Basketball qualification for the French Olympics started two days ago. This is the last chance for teams to qualify for the main tournament of the fourth anniversary. For the most part, the favorites show their best side and Italy achieved the biggest victory in the modern history of the qualifiers. Now the time has come for another legendary European team to show its skills.
Italian miracle!
This has never happened before! Italy showed its opponent in the Olympic qualification
We are talking about the Greek national team, which has absorbed all the cream of the crop of the Euroleague and one NBA superstar. Thomas Walkup, Nick Calathes, Georgios Papayannis, Konstantinos Mitoglou, Yiannoulis Larentzakis and Giannis Antetokounmpo lead the team. In the first game of the group stage, Greece had to face the Dominican Republic. Although the Central American team played without its main star, Karl-Anthony Towns, it is still a formidable force, as it has good players who proved their worth at the last World Basketball Championship.
However, this did not prevent Greece from defeating its rival 109:82. Naturally, Antetokounmpo stood out! Giannis never missed a field goal, making all 11 attempts (10 two-pointers and one three-pointer). Grik Freak finished with 32 points, two rebounds and one assist, adding nine successful attempts from the foul line. And all this at 18.10 on the court. The Dominican Republic had its own hero: Chris Duarte, who scored 26 points. However, the team looked much weaker than its opponent.
The video can be viewed on FIBA’s official YouTube channel. The video is copyrighted by FIBA.
Giannis is slowly getting used to playing for the national team. If he seemed, to put it mildly, bad before, he has now organically fit into the team structure, and Kalathes and Larentzakis found Antetokounmpo perfectly under the basket, contributing 16 assists between them during the game. Greek coach Vassilis Spanoulis was satisfied with his players’ performance: “It was a very good game. We played good basketball and I’m happy with how we played on both ends of the court, but it’s just one win. We take every game seriously.” Spanoulis also could not avoid touching on the subject of Antetokounmpo’s performance with the Greek national team, which has not participated in the Olympic Games since 2008.
Vassilis Spanoulis
Greek national team coach, best coach of the FIBA Champions League – 2023/2024
“He is very humble, even though he is a superstar. He only cares about winning, he doesn’t care about statistics. He sacrifices himself for victory. If he needs to score 40 points, he will do it; if he needs to score less, he will do it. He understands what he needs to do and how to adapt his game to European basketball. We also made some adjustments, the main thing is that he came to the team with a great mentality. Yiannis represents us all over the world and we are very proud of him. He has an open mind, he loves basketball a lot, he loves his country. He really wants to be here and he really wants to do what we have been missing for the last 15 years.”
Greece will now have to play the final match of the group stage against Egypt, and only then will they continue to fight for a ticket to the Olympics in the final phase of the tournament. But Antetokounmpo is not the only NBA superstar who is doing very well for the national team. The newcomer of the 2023/2024 season to the National Basketball Association, Victor Vembanyama, faced France in a friendly match against Turkey. The team, led by young talents, is keeping fit before the start of the Olympic Games at home.
The Turks are a very strong team, with famous players in the national team: Furkan Korkmaz, Sertac Sanli, Tarik Biberovich, Erkan Yilmaz and others. It is true that France is at the limit of its motivation, as the team will not need to fall face down in front of its fans. From the first minutes of the match, Vincent Collet’s team was brighter and more harmonious in almost every moment of the match. France won by more than double the points: 96:46. Vembanyama was irresistible: 24 points, six rebounds and four assists with 71.4% shooting from the field.
The video can be viewed on the NBA’s official YouTube channel. The video is copyrighted by FIBA.
Gershon Yabusele and Rudy Gobert performed well, but Vemby is something else. The French centre has gained several kilos of muscle mass in just a few months and continues to progress day by day. Of course, at the Olympic Games the level of opposition will be completely different than in a friendly match, but the talented San Antonio Spurs player never fails to surprise.
And we are waiting for the last day of the group stage and, for example, the Slovenian national team led by Luka Doncic may not make it to the final round of the national team if they do not beat New Zealand. Even Doncic’s triple-double was not enough to defeat Croatia (92:108), the Slovenians still have a chance, but they need to win at all costs.
Overall, Greece and France, led by NBA superstars, are approaching the Olympics in excellent form. It is true that Spanoulis’ team still has to find a place for itself and the hosts can only prepare for the start of the tournament. But Greece and France can hardly be said to be favourites for the upcoming Games. One can never rule out Spain, Germany, which became world champion in 2023, Canada and Australia. There is nothing to say about the US team. The team is simply packed with the best players in the world. There is also Serbia with Nikola Jokic, three-time NBA MVP.
Vemby’s transformation:
Has Vembanyama started to gain weight? The Frenchman’s off-season photos surprised many
