In 100% CSP, we take advantage of the international window to open the memory box with former players of the French basketball team. To begin this series, the former pivot of Limoges Franck Butter recounts his unexpected trajectory in the world of basketball. He started late at almost 18 years old but his tall size (2.10 meters) quickly opened doors for him at a time when the big boys were missing. In the early 80s, exempt from younger sport due to his growth, he moved on in just three years from the agricultural shoe factory where he worked in Seine-et-Marne to the French team via Limoges where Pierre Dao convinced him to come at just 18 years old.
I find that the operation was good for a person like me who knew nothing at all about basketball
Franck Butter has not forgotten his beginnings in the French team. “What coach Jean Galle wanted above all was to show me what the French team was like. I arrived like a hair in the soup in the middle of basketball where I started very late. He told me that I was the future hope of the France team at the pivot position. For me, everything happened very quickly. I found myself in Limoges after a year of basketball and about a year later, I find myself in the France team! I find that the operation was good for a person like me who arrived and who knew nothing at all about basketball“He explains humbly.
– JF Molliere/FFBB
Always in the right wagon
Franck Butter, and the 1993 European title with Limoges confirms this idea, believes that he has always been in the right car. In the right place at the right time. But if he had the right to the honors of the France team, it is above all because he was like in a club, a hardworking player and a model teammate. “I was there mainly to play for others. Like I love to help, I loved making blocks for the guys who put points, I loved taking rebounds for the team. I wasn’t there to be a star. I was there to help others” easily assumes Franck Butter.
I was talking bullshit. I was doing magic tricks. We were kidding!
To the point of being selected even injured. Of the two European championships in which he participated, there is one in which he did not play at all. Coach Michel Gomez brought him in 1995 when he had a broken arm. “I didn’t train. Nothing at all. I came with the group to make the month of preparation much less restrictive and much less long. It’s having a good time. Discuss things and others. The good atmosphere. I was talking bullshit. I was doing magic tricks. We were kidding! It was really nice“Recalls Franck. His regret? At the time, there were very good players but the France team did not win against the best. “It was frustrating, discouraging“.
This did not prevent Franck Butter, 68 selections on the clock, from taking full advantage of his passages in Blue. Especially outside the courts like the year when the France A team did not want to go on a tour of Brazil. It was the A premium team that went there with Franck Butter in the luggage :”we played 5 games. We took between 50 and 70 points. But we paid for three weeks in Brazil! We went to Copacabana a bit. Players have been assaulted on the beach. It was a little scary there but it didn’t get far. We laughed a lot. Unfortunately, we took down jackets but we knew it when we went there“. Franck Butter who in Blue will have had a lot of fun off the field. On the parquet side, it is rather in club with Limoges that he shone and collected trophies.
(Next episode: Crawford Palmer, sports director of Limoges CSP and former interior of the French team, silver medalist at the Sydney Olympics)