In 100% CSP, we take advantage of the international window to open the memory box with former players of the French basketball team. After Franck Butter and Crawford Palmer, former Limoges winger Yann Bonato looks back on the highlights of his career in Blue. She started early. The Blue jersey, he wore it from the youth teams. A kind of second skin. “We are part of those generations who from the age of 16 left for the French team every summer. We wore this jersey all our lives overall so it was a strong thing” entry camp Yann Bonato.
If he has trouble remembering his 1st with the A, he will never forget his 1st major competition with the France team. “It was in Berlin. European Championship 93. I was 21 years old. I had the chance to play quite quickly and therefore to be an actor in the French team at 21, it was pretty cool” recalls the former captain of Limoges CSP. Yann Bonato whose best memory in Blue, unsurprisingly, are the Olympic Games in Sydney and the silver medal against the United States in 2000. Even though he was injured in the quarter-finals against Canada and had to leave his teammates earlier than expected.
The Olympic Games, you can’t refuse
After the grueling season and the hat-trick with Limoges, he expected such an outcome. “I was at my wit’s end. I was tired after 2000. I had lost 15 kilos. I was in agony. I no longer wanted to go to the France team. I was tired. I discussed it with relatives and came out that the Olympic Games cannot be refused. So I felt like I was going to the box. I hurt myself but it was almost obvious to me” he explains fatalistic. But neither this injury nor his return before the group without the slightest welcome on his arrival in France spoiled his pleasure of being a silver medalist at the Olympic Games.
– JF Molliere/FFBB
A medal came to reward a group hitherto foreign to success. “1993-2000, we still had a slice of life together. There have been several episodes of missed meetings with the French team. We were beginning to perceive this “fanny generation” which would have been a waste. I would have found it a bit of a shame if we ended up each time like the “Jean-Michel Apeuprè” of failed results” he laughs today in reference to the sketches of Kad Merad. Yann Bonato who in the France team, shared his room with Laurent Sciarra and also spent a lot of time with Laurent Foirest and Stéphane Risacher. These four have used it card games.
A total investment in the French team
Silver medal champions at the Olympics who have much respect for what the following generations Parkers, Diaw, Pietrus, Gelabale and other Batum brought in French basketball. “It’s a different generation because it’s a little Americanized, a little NBA. But with a total investment in the French team. They also brought this culture of American winning. They crossed that threshold“explains Yann Bonato. The Blues will also have every chance in his eyes in the event of a new confrontation against the USA at the Paris Olympics in 2024.
“Vincent Collet has evolved a lot in relation to the game. There is a lot of first intention. There is physical. Fournier has the ball very much in hand. We see that it is not the same basketball as in a club where his basketball is very structured, where it is much more altruistic. He let either Parker or Fournier play instinctively. Because after a while, we can’t restrain these players. They are world-class but instinctive players. You can’t just put them in boxes. So today, we have characteristics to play like Americans. We don’t make any complex. We have the game” analyzes Yann Bonato, optimistic about the chances of the French basketball team to shine again in the years to come.
(Next and last episode: Frédéric Weis, former pivot of Limoges CSP and the French team, silver medalist at the Sydney Olympics)