Jean-Baptiste Sarrazin
modified to
10:54 p.m., January 18, 2023
The NBA is internationalizing and once again promoting itself in France after a first experiment in 2020. The Detroit Pistons will thus face the Chicago Bulls on Thursday evening at the Accor Hotel Arena in Bercy as part of the regular season of the American championship. . A promotional tour at stake for French basketball which can thus seize this opportunity.
Special guest of the show Europe 1 Sport (every evening from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.), former basketball player Ronny Turiaf said that “hosting an NBA game in Paris is essential for basketball culture. We feel that young people are excited, everyone is happy , everyone wants to be there and I had the chance to play a pre-season game with the New York Knicks in Paris. This game (Detroit-Chicago) is good for basketball.”
effervescence
“Speaking of basketball culture, there is an effervescence in France which was created at the time with Mickael Jordan. We have Lebron James now who is a planetary star. What I like with the NBA is the whole package which comes with: a two and a half hour match is a show, people forget a little about everything that happens around their lives for two hours”, underlined Ronny Turiaf.
The basketball game is accompanied by a whole tradition carried around shows, dances and songs, a symphony which is similar to a show and which keeps the spectators in suspense for several hours. The NBA has thus found its audience in France, especially among young people and this gala match between Detroit and Chicago at the Accor Hotel Arena bears witness to this. The room will be full.
The conquest of the Europeans
For the former player of the France team, basketball “is the opportunity to show, to share beautiful values. When we see today that there are about a quarter of the NBA who are international players, we see that basketball transcends cultures and I think that’s why people are touched by this sport.”
And this match in France is not trivial when you know that one of the future stars of world basketball is French. Indeed, Victor Wembanyama is announced as the next prodigy of the sport. He will also be present for the match at the Accor Hotel Arena. Europe provides the American championship with very good players every year. Since the 2018-2019 season, the trophy for the best regular season player in the NBA has been the prerogative of two Europeans: the Greek Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Serbian Nikola Jokic, rewarded twice each.
Before them, the only basketball player from the Old Continent to have been distinguished in this way was the German Dirk Nowitzki, in 2007, a sign of a strong trend in recent years. This basketball match in France is thus a nice thank you from the NBA to Europe.