Who can pick up where three future Hall of Famers leave off?
Tony Parker was surprised to see a familiar face in an unfamiliar place.
“What are you doing here?,” he asked Wednesday, after his last game playing for the Blues, the French national team. They were again vanquished by its old nemesis, Spain, 92-67 in the Olympic quarterfinals.
I was there because respect had to be paid — to Parker, to Manu Ginobili and to Pau Gasol. They were not the first international players to play in the NBA, and you could certainly make a case that Dirk Nowitzki is the best player outside the United States to ever play in the league. But the global impact those three players had on basketball over the last 15 years cannot be easily quantified. Their impact put their respective teams on the map, and ushered in the most competitive era of international basketball ever seen.
“I hope they stay with their clubs,” veteran Spanish guard Juan Carlos Navarro said Friday through an interpreter, “but we all face the day when we have to leave.”
The trio has exemplified the integration of international basketball with the NBA game, with their international experiences augmenting their play in the States, and vice versa.
Between the three, their teams have nine NBA titles and a Finals MVP (Parker), one Olympic gold medal (Ginobili’s, from the 2004 Games), two Olympic silver medals (Gasol in ’08 and ’12), two bronze medals (Ginobili in ’08; Gasol this year) a FIBA World Cup gold medal (Gasol, in ’06), a silver (Ginobili, ’02) and a bronze (Parker, ’14), and four EuroBasket titles (three for Gasol and Spain, in ’09, ’11 and ’15; one for Parker and France in ’13).
But at 39, Ginobili is done for Argentina, and the 34-year-old Parker is hanging his French uniform up, too. He promised the Spurs that he was done and that any basketball he has left to play will be in San Antonio.
“I have mixed feelings,” Parker said. “Because at the same time, obviously, I’m disappointed we lost the game. I think we could have done, obviously, a lot better. Spain was just great today. They made every shot. We made a decision to stop Pau, and (Nikola) Mirotic goes off. That’s basketball. But at the same time, you know, I don’t want to throw everything away that we’ve done over the last 16 years, and the last eight or nine years with Coach (Vincent) Collet.
“I’m very proud of what we’ve doid on the national team. It’s the best results in the history for French basketball, first time in history we’ve gone to two Olympics in a row … I just want the whole team to know, don’t forget what we’ve accomplished.”
Parker has not always competed for the French in international play. This was only his second Olympics, and he missed the ’06 and ’10 World Championships because of injuries. But when he’s played, France has been a medal threat. He starred on the France team that won the bronze medal at the ’05 EuroBasket, ending a 50-year French drought in that competition, and led the Blues to their first-ever gold at EuroBasket in ’13, including an overtime win over Spain in the semifinals.
“He is the best French player for ever,” Collet said. “We’ve gotten medals four of the last five years on the national team, and he was a big part of it. He has been the leader we needed for a long time. It’s very frustrating to finish like that. I told Tony as we were walking off the court that I regret a lot that he has a last game like that.”
Led by Pau and Marc Gasol — the Memphis Grizzlies’ center missed the Olympics rehabbing the stress fracture in his foot — Spain has consistently been one of the best teams in international competition for a decade. The Spanish won gold at the ’06 World Championships (now known as the World Cup of Basketball), and silver medals in ’08 and ’12, losing both times to the Americans. Even without Marc Gasol and Orlando Magic forward Serge Ibaka, who played for Spain in ’12, the team won bronze here in Rio, taking a thrilling 89-88 victory over Australia Sunday.
The 36-year-old Pau Gasol has said during the tournament that he has not yet made up his mind if this was the last game for him for Spain. But as he dove out of bounds to save a loose ball, and dropped 31 on Australia, he looks like he still has more to give — good news for his new NBA team, the Spurs.
“I really don’t know how the process is going to play out,” Gasol said afterward. “I love playing for my national team, that’s pretty obvious. I have a lot of fun. I feel something special when I play for the national team, something unique. I always say that I’d like to do it as long as I can, but I don’t want to be outrageous with my decisions. I’m very rational and thoughtful. At the same time I love playing for this team. We have such a talented group, great group of guys, and we always have a chance to be at the top of every championship. So it’s fun.
“That being said, I’m getting older. At some point I’m not going to be able to play. When that point comes, I’ll accept it. It’ll be hard. As far as my journey, I look back, and it’s been incredible. I can’t ask for anything else. Everything that I did as a basketball player, it’s a plus, it’s a gift. Not many players can play for as long as I have, at the level I have. So just enjoying the ride, and I’m going to work hard to try to continue to extend it.”
The Spanish team features a lot of plus-30 players who’ve accepted lesser roles, like Jose Calderon, Juan Carlos Navarro and Sergio Rodriguez. Only Gasol is still a leading man. But all make contributions to Spain.
“Pau deserves the position he holds,” Spanish Coach Sergio Scariola said. “He is a leader. He is not despotic, but with a natural gift and a lot of education.”
There is finality with Ginobili, who was embraced by both teammates and U.S. players when the final horn sounded Wednesday, tears streaming down his face as sweat came off of his freshly shorn head.
The Greatest Generation, as the Argentina team anchored by Ginobil, Luis Scola, Andres Nocioni (who also announced his retirement from the national team last week) and Carlos Delfino — with contributions from the likes of former NBA players Pepe Sanchez, Walter Herrmann, Fabricio Oberto and current Houston Rockets guard Pablo Prigioni over the years — is, at last, done.
“I’ve known him since he was a child,” Argentina Coach Sergio Hernandez said of Ginobili. “It’s a difficult day for me, I admit it.”
Ginobili, who will play at least one more NBA season in San Antonio, has always been an artist on the floor. There was never a plan when he got the basketball; only a set of possibilities that he could link together with his incredible mind and physical gifts. (Hopefully, he patented the phrase “EuroStep,” since he’s the one who invented it and brought it to the NBA.)
But his on-court poetry created a mystique about the Argentines. They were a team out of a novel, like if Inigo Montoya and Fezzik found three other guys for pickup games as they traveled through Florin. Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You dunked on my father. Prepare to be crossed over.
“Nobody knew who we were,” Nocioni said. “We’ve done something that is not real. It is out of the ordinary.”
But because of their collective impact, international players are the norm now in the NBA, rather than the novelty they were when Parker, Ginobili and Gasol began their professional careers. The “stash” player is no longer someone who is forgotten by his NBA team; he’s now a valuable future piece who is pushed through the best leagues in Europe and Asia, in hopes that the return on investment will be great. A player like Dario Saric or Kristaps Porzingis isn’t mysterious for anyone paying a whit of attention.
But Parker and Ginobili will not be doing it for their countries any more, only in San Antonio.
“I just take a lot of pride playing for the national team,” Parker said. “I just love playing in this competition. The atmosphere is very different from the NBA. Growing up, obviously my dream was to play for an NBA championship. That was my ultimate goal. But as I grew up, I fell in love with the national team. We won the gold medal in juniors when I was 18. And then my goal was to bring in the first international team ever to win a championship for France, and we did that in ’13. Overall, it’s just great experiences. You play in different countries. The crowd is different. It’s just different from the NBA. And I grew up in it, and I enjoyed it. All those years, the last 16 years, has been great. I don’t regret one second.”
… AND NOBODY ASKED YOU, EITHER
Pay That Man His (undeserved) Money? From Ned Einstein:
Wonderful column. Probably scores of things to consider. But one is the huge mistake of requiring teams to spend 90 percent of the cap money. This MUST change or the overspending part of the equation will not stop.
Secondly, the NFL’s franchise-player solution may work in a League where that person is almost certainly a quarterback, and a great quarterback can make an otherwise average team superior. But in basketball, as we can see in the Olympics, one or two great players does not make for a great team. So the real goal of equaling the quality of play — so that the entire League’s domestic audience remains interested — must address an equality beyond merely the problems you cited.
Another thing that would help is making players remain in college for at least two years — although some Curt Flood could come along and trash this constraint. Otherwise, we’ll see more “proven players” from Europe being drafted higher, and U.S. viewers may not like the game as much.
The reality is, there are several layers of equality that must morph into shape, not merely the equal chance to get a great player and the means to not overpay for mediocre ones (which my first comment would address to a large degree: If you wouldn’t be forced to get stuck with even worse talent for the money, Harrison Barnes would not have gotten a $94 million, four-year contract).
A lot of things to unpack there, Ned. First, the 90 percent cap floor isn’t going anywhere. Otherwise, teams that have no chance at being competitive in a given season wouldn’t spend anything to get or retain players, and the on-court product — for which their fans don’t get any discounts on tickets — could be substantially worse. Teams can and should still be obligated to make smart decisions on whom they spend money. The franchise tag would serve in basketball to simply allow teams in smaller markets to hold on to their superstars without exposing them to the free market, as Oklahoma City had to eventually do with Kevin Durant. I agree with you that the age limit should be raised; I continue to support Major League Baseball’s system, which allows players to declare for the Draft out of high school, but compels those who decide to play in college to play for at least three years. As I said in the column, we all have to get used to the idea that a player’s contract is no longer an accurate means to determine his worth to his team. It’s now just a mechanism to get talent of varying levels onto a roster.
As Vin Scully would say, it’s just the start of things. From Maurice Smallwood:
Would you take Damian Lillard or Kyrie Irving to start a franchise?
Well, the question’s kind of unfair, Maurice: we’ve already seen what happened to a franchise that started with Irving (the post-LeBron Cavs of 2011), while Lillard has never had that kind of pressure on him — he always had someone substantial alongside him, whether Brandon Roy or LaMarcus Aldridge; now he has C.J. McCollum. But, having said that, I think I’d pick Lillard, for one reason: he’s been more durable so far physically in his career than Irving. I don’t think there’s much difference between them as players, and while I suspect Lillard is a better leader, there’s no obvious way to prove that. But playing every night matters, and Lillard has only missed seven games — all last season — in his first four NBA seasons.
Even with a program, I screw it up. From Julien Duc:
This weekend a friend of mine sent me an article you wrote for the NBA website: “Australia, France making presence (and future) felt.” Very interesting article… Good job!
However, I have a question. In this article you say: “Along with former NBAer Mickaël Piétrus, they’ve formed the spine of the national team since 2005.”
Are you really referring to Mickaël Piétrus, or to his brother Florent, who is in the current Olympic squad?
I ask because in my opinion Florent truly has been the spine of the national team (along with Tony Parker and Boris Diaw).
Florent Piétrus: played 221 times for France
Mickaël Piétrus: played 44 times for France
Mickaël hasn’t played for France in a little while.
As usual, I drank way too many cocktails laced with moron and lazy. Thank you for the correction.
Send your questions, comments, criticisms and in-flight entertainment suggestions to top this to daldridgetnt@gmail.com. If your e-mail is sufficiently funny, thought-provoking, well-written or snarky, we just might publish it!
I’M FEELIN’…
1) I was lucky enough, a week ago last Sunday night, to see a very fast man win the 100-meter dash and win his third Olympic gold medal in that event. To say Usain Bolt lived up to the hype and then some in these Games is understatement writ large.
2) No, Rio was not perfect. Far from it. But the Olympics Olympicked me again. There are so few times in most of our lives when we go outside our own comfort zones and truly spend time with people from different cultures, who speak different languages, who don’t see the world the way we do. I get that the vast majority of the people in Rio were fortunate and/or rich enough to be there, and don’t represent the poverty that too many live in every day of their lives. Yet it’s possible to separate the political issues created by the Games from the events themselves. Even though it’s not what we’re taught to do as journalists, for example, it was cool to see the Serbian players high-fiving and hugging the Serbian reporters who cover them after the team beat Australia Friday night to advance to the gold medal game. It was a big deal for that country, and they all were celebrating together. And the people of Rio went above and beyond to try and make all of this madness work as well as possible.
2A) Special thanks to our wonderful driver, Olavo, who got us everywhere we needed to go, day after day, on time and with courtesy and delightful company, told us where the legit churrascarias were in town and knew just where to go to get my computer fixed after I spilled coffee on the keyboard in the press tent outside Carioca Arena. May you, your wife and your little baby have many blessings and wonderful adventures on the ground and in the air in the years to come, our great friend!
3) One would expect the POTUS to get the best seats at Bradley Center for Milwaukee Bucks games even after he leaves office, now that his brother-in-law Craig Robinson — First Lady Michelle Obama’s older brother — has been hired as Milwaukee’s Vice President of Player and Organizational Development. Robinson coached in college for eight seasons, most recently at Oregon State, where he coached future NBA players Jared Cunningham and Eric Moreland. In his new job, Robinson will help mentor some of Milwaukee’s young players.
4) So, tchau from Rio. I’m going on vacation for a while. It’s been a long, long year. We will have some excellent Guest Tippers the next three weeks, including the Fan Tipper for this year! If you want to send a last-minute entry, it’s daldridgetnt@gmail.com. Again: I want to know why basketball means so much to you, and how it’s a part of your life, whether you still play in a weekly run, or coach it, or have a Hornets Fan Club in Estonia.
NOT FEELIN’ …
1) Ryan Lochte seems a cliché, someone that a bad writer would make up to exemplify white privilege in this country. I purposely say white rather than just privilege for this reason: too many people of color, in the United States and in other places, have been subjected to that oldest of boogeymen by white people caught in dubious circumstances: a black guy robbed me. On those words alone, whether true or not, countless people of color over the years have been falsely arrested, prosecuted — and worse. And if not for videotape evidence to the contrary, that may have happened again in Rio. It is possible, I suppose, that Lochte and/or his teammates really did interpret the actions of the security guard, who did pull a gun on the group after they urinated in public and destroyed property, as a “robbery.” Ask yourself this: if members of, say, the Brazilian swim team had broken an item at a gas station in, say, Houston, and urinated in the back of the building, and then tried to leave, and a security guard pulled a gun on them and demanded restitution, how would you judge their actions? And why did Lochte not mention the civilian who tried to act as interpreter between the owner and the swimmers — and who subsequently told the Brazilian website globo.com that the swimmers begged him not to call the police? If someone was being robbed, I’d think you’d want the police to come, and as soon as possible. It all added up to an ugly stain on the other American athletes who competed and acted honorably in a foreign country.
2) This is a terrific read by Milwaukee Bucks forward Jabari Parker, but the subject matter — the seemingly unending spate of violence in his hometown of Chicago — is beyond sad, and infuriating.
3) Tough outcome for Australia, which was desperate to get its first medal in men’s basketball, but came agonizingly short Sunday, losing by one point to Spain on a dubious foul call on Patty Mills with five seconds left, leading to Spain’s game-winning free throws by Sergio Rodriguez. The Aussies deserved a better fate, but the future is really bright for the program, with Ben Simmons, Thon Maker and Dante Exum all likely to be on the 2020 squad in Tokyo. One wonders if Andrew Bogut, who fouled out in the third quarter Sunday and understandably had nothing good to say afterward about the officiating, will come back for another rotation.
BY THE NUMBERS
3 — All-Star host assignments for New Orleans since 2008, after the Crescent City was officially awarded the 2017 All-Star game by the NBA last week. The league pulled out of Charlotte, its original choice to host the game, after the North Carolina state legislature passed a bill that blocked local municipalities from passing anti-discrimination legislation to protect gay and transgender people.
$8,000,000 — Reported one-year contract for Yi Jianlian, the former No. 6 overall pick of the 2007 Draft, after he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers last week. China was winless (0-5) in Olympic play, but Yi played well, leading China in scoring (20.4 points) and rebounding (6.6) in the tournament. Now 28, Yi played five NBA seasons with the Bucks, Washington Wizards, New Jersey Nets and Dallas Mavericks.
$45,546,390 — Estimated career earnings, per basketball-reference.com, of unrestricted free agent guard J.R. Smith, probably the best unsigned free agent still on the market. Smith and the Cleveland Cavaliers have yet to come to terms on a deal that would return him to Cleveland, though LeBron James has said on social media that it’s time for the Cavs to get something done with his starting two guard.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
— Heat guard Josh Richardson (@J_Rich1), Thursday, 7:29 p.m. Wait until you start watching your favorite TV shows, only to find out that no one younger than you remembers them at all. The Flintstones? What are they?
THEY SAID IT
“Of course not. ‘Cause three years after the invitation, we beat USA at USA. That would never happen if I had accepted invitation to play for New Jersey Nets. So I’m happy. We were the cause of the change. So I’m very proud of that.”
— Hall of Famer Oscar Schmidt, asked if he ever had any regrets not coming over to the NBA from his native Brazil after he was taken in the sixth round of the 1984 Draft by the then-New Jersey Nets. Instead, Schmidt stayed in Brazil and engineered that country’s greatest basketball victory, its upset of the U.S. team at the Pan American Games in Indianapolis in 1987. After the Russian team beat the Americans in the 1988 Summer Olympics, FIBA allowed NBA players to play in future Games starting in 1992 — when the “Dream Team” restored American dominance in the sport, at least for a while.
“I can’t be mad forever.”
— Lakers guard Nick Young, to the Orange County Register, on his belief that he could again play with point guard D’Angelo Russell if L.A. keeps him for the 2016-17 season. (The Lakers still have their stretch provision and could waive Young before the start of the season.)
“It’s pretty well known we didn’t receive any support. We did this on our own. We’ve faced hardships as a team that other teams in our group couldn’t even fathom. The fact that they can get here and be as competitive as they were, I think it speaks volumes to them.”
— Nigeria national basketball Coach William Voigt, to the Boston Globe, which detailed Nigeria’s non-existent budget for its national team. Most players paid their own way to Rio for the Games, and the team played without Blazers forward Al-Farouq Aminu because the program didn’t process the paperwork for his insurance in time. Nigeria was 1-4 in Olympic competition.
MORE MORNING TIP: Anthony leaves lasting legacy of leadership | U.S. women set standard of excellence
Longtime NBA reporter and columnist David Aldridge is an analyst for TNT. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.
