits for France.
At the tournament, co-hosted by the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan, the French team can tinker with its recipe. It can learn what ingredients they need and how to blend them all in time for doing in the same back home next summer.
It will also be a great simulator of the pressure that is to come with teams such as Spain and the USA all pointing to the French side as one of the favourites to take the crown at the World Cup. The spotlight will be firmly fixed on Les Bleus throughout the tournament just as it will be when the Paris Games arrive.
"We're going to use this year for next year, that's for sure,” head coach Vincent Collet said of his plans for the tournament.
“We're going to put in place a system of values, which we've been carrying for some time, which we're going to insist on even more with Paris 2024 in our sights."
The values Collet points towards have been proving their worth for over a decade. With its defensive intensity, team spirit and high ambitions, the French team is now one of the best on the planet.
It has brought home a medal in its last three campaigns: bronze from the 2019 World Cup and silver from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and EuroBasket 2022.
But Les Bleus aren't content with that, they want to keep proving themselves.
"We have to show the world that we're a team to be reckoned with,” Batum said underlining their hunger.
Nando de Colo: "You can’t decide from one day to the next, ‘I’m going to be ready’"
Regardless of the competition, the venue or the opposition, the duty France feels to keep excelling is evident among the entire squad.
The passion to go that extra inch further was born the moment they lost to the gold medal to the USA on the hardwood courts of Tokyo back in 2021.
Part of that ambition, to keep evolving, involves creating winning habits which by Paris 2024 will be so engrained it will be like a reflex when their Olympic campaign gets underway.
"It's important to perform in all competitions,” Rudy Gobert told Olympics.com, explaining the value of the World Cup to their overall approach.
“You don't start a competition without the goal of winning. Every year, every match, we learn. It's important for us to keep progressing. The Olympics will be another competition, but as of this year, we're really focused on being the best team we can be.”
De Colo likewise agreed with Gobert: “In all sports, but especially in basketball, you can’t decide from one day to the next, ‘I’m going to be ready’, the former San Antonio guard explained.
“To be good at the Olympics, even if it’s a year away, it starts today. I've said this to some teammates, explaining how important it is to take this World Cup seriously, to go there to get the best possible result, that's what will make us better for the Paris 2024 Olympics."
The World Cup tests will come early and hard for France in Indonesia. They will open their Basketball World Cup campaign in Group H against Canada on 25 August - featuring a roster stacked with NBA talent.
Latvia and Lebanon then await with world champions Spain a possible challenger in the tournament's second phase.
As competitions go, the tournament will be gritty, hard, fast-paced - all things the Olympics will be and more. It'll be the perfect stress test and one the team are more than ready to embrace.