Follow live coverage of Day 12 of the 2024 Paris Olympics, with 21 gold medals on offer
PARIS – Maybe Victor Wembanyama knew what was coming.
Before France’s men’s basketball win over Canada on Tuesday night at Bercy Arena, just after a crowd of approximately 20,000 chanted his country’s national anthem so proudly, and with the energy in the building continuing to rise, the 20-year-old sensation who rose to prominence nearby raised his arms to the sky as if they had already won.
It would take two hours for his manifestation to materialize, but Wembanyama and his fellow Frenchmen were once again reaching for the sky at the end.
Their 82-73 upset sends France into a semifinal game against Germany on Thursday, when they’ll attempt to secure a medal in this sport for just the fourth time (in 12 appearances) and the first time since 2020.
For Canada, a team that was widely seen as a gold-medal threat to Team USA and featured 10 NBA players, this loss is an unexpected step backward after they won the program’s first-ever medal at the FIBA World Cup tournament last summer (bronze). Canada has just one men’s basketball Olympic medal in the country’s history (11 appearances), a silver from 1936.
But the French were raising eyebrows even before tipoff, as coach Vincent Collet made the bold choice to take two of his program’s most revered players, Rudy Gobert and Evan Fournier, out of the starting lineup. He went with Frank Ntilikina, Nic Batum, Guerschon Yabusele, Isaia Cordinier and Wembanyama, marking the third time in the tournament Team France had changed its starters.
The biggest surprise was Gobert, the four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, who no longer played his Twin Towers role with Wembanyama. He didn’t enter the game until 7:41 left in the first half, finished with just three minutes of action in all, then sparked a bit of confusion about his situation afterward.
As Gobert was leaving the media mixed zone after conducting his news conference, he told a small group of reporters that he had injured his left ring finger at practice two days before, had “surgery” on the following day and was, in essence, thankful that he was able to play in the game at all.
Collet later clarified, indicating Gobert did not have surgery, but rather an exam of the finger that included an MRI, and was available to play despite still feeling some pain.
“Yesterday evening, despite the (doctor) saying he could play, he had pain, so we didn’t know exactly (if) he could play,” Collet said. “But finally, this morning, he said, ‘I can play.’ But my idea was to protect him if I could do it, (and) I wanted to have him on the bench.
“As it was working well with the other big men, I prefer to keep him on the bench and he will be ready for the next game.”
Collet, it was clear, saw a need to go small regardless of Gobert’s status.
“The main reason (for both starting lineup changes) was the lineup from Canada,” he explained. “They always start the game with (6-foot-6 guard) Dillon Brooks at position four, and they play small ball. … I wanted Wemby to start at position five (rather than Gobert), so that’s why I put back Yabusele at position four, and the second change was Cordinier for Evan Fournier, because I wanted to start with a defensive starting five.”
It worked wonders for this France team that picked the perfect time to play its best game of the tournament.
Yabusele made Collet’s move look masterful, as the 28-year-old big man finished with 21 points and five rebounds. Ditto for Cordinier, who had 20 points (including four 3s). Wembanyama had just seven points, with 12 rebounds and three steals, in 26 minutes.
The Canadians shot just 37.9 percent from the field, and had 14 turnovers, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finishing with a team-high 27 points.
Team France wasted no time taking complete control of the frenzied crowd of locals, as they led 23-10 after the first quarter. The Canadians, whose defense had been suffocating in this tournament and a stark contrast to their inconsistent offense, came out tight and sloppy. Brooks missed his first five shots (finishing one of nine).
Jamal Murray’s disappearing act, which was an issue throughout the tournament as he struggled to adjust to a sixth-man role, began anew (he was just 3 of 13, finishing the tournament with a 29 percent shooting mark overall and just 14.3 percent from 3-point range).
R.J. Barrett wasn’t saving the day like he had in games past. And Gilgeous-Alexander, who had been carrying this team along with Barrett and Brooks to this point, was bottled up early on in the kind of way that the basketball world hasn’t seen in quite some time.
“I think (the problem) was just the start, the urgency, the aggressiveness, paying attention to details,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “When you start like that, it’s hard to play against any team. … I think I just attribute tonight to the start. I know I sound like a broken radio, but I think that’s what it was.”
With 15 seconds left in the half, Yabusele buried a 3-pointer that almost felt like a fourth-quarter dagger as France led 45-29. It would take a little while longer for France to finish the job, with Fournier’s end-of-shot-clock 3 from near the half-court line with 55 seconds doing the trick by putting France up 10.
And then, as Wembanyama had foreshadowed at the start, they would indeed raise the roof at the end.
“France played a hell of a game,” Murray said. “Give it to them. They played physical. They played like they’re at home, and they brought that energy from the start.”
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
