Tony Parker, winner of Euro-2013 with France, can boast of having more champion rings than his two acolytes (2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014), all won with Spurs, alongside Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, already members of the Hall of Fame, with whom he formed one of the most formidable “Big3” in history. He was also the first European elected MVP of a final, in 2007.
Born in Bruges (Belgium) to an American basketball player father and a Dutch mother, arrived as an infant in Denain (North), he spent his childhood near Rouen (north-west) and opted for French nationality at the age fifteen years old. His influence with the Blues has been enormous. Between his first selection, in 2000, and his last sixteen years later in the quarter-finals of the Rio Games, the brilliant playmaker led a dozen campaigns, linking the Olympics and the Euros without complaining with grueling American seasons ( more than a hundred matches).
He has 181 caps (for 2,741 points, or more than 15 on average per match) during which he was both the leader, the inspiration, the organizer and the finisher of the team. If he was not the very first Frenchman in the NBA when he arrived in Texas in 2001, at the age of 19, it was he who served as a model for the many compatriots who tried the adventure after him: Nicolas Batum, Evan Fournier and Rudy Gobert in particular. It is therefore only fair to see Parker, who ended his playing career in 2019 after an anecdotal final season at the Charlotte Hornets, join Duncan and Ginobili in the “Hall of Fame”.
