By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
France never won a gold medal in Eurobasket and now the greatest basketball player in the history of the country, Tony Parker, is ready to make history. He admits that two years ago his team was happy just to get to the final, but now things have changed: “The semifinal was a great game, but on the same time the next will be bigger. Two years ago we were excited just to get to the final and to get the qualification to the Olympics, we didn’t realized what the win in the final could mean and we have to use that experience and be ready. I have confidence to my team, we now that we will have to produce a big game in the final. Nico (Batum) had a great game in the end, he was ready. We are ready, we fought till the end, we were trailing, but we never lost our faith and finally we won. We have to do the same in the final and I have the faith that we will do it”.
About the come back in second half of the semifinal against Spain, Parker explained: “We knew that it was going to be a long game. We knew that there was time, nothing was finished, but on the same time we had to react. That’s what we did”.
And of course the key was defense: “Our defense was incredible. Nico carried us with his defense, Florant Pietrus is our “chief of defense”. Nicolas was also incredible against Dragic in the quarterfinal and he also did an excellent job against Rudy Fernandez. Florent was enormous against Marc Gasol and that was the work of coach Collet”.
With his 32 points against France, Parker became the second all time scorer of Eurobaskets surpassing Dirk Nowitzki, but that doesn’t excite him: “No, only the gold medal”