There are few types left like Nico Batumlet them speak without filters. He said one day, openly, that NBA players are also human and not impervious to mental health problems. And the French forward 37 years of the Clippers tells it like it is when he talks about how much he took from him Pau Gasol in that era of fierce rivalry between Spain and France in the last decade in which the Spanish team emerged victorious in almost every chapter.
“I wish I hadn’t played basketball, I would have had a couple more gold medals,” Batum said loud and clear to MD during the Clippers’ recent visit to Toronto. And, in fact, the Frenchman revealed that he was able to have a conversation about it with Pau after his last meeting with the French team, the final of the 2024 Olympic Games between France and the Team USA.
“I spoke to him after the gold match in Paris, before the medal ceremony. He was working for the Olympic Games, so we both talked for five minutes. I told him, ‘this was my last match,’ so I thanked him because, you know what? That was fun. I mean, the United States was nice, the Olympic Games, but playing against Spain was fantastic, it was different. Our duel was different,” Nico Batum explained with a nostalgic smile.
“I have good memories, bad memories. We beat them at home, they beat us at home. We had great battles a couple of years. We should make a documentary about it, but it was fun,” added the Clippers forward.
Those consecutive life or death duels between 2014 y 2015 It was the final fireworks, with both exchanging moral blows that rip out the heart.
France did it to Spain in the 2014 World Cup, in which a host Spanish team dreamed of a final with the United States that everyone took for granted. But the Heurtels, Diaw, Batum and company left the Pau y Marc GasolRicky Rubio, Navarro and co. on 52 points to dispatch them in the quarterfinals (52-65). The French coach’s plan Vincent Collet Not doubling Pau worked out well and the Spain attack then led by Juan Antonio Orenga collapsed with only 9 assists.
But the Spanish team would serve cruel revenge the following year by making France go through the same thing by firing them in the EuroBasket semifinals on French territory. Among the bad memories against Spain that Nico Batum referred to, the one that stands out the most is that fierce 40-point display by Pau Gasol against 27,000 French in Lille that threw out the French team (75-80).
“We tried to stop it, we tried and it didn’t work. It’s one of those moments for great players, they have those moments. And especially with what we did to them the year before, when they were supposed to have the greatest team in the history of Spain to win that World Cup. I hope their moment is over. We had a young team and we developed it. So I hoped they would come back and do that,” Batum explained about that French drama. In that France, some young people were beginning to emerge Rudy Gobert (22 years old) and Evan Fournier (21).
“They didn’t have the best team at that time (in France), they were missing a couple of guys and we had our best team. So it was a great revenge for them, it’s basketball,” Nico Batum added with a still certain tone of resignation.
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One of Batum’s great rivals
Juan Carlos Navarro
Spain, which would end up crowning that milestone with gold, lifted that EuroBasket without players like Marc Gasol, Ricky Rubio and a Juan Carlos Navarro with whom Batum starred in one of the most notorious episodes of that rivalry: the forward hit Bomba with a slap at the 2012 London Olympic Games and then acknowledged his mistake and asked for forgiveness.
The Spanish team eliminated France in the quarterfinals of those Games to end up losing the Olympic final with the powerful Team USA of LeBron, Durant and company.
Spain also collected victories against the French team in the quarterfinals of the 2009 EuroBasket and the final of the 2011 EuroBasket. Only in the semifinals of the 2013 European Championship and that tragic premature goodbye in the 2014 World Cup did France defeat Spain, with the 2022 EuroBasket final being the end for the team coached by Vincent Collet with the bathroom of the Sergio Scariolo (88-76).
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Just a Rudy Fernández Now 37 years old, he was the only one of the golden generation left in that team, but the now Barça center Willy Hernangomez He wet Rudy Gobert’s ear to finish as MVP of the European Championship and Juancho Hernangómez hit 7 triples to be named MVP of the final. Nico Batum was not at that EuroBasket. I had already made him suffer enough Pau Gasol.
