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Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, "Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
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An interview with Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Network.
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Keith Rathbone
Hello and welcome to New Books in Sports, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Keith Rathbone and I'm coming to you from Sydney, Australia, where I'm a senior lecturer in history at Macquarie University. And I'm here today, actually, I'm so excited today because I've been looking forward to talking to this author for a long time. I'm here today with Lindsay Sarah Krasnov Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov is a historian specializing in global sport, communication and diplomacy. She's the director of France and us, which is a fantastic resource for people who want to look it up. And she lectures on sports diplomacy at New York University's Tisch Institute of Global Sports. She's also the author of the Making of Les Bleu, which which if you haven't read it, you should also read that's the Making of Les Bleu Sport in France, 1958-2010. And she's written on Global sport for CNN International, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker. But we're here today to talk about Lindsay's newest book, Basketball Empire France and the Making of a global NBA and WNBA, out from Bloomsbury in 2023. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me. I've been so excited to talk to you about this for about a year now. So I'm really glad that we're finally getting getting to speak.
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Oh, thanks so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this as well.
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Keith Rathbone
So, Lindsay, I'd like to start off by asking you the same question I asked everybody else, which is just simply how did you develop this project? Where did it come from?
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
It's a great story. The origin story of Basketball Empire. When I was researching and writing the Making of Les Bleus, while the primary focus was on football soccer, I did a little sidebar on basketball. And at that time when I was researching it was still in the early aughts. And while it was clear that there is something going on in terms of French into the NBA, there's there wasn't the same sort of kind of results or recent history to back it up at that time. But I found myself becoming more and more interested in it, as well as the fact that for the Making of Les Bleus, some of the archival materials that I pulled on from the late 1970s and early 1980s about the kind of the sports study sections that were being instituted in the French school system, I found that there is more documentation on the basketball side than the football soccer side. So that, you know, kind of, I knew I wanted to do something with that. But it wasn't until 2013, when I was still working for the US Department of State as a historian, but working very closely with colleagues at the U.S. embassy in France on a joint World War I centennial project, that the kind of the seeds of basketball were further implanted in the World War I work. Part of my, part of the research question was what did U.S. diplomats in France do during the first years of the war, when war broke out in 1914, as a neutral nation, even though we know that they had fought whatever they were doing, had fostered very, very close ties with their French counterparts, and kind of helped to set up a a new type of rapport between French and American diplomats. And part of what I was charged with doing was also trying to diversify the voices of who we were examining at the time. The U.S. foreign Service didn't exist in its current status. The ambassadors in the diplomatic corps were appointed. They were usually from the country's elites, even more so than perhaps now. And it was all white gentlemen, by and large. Same with the consular service, although as part of this project I found that that was not always the case. And so I was on the hunt for as diverse an understanding of who was doing what on behalf of the US government in France during the first years of World War I. And I had come upon two or three examples of how sports was a connective tissue in kind of an early iteration of what today we would call sports diplomacy. But at the time, you know, it was never really kind of fused officially as such sports diplomacy, you know, our common definition being when the acts of the diplomatic world, communication, representation and negotiation intersect through the sporting realm, whether it be through an officially credentialed government diplomat or representative of state state. And that includes elite athletes performing or competing on behalf of the nation at major international competitions or informal or non official sports diplomacy undertaken by everyday citizens. And while this latter is far more diffuse and robust Today in the 21st century, there were not that many of examples of it in the early 20th century. Yet I found that there is example of the US Consul in Saint Etienne, France, William H. Hunt, who was stationed there for about 20 years. He was one of the very few African Americans in the US consular service at the time, posted overseas. And he was posted to France. And he used sports, particularly rugby, to assimilate into his local consular district. He rapidly became the president of the local rugby club in St Etienne. It was that club still exists today as case Rugby and St Etienne, the professional team there. But William Hunt was its longtime president and kind of used sport unofficially to foster relations with local French people and to push his case when the war broke out in 1914. Yes, he was technically a neutral nation representative, yet he worked diligently on behalf of his consular citizens, particularly those tied to his rugby club, to try to find out where their loved ones were. Were they interned in prisoner of war camps, were they missing or killed in action? And perhaps was not exactly 100% walking that neutral line, which is a fine line. And it won significant gratitude from the Sentetian community to the point where after the war he remained for, you know, up until 1927, when he was reassigned to Guadeloupe. He remained a pillar of the society there, despite the difference in his background, skin tone and so forth. So that was one of the early examples of a kind of sports diplomacy that fostered closer relations and better understandings of French and American citizens at the time. The other was found in French Ambassador to the United States, J.J. juicerand, who himself was a writer and a bit of a historian, recognized by the American Historical association in the 1920s for some of his work. But Juice around was stationed as the ambassador in the United States from 1903 through 1924. So again, for an equally long time. And the fascinating thing about him is that he used sport to forge better relations with American citizens, particularly with then U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. Doucerand was often tasked with going on walks with Roosevelt through Rock Creek park and recruited to play tennis as part of the famed tennis cabinet. Some of Roosevelt's closest advisors and executive secretaries to very informally, you know, think through some of the issues of the day. And it is we found that because of these close relationships that Juice around was able to forge through tennis, through walking or other sports, that when war broke out in 1914, he was able to petition fairly successfully for assistance and aid on behalf of France. So these are kind of like the, the founding, the founding style stories that then while I was there in 2013 researching these very stories and had found the early, the early, you know, pathways for them, I was also watching Les Bleu, Les Bleus of basketball when the European basketball tournament EuroBasket for the first time ever. And I had already understood a little bit of French basketball history that there was a very long and proud tradition and that from the immediate post World War II period. So like 1947 through 1959, the national teams, both the men's and the women's national teams, had a kind of a first golden age where they did pretty well in international competition. They won medals at European tournaments. The men's team won silver at the 1948 London Olympics. The women's national team won bronze at the first ever FIBA Women's World cup in 1953. But then that kind of was that that progress was nullified by the sports crisis that began well, was illuminated by the poor showing at the Rome 1960 Olympics and kind of, you know, as the making of Les Blue gets into, prodded France to put sport as part of the everyday, part of its citizen project. And so, you know, I found myself watching that 2013 EuroBasket winning team and a being over the moon, happy for them, knowing all the setbacks and the challenges that they overcame, but also looking at the individuals who made up that team. More than half at that point had US experience in the NBA, whether they were currently active NBA players or had played a few seasons and were back in Europe or elsewhere. And I found myself thinking, to what extent did their US experience and their NBA experience play into how they were able to level up their team game and win it all on the European continental level? Knowing that the NBA is recognized as the elite basketball championship in the world, Euroleague, you know, very close second. But the NBA is still seen today by most as kind of that premier, the best of the best. But also knowing for myself, through study abroad, as a student, through work experiences and, you know, research as a, as a historian, that the experience of being abroad also helps you in a variety of other ways, maybe not just developing your professional skills, whether it is your professional skills as a historian or as a basketball player, but also your, your own personal development and how you kind of better know and understand yourself and then how you're able to bring that to your other endeavors. And, and so I found myself thinking, is there something in those players overseas experience, the US Experience, that helps to explain why France has started to again win at titles or very close to titles, silver medals, bronze medals in international competition, and why at that point, by 2013, there was a clear, clear, demonstrated history of a continual pipeline of French players into the NBA. The first ones hit in 1997, as well as in the WNBA. But by 2013, it was clear that it was not a fluke that some NBA draft classes would bring in, you know, four players, some would bring in just one, but it was consistent over time. And so that's kind of the very long origin story for a basketball empire.
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Keith Rathbone
No, but I think one of the things that I was getting out of your response is, and when I read the book, you said a very hard task for yourself in some ways, like because you actually needed to. You're integrating a range of different subfields, transnational history, diplomatic history, sports history, and weaving those together. But also, I mean, even in your response here, you're kind of talking France in the US but when you use this term, basketball empire, and I would ask you here in a sec, what, what you meant by empire. You don't just weave together France and the United States, but you also have the, you know, French Antilles and Africa. And so I wondered, you've talked a little bit about your, why you, why you wanted to do this diplomatic History. But I wondered a bit if you could explain to us why you called the book Basketball Empire. And probably people who do French sports history are already tweaking a little bit to some of the reasons, but maybe you can tell us what led you to this great title and what you meant by empire. Whose empire is it? Is it France's? Is it the United States? Is it the NBA's? Whose empire?
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
100%. And you know, the title Basketball Empire is very much an homage to Laurent Dubois groundbreaking work, Soccer Empire and what, what I hoped to do with basketball empire was not to replicate what Laurent has so brilliantly done in that foundational piece of work, but to provide kind of a different kind of point into how sport more broadly by France, particularly in the 21st century, has certain degrees of success as measured by titles or medals or number of players in elite leagues or a variety of different barometers, but is also one of the most diverse and democratic milieu's in French society. And it is thanks to, and because of its colonial history and the post colonial legacies, as messy and as complicated and complex as those are. Without that, we would have a vastly different situation today. And it is because of that diversity that enables France to kind of play in the world globally, within the sports scene today. And I think most within the sports realm in France today very much understand and acknowledge that.
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Keith Rathbone
Yeah, I definitely, when reading it, I got the homage to Laurent Dubois book, but I didn't. Your book and his book are totally different in a good way, in a really productive way. I mean, he's not as interested in the diplomatic angle in some ways, but also for people who are really interested in sports history, your, Your work drives more deeply into the kind of function of, of the Federation Francis de Basketball and, and of the NBA than, than Laurent's work looks at, for example, the Federation Francis de Football, which he doesn't really. He. He hadn't really looked at that as a kind of institution. So I appreciated the kind of differences. I, I want to. There's just such a rich book, Lindsay, so I don't want to. I. We could talk at the. We could talk at the macro level for a long time and that would be good, but then listeners wouldn't. Wouldn't have some of the sense of the particularities. I would say for people listening, there are three sections. The first section, kind of the three sections of the book. The first section kind of deals with the. This longer history of basketball in France. And there's a second section that deals particularly with basketball in this late ots, early to late ought period where we have this emergence of this as. As what Lindsay was calling it, this globalization of French stars as they enter into the NBA. And then there's a final section. I want to make sure it's called Glowing Global. But it looks in some ways at what the Formation a la Francaise is like, why the French system has been so successful at producing global stars in a way that other countries have not. And so I'd love to look at each one of these sections in part and very much just in Part because for people listening, this is a really rich book and it has not only the kind of, you know, broad scope, but it has really a lot of like, interesting texture to it with a lot of people who, even as someone who studies French sport, I was like, oh, I, I didn't, I didn't, you know, know this person was doing that. I didn't know this person was doing that. Although I interviewed one of the people you mentioned in the book who was a French basketball player and during the Vichy period and he later became an official at the Federation. Francis the basketball, although I'm blanking on the name, but as soon as I came upon it in the book, I was like, oh, I've interviewed this guy. At any rate, I wonder if you want to start, Lindsay, because we talked a little bit about basketball in the 1920s, that early origin. And really the first section of the book in some ways deals with, I don't know if you want to say, the kind of origins of French basketball in line with this kind of American influence and how they are intention and in, in, in collaboration. So I wonder if you can kind of, you know, what, what are you trying to do in the first part of that book, in the first section of the book. And maybe if you can, I don't want to know. Do you want to start all the way back at the Basque basketball in crisis, or do you want to maybe start in that post 68 moment or so?
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
We can start kind of with the, you know, with the kind of reintroduction of French basketball to its amie American in the. In the early 50s. The interesting thing about French basketball is that it was the first place where basketball was exported when it left North America. So if basketball is invented in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, it next is taken to France. And in Paris, December 27, 1893, is the first basketball game on European soil at the YMCA building on Rue de Trevise in Paris is still there. It is the oldest existing original basketball court in the world. And actually a really interesting kind of symbolic, kind of legacy of French and American informal sports diplomacy. That's a whole different story. But from pretty much that early introduction period, with the exception of the immediate two World War periods, French basketball developed on its own, independent of the American cousin. And there is a compilation co edited by Fabienne Ochambeau, Loic Arteaga and Gerard Basque, Le Continent Basquet, that came out, I think in 2015 that does a really good job kind of dealing with the spread of basketball from there through the rest of the European continent, but also how kind of French rules were dominating at least part of that strain. So the book begins with the first American to really mark French basketball after World War II, Martin Feinberg. And his story is kind of the catalyst into the rest of it that obviously French basketball has been enriched by a wide variety of different influences, because just like other parts of French culture, basketball and sport more broadly have benefited from outside influence. It's not as insular all the time time, I think, as some people think, and certainly French historians know that quite well. But Martin Feinberg really kind of the one to kind of launch this. And for me, one of the important things throughout the book was telling the story from the perspective of the players or the coaches or those directly involved, kind of by necessity, because the kinds of questions I was interested in exploring were not really found in government archives to begin with, and B, because sport was not seen as important for a good chunk of the time that the book covers. These are just not things that were captured and recorded for posterity in government archives in quite the same way as they might be today. So kind of the twin propelling, but starting with Martin Feinberg, who didn't go to France to play basketball in 1954, but basketball found him. And, you know, there's just one of the beautiful things about the French basketball story, and different from the football story, is that it is very much a family, an intergenerational family. It is also a much smaller world.
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Keith Rathbone
I was so surprised to see how these, like, family connections and you could almost do a. I was waiting for there to be a genealogy in the back of.
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Yeah, so genealogy, not necessarily in terms of, you know, blood relatives, but certainly genealogy in terms of biology, basketball, you know, generations. And for me, that was, yeah, one of the really enriching things for me personally. And, you know, getting to speak with different members of each of these, you know, basketball family, you know, family trees, was also really enlightening as well. And, you know, how. How Martin Feinberg's teammates at the Times say how much playing with him introduced them to a different type of ball, different way of thinking about what basketball could be like and how they learned more about the United States through him and what he helped to impart about basketball back in the US Than from what they would read about in the media or from the government at that time. So, you know, I think that's kind of an early illustration of these sorts of things. And that entire first part is looking at a lot of the kind of those earlier interactions which start to pick up pace after 1968 and interestingly impacts not just the men's game in France, but also the women's game, which has a very different kind of history. And actually up until, you know, Perhaps the late 80s or 1990s, French women's basketball had the stronger domestic history and kind of tradition of winning, including with some international accolades, than the men's game, which is kind of a. There's many different kind of ironies in the larger story, but this being one of them. And you know, discovering how NBA champion Boris Diao's mother hoops heroine in her own right, Elizabeth Riffy had. Her idol was Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, which is my team. I grew up in Boston. And the only reason that she agreed to speak with me for this project, or at least initially, it's because I wanted to ask her more about her idol, Bill Russell. And you know, she's like, well, I. No one ever asked me about that. And so, you know, those kinds of kind of interesting connections to learn how, even if there's not kind of that person to person exchange, she very much learned how to defend and to do a one handed jump shot through watching game tape of Bill Russell. So speaking to the power of that communications, have we think of that so much today in terms of what the Internet and social media allows empowers and all the negative things that obviously go with it. But I don't think as historians, particularly within sport, yes, we talk about the power of images, the power of moving pictures and television, but the ability to have game tape for a player overseas, to watch the best of the best, and to rewind and keep hitting play and replay over and over and then try to replicate that. For me, that was something entirely new and really spoke to a type of technical exchange that I had not thought about before, but which in the process of doing the interviews and the research became clear that many of a certain generation did that.
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Keith Rathbone
Yeah, One of the things I loved about the book was how, you know, you interrogated this notion throughout of the idea of a difference between French and American styles. And it wasn't just kind of a technical difference on the court, but also differences in preparation and differences of attitude and differences of approach. It was really interesting to see that. And at times, sometimes, you know, the movement of players or the movement of tape or the. I mean, obviously the Internet now has allowed for these styles to approach each other, but they never actually kind of entirely overlap and they're just different value sets as well. Like this idea that French basketball Was about, you know, the team and the movement of the ball and not. And not about athleticism and so much. But then always players who on both sides were like, no, I'm going to show them that I can. The Americans who came to France, showing them I can pass. I know how to pass. And the French players coming over to the US who could. Who could throw one down, you know, and. And play above the rim. So it was really. That's one thing I loved about. About. About the book as a whole. But there was a really tricky chapter in that first bit, triangulating foundation 68 to 84. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about. About that, because I think that encapsulated in some of the ways, some of the. The. The value of the book for people who are reading it, who want to be. Who are interested in transnational sports histories, because this is something you do really well. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that chapter in particular, maybe the difficulties of this kind of triangulation of multiple empires.
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Yeah, that was the most difficult chapter to write of the book. It was also, I think, one of the very last ones I wrote, even though it was the one that I had the most information on and kind of completed the research earliest, just because figuring out how to put it together in a narrative that kind of made sense, but still fit in with the rest of the rhythm and hopefully didn't lose too much rhythm either. Triangulating this particular chapter talks about the evolution and French men's basketball from 1968 through 1984. Kind of the period where you start to see the floodgates open and more American players come into the French league, which was not professional until 1987. So it was amateur or semi pro, because the American players and some of the other foreigners, they would get paid under the table or the teams or the companies that were their sponsors would provide the apartments, the cars, you know, a job teaching English. Yeah. So, you know, you have an influx of American players. At the same time you have players increasingly from the French Antilles, notably Guadeloupe, but also Martinique, starting to come to the mainland and playing basketball. One of the stories that this chapter hinges on is Jacques Cashmere, one of the legendary players of French basketball who grew up in Guadeloupe. His grandfather was a slave and just really fascinating figure in terms of not just his story, but also the insights he offers in terms of being one of the first waves of players from the Antilles to really mark French men's basketball. Certainly was not the first player of color on the men's national team. That distinction went to Roger Antoine in the 1950s, but Jack Cashmere, kind of one of the big stars to really break through. And hearing his tale about how growing up in Guadalupe, yes, recently a full part of France, this is after the change into a full on department, but still being situated geographically close to the United States, this kind of starts to tease out the question, well, whose empire are we talking about anyhow? Is it, you know, empire in a geographic sense, but also empire in a cultural sense. And you know, Jacques Kashmir says how Bill Russell too was his idol and you know, kind of an interesting story there, but no, that you have the American strain, the Antillean strain, but also at the same time, while you do have some players from francophone Africa, notably Senegal, going to France at this time period, you also have the French basketball federation, the ffbb, starting to send some of its technicians and coaches out to their former African holdings, to newly independent Senegal, to newly independent Madagascar, among other countries, and providing that technical exchange, that technical knowledge and know how and training up some of the university or other youth teams there, which was, you know, very interesting insight to get. And the, the, the, the player and official in question, Michel Rat, talks very much about, yes, you know, how he was aware that, you know, this could be seen a certain way by the locals, but that he personally never felt that he was necessarily there in a colonial capacity. He was there to share the love of the game and how, you know, over generations, you know, he too now has this genealogy of players, not just from France, who he has helped to coach or to kind of matriculate into the development system, but also from Senegal in particular from Madagascar, and how he's been so proud that they too have gone on to kind of some of the top rungs of the sport within their countries or the African continent. So that's one of the interesting aspects of, or from my perspective, basketball Empires app. I think it's providing snapshots of the intersection of African basketball and its francophone or American counterparts and hopefully paves the way for a lot more work that is needed to be done and can be done and is I think hopefully increasingly out there.
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
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Keith Rathbone
Yeah, I, I, I think we should talk about that a little bit at the end. But one of the things that, that you're bringing out in your, in your conversation as well and that comes out in the book is that this is not a picture of kind of mono, mono directional empire, but it's, you know, kind of polycentric empire in which things are, are moving in lots of different directions and it's very agentic and people focused picture of empire. So it really was rich in that respect.
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
And you also start to see that kind of traversing of the Atlantic in the other way, from France to the United States as well, starting in the 1980s more consistently. And it's at that point where things start to, at least from my perspective, become interesting because it's no longer just kind of, you know, it speaks to the two way flow of players information experiences. Not just France, US but also France, Africa and obviously the, the Antilles being a full part of that. So it's kind of textured in many ways, including with the women's game and Paulina Cambie as the first French woman to play Division 1 basketball in 1984 with Marist College. People might know of Rudy Borgerell, who played on Marist College's men's team, the Red foxes, in the 84, 85, 86 seasons. Rudy Borgarell is immortalized on celluloid in the film Coming to America, the Eddie Murphy movie. When they're at that March tournament basketball game, he is in some of the frames of those because they filmed with the actual game. Rudy Borgarrel is the father of three time NBA Defensive player of the year Rudy Gobert. So there is that interesting connection. But Paulina Cambie was one of the first and it's interesting in terms of how she is seen by subsequent generations of French players as kind of the big sister in helping them towards their American chapters or American experiences. And she was a legendary star in her own right in France before she went to the US and was of such a caliber that she won her way into the starting five very rapidly. So it's not that she was a role player when she came to the U.S. she was, you know, a major part of their team from the get. Go.
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Keith Rathbone
Yeah, there. There's one kind of other thread in the first section that I'd love to talk about and there's so much more to talk about, but I want to get into the second section where we get. Where we get some of the rise of the 2020, late 20th, early 21st century basketball players. That's the influence of. And the kind of adaptation of not just like complete bar. It's not a borrowing. It's an adaptation of American language, language about basketball and, and how basketball was intersecting with other cultural imports like rap music, urban fashion. And I was so glad to see George Eddie because I love, you know, listening. If you listen to, if you understand French, you need to Google George Adi and listen to him discuss, you know, or him talking about basketball, all these American phrases, but in entirely French ways. They're neologisms that were. That are so evocative. But I would love to hear a little bit about that because I think we get the sense that I think we could have watching it get the sense that America, that American pastimes just go to France, but they're not adapted in a French way. And that would be wrong. And because your book shows that's not what happens.
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Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Right. So it's not just an Americanization full on of the game. It is kind of the French receiving basketball or some of the terminologies that are used and kind of reworking it and using them in their own context in ways which I find very interesting. Others might argue otherwise, but the example of George Eddy is kind of key. A French American, he grew up in the US and upon graduating college, University of Florida, went to France because wanted to try his hand in basketball semi pro. And he became the voice of the NBA. Once Canal plus began broadcasting NBA games, I think January 1985 was the first game that he was the analyst for. And how he brought the. Not just knowledge of the NBA and its style and the players who would be shown on these games, but also the lingo and what it meant and how he helped to kind of translate this into French audiences, especially that first generation of kids who were so eager and excited to receive it. And today George Eddy is still super active in the basketball scene and helping to be a key conduit and ambassador of the sport at large. And I think that's one of the interesting things for me that comes out is that basketball is not just about one identity, but it's about multi identities, multiple layers of identity at the same time with perhaps the global identity of being a basketball player or Being part of the basketball world, that overarching sense that there's common reference points, Michael Jordan or the Dream Team, Tony Parker, Victor, Juan Banyama, but also with it, those common reference points. There's, you know, a few common reference points in the music. You know, usually hip hop, rap, but not always. And that, you know, has started to come through. Some of the most recent French arrivals in the NBA have introduced their U.S. teammates to French rappers like Ninho and others. And, you know, that's now played in some of the arenas. So, you know, it's. It's about the game. It's about the culture around the game, the way of kind of, you know, adhering to the principles of the game, the music, it's the fashion, but it's also the sneaker culture too. So it's all of these things. And I think that's what makes the identity of global basketball so super interesting.
- [39:28]
Keith Rathbone
So your next section will be of interest not only to people who are French history nerds, but just anyone who loves the NBA would love reading this section, I think, because it's, it's, it's. I. The first part of the book is fabulous and anyone who loves sports history would love that. But the second part, I could, I feel like I could give that to anyone who loves the NBA and isn't a historian. It's so rich. And it's a focus on these 21st century basketball players and how they act, these French basketball players, how they act as sports diplomats in the US you look at Tony Parker, Boris Dias, Sandrine Gruda, Nicholas B. I, I mean, on and on and on. I. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you saw these people as sports diplomats and maybe, you know, if you want to talk there, there, there. Each one of these chapters focuses on one or two players, but if you want to focus on one or two of them yourself, because if we went through all of them, I think it would take us a long time.
- [40:30]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
So with this particular section, I was really fascinated to ask the players themselves, what is it like to be French in the, in the NBA or the wnba? You know, from the most mundane parts to kind of the bigger picture things. And I was very lucky that so many of them agreed to speak with me. So the ones who are the titles in the chapter are the ones who I was able to do more extensive interviews with or with the example of Nicola Batum and Marine Johannes. A series of interviews I did for media pieces that were on the record and were integrated in to get at their experience. So it was really kind of one of the most fun parts of doing the book and also one of the more fun parts to write, because as historians, we usually kind of write a little bit more formulaically or, you know, there's certain ways we have to go about doing it. But at least for some of the first ones, the standalone Boris Diao chapter or the standalone Sandrine Gruta, I was able to play around a little bit with, you know, kind of the art of crafting or shaping the narrative for nonfiction writing and that, you know, as a writer, that's always kind of fun to do and try to reimagine how you might do things. The Boris Diaw chapter is kind of one of those big ones. But I'd love, as one of our examples, the standalone. I'd like to talk about the Sandrine Gruta one as the first French champion in the wnba, and I think, really an example of how the fact that this project took so long to get into publication benefited it ultimately, because way back when I first conceived, it was focused only on the NBA and only on that narrow US France connection. Over time, it grew to include the African and Italian side as well. As when I came back to it in 2020, during the pandemic, it seemed to me silly to write about it without writing about it in a holistic sense. And that meant fully integrating the women's game as a full part of the story, not as a separate part, but as kind of the fuller part of the basketball story. And Sandrine's story helps me to do that very much, as she's still active, she's still playing professionally, she's playing for Tony Parker's women's team as valiant. She's still with the national team. She is dominant. She is, even for me, very inspirational in terms of how she has this mental toughness. And her chapter, you know, one of the things we went behind the scenes for was what it was like growing up French. She's from Martinique, but, you know, still growing up French, whether on the island of Martinique or when she went to the mainland for her basketball training, how she was different mentally from so many other French or Martiniques around her in that she wanted to win it all and to do whatever it took to put in all the hard work to do it. And that mentality of being a winner, of the mentality of being a champion, was not, at the time, and we could argue on this perhaps still today, not as common in French culture as it is, maybe in the American culture. It's A different mental outlook and attitude, and how she struggled to try to come to terms with the fact that she might have been seen as a little bit of an extraterrestrial for always staying behind and working on her game instead of going out to the movies during leisure time or other things. But how when she came to the United States and was around in the WNBA and it was around other players who had that exact same kind of drive and motivation, everything just clicked. And so that was the kind of example of things that, you know, aren't really as much in media interviews that I was able to ask and tease out in the course of an, you know, the. The interview conversation and to kind of prod a little bit on. So I think that's one of the. One of the interesting kind of standalone chapters. The other one is the one that features Nicola Batum and Marine Johannes, two players kind of slightly two different generations, both from a tiny town in Normandy, Lisieux, that's not really known for its basketball until they came along. And Nicola, who is the current team France captain, is part of the larger genealogy. He was national team coach Vincent Colet's first basketball son, the one who gave Batum his first chance at playing pro when he was 16 at Le Mans. Le Mans, which also has a very interesting connection to US influences and how. I first started interviewing Batum in 2015. It started off as a piece I did on him and Bill Kane for the New Yorker that year. And over the years, as you know, I've continued to interview him on the record for different things. You know, just the kind of. The evolution of how he expresses himself and, you know, how he talks about his role as a player, not just for France or for his pro team, but also as a player for the game and a representative of the game. For me, it's been interesting to see that evolution of his, which is in part why I also give him the. The last words in the book on the game's global growth. But, yes, so those are, I think, two examples.
- [46:20]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah, those. I mean, there are. It's hard to. It would be hard to pick. I'm glad you had to pick and not me because really, all of the. All of the chapters here are really evocative and it's. It. It. The few things, like the major themes that I drew out of this section in particular, were the ways in which the French players had challenges in transitioning to the US Often. Language issues, obviously, being a major challenge, but also just cultural fit issues. And Sundrin Gruda's Chapter was really great at bringing out this difference in kind of competitive culture. And having lived overseas now for a long time in Australia, that's something that my wife and I have noticed just starting at a young age in Australia too, that this emphasis on win, like winning at all costs is not a. Is not a part of. Of of cult of culture here. And we kind of laugh that we're inculcating our children with these bad. Like they're going to be bad winners and sore losers.
- [47:20]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
You know what's so the interesting commonality through all the know French in the French in the US Chapters? And I asked them, what do you miss about home to. To the person? It's always about the food. And so kind of that, that, that you know, that window in through food, it is real and it is. It is, yeah. It's an interesting commonality.
- [47:42]
Keith Rathbone
I can't remember which player it was. Was it Batum who became like the team sommelier who was like, oh, I introduce everyone on the team to wine? Because I know, I know wine.
- [47:52]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Dio.
- [47:52]
Keith Rathbone
Is dio okay? Yeah.
- [47:54]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Yes, because he's from Bordeaux.
- [47:56]
Keith Rathbone
Oh, of course. Well, I also. One of the other things that I really liked was that there were, you could tell, you know, that there were French genealogies, but also American genealogies too, like particular American teams. And Greg Popovich I think, is a great example of Americans who are like, I know how to work with French people and I can bring them in and integrate them into my team culture because they play in the French way that works with my. The way I want my team to play. And there are other NCAA teams, women's and men's, that had maybe more success or less, you know, less resistance to bringing in French players. I did wonder, you know, if, if, if you could just generalize broadly, what were the major things that you thought besides the competitiveness that French players learned about US Basketball? So what was the. How. How close are these French and U. S styles? I guess. And then also did you. Did you feel. Because this brings us right up to the present in some ways this section, is there still a kind of prejudice against French players? Because some of the players ran up into that. Like, you know, not some of them ran into racial prejudice or other things in. Inside the broader U. S Culture. But then within U. S Basketball, there were specific prejudices against French players as being put one way or another. I guess. I don't. I'm trying not to step on it by telling.
- [49:18]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Yeah. And it is one of the non players who is featured Who I think can speak and does speak in the book most freely about some of those French prejudices. And I, I think all of us would make the argument that with the very recent, you know, history in the making of Victor Juan Banyama, but also Bilal Koulibaly and Washington, these two French rookies who are coming in and defying the odds and actually having really good starts to their rookie season in a way that kind of puts. Puts all of the hype to bed. Right. I think that has started to change the metric that there's not the same sort of anti French prejudice that others have had to encounter, whether they have stated it on the record or whether others have stated it on the record for them. So I think we're at an inflection moment. I think that is aided by the fact that it's very clear that the NBA and the WNBA as well by 2023 is a very international affair, that it is not just American players who are dominating, it's actually the international players who have begun to do so, with the Last several league MVPs being from Europe or Africa and not from the United States and a variety of other barometers as well. So I think that helps the franchise does the Wambanyama 1B mania, for sure.
- [50:49]
Keith Rathbone
I'd love to talk to you about the last section too, because this section is really. It goes into some detail about things that I think a lot of people interested in sports studies are really interested in, which is basically why, why has France been successful in this going global moment? And I wondered if you could talk a little bit, you know, and talk to us a little bit about ancep, which is so present in the book, which we haven't talked about, or in the Pol Espoir.
- [51:17]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
And when even when I asked NBA, NBA officials and movers and shakers, you know, why, why it is France. They point very much to the youth development programs, both through the federation, which culminates with incep, as well as through the professional club academies which began to develop once basketball went pro after 87, but really kind of more so in the 1990s. And the interesting thing we see, and where there is a present day tension that I tried to point the breadcrumbs towards, but I think we'll be seeing this playing out in real time, is that the success of France's overall youth development programs and detection in basketball, in this particular case, the success that they're having, they're falling a little bit victim to that in terms of. It is when you look at the last several cohorts of French into the NBA or into the wnba, they were formed through the pro club youth academies and not at incep. And that is a problem for the, for the federation, right, because they are still tapping into the best of the best. But you know, increasingly some of that is, you know, going to the pro clubs. And so this is going to be a continued tension point well into the 2020s as both try to grapple and come to terms with each other. I think the last French NBA player to be pretty much mostly formed at INCEP was Evan Fournier and he entered the league, what, in 2012. So it's been a while. On the WNBA side, it's a little less pronounced simply because it's still incept, still has very strong, not just recruiting programs, but also that the French women's pro academies are not as entrenched or as numerous as their male counterparts. Marine Johannes, though, came up through the center youth academy program. Ileana Rupert, who won the WNBA championship two seasons ago with the Vegas Aces, she came out of incep. So there is that the French formation, detecting them early, putting them in specialized programs starting around age 13 for those who are good enough to qualify. That follows both sports supervision and training, but also scholastic supervision and training and medical supervision and training. Trying to take this three pronged holistic approach, which also includes increasingly health and psychology as well as this is something that's been there kind of really known on the football side since the mid-1970s. And the National Training center at Claire Fontaine has certainly produced les bleus of football for generations. INCEP and now the pro club academies and basketball doing that very same thing, but really kind of bringing together some of the country's best players and having them play and learn and kind of grow up, grow up together, you know, is part of their secret sauce.
- [54:44]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah, the player academies, I mean, I, I'm very curious to, to ask you about what influence you think this French development system has on the NBA, but also maybe globe, globally, on other countries. But it was interesting to see because the, the fight between the Federal San Francis, the basketball and the, the player academy seems to be around the payments that they can get from the NBA when people leave. And, and the player academies also often benefit big time from players who come back from the NBA who bring money and their own skills and expertise, like Tony Parker for example, being a great example back. So I do wonder if there's a kind of a, A, a positive feedback loop with, with the player academies that won't work at least on the men's side, maybe for onset in the same way.
- [55:39]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Yeah, you know, I think that's something that still is a work in progress and, you know, depending who you talk to, it's a more positive step or more negative one. I think overall, what we have seen over, say, the past decade, decade and a half, has been far more positive relationships between the NBA, the ffbb, insep, and the youth academies, kind of in this larger project of forming top talent. And we're, you know, training it to. To play at the elite. The elite level, both in international competition as well as professionally. So I think.
- [56:21]
Keith Rathbone
I'm sorry, I didn't. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wonder, because that could bring us to kind of one of your final chapters that I found really fascinating. One of the chapters at the end and that I also found really fascinating, which was rubbing shoulders with African basketball, where I really found it almost sounded at times like the NBA and in French basketball and African basketball were again, triangulating locally and that sometimes the NBA was playing nice and sometimes it wasn't. And so both French basketball and the NBA were very much fighting in Africa to be the more influential. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that. And you brought it up earlier. So I was like, oh, I want to bring this up towards the end.
- [57:02]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
So it's very interesting, as basketball is making significant inroads in terms of growth, popularity, mediatization, consumption across all these different barometers across the African continent, that it is the NBA that is kind of leading the charge. The French still have their. Their fingers in the mold. And when we talk about the NBA in Africa, I think it's critical to state that it is the NBA mark and brand, but it is driven by Senegalese, you know, homegrown Amadou Galofal. So it is. It is not an American propelling strategy and growth of the NBA in Africa through basketball, Africa League. It is Amadou Galofal, born and raised in Senegal, who went to the United States on a basketball scholarship. He played at the University of Washington, D.C. so, you know, very much kind of a beneficiary of that whole system. But given the historic ties between Senegal and France, perhaps a little bit closer than some of the other francophone African countries, particularly in basketball. At least then there's that kind of natural connection when we talk about the NBA in Africa. It's the NBA in Africa, it's the NBA in North America. And there is that kind of poll that goes also through France. You see this as well at competitions such as K54, the world's biggest street ball tournament that's held every summer in Paris. And it has a very strong African connection as well. They, I believe right now they are getting ready to kind of highlight, you know, African contributions to the game and so forth. So it is kind of inter, interwoven. When you talk about French government, sports diplomacy and how that provides an umbrella for some of the French sports federations to engage with counterparts in different parts of the world, particularly Africa, you do see basketball playing very strongly in that there is a current program that is currently underway that's not in the book because that started kind of at the tail end of it between basketball, handball and volleyball federations, the six of their African counterparts, and kind of the technology exchange and the knowledge exchange that that's helping to foment. I think it's going to be something really interesting to watch and will help, I think, to further kind of unpack the different layers of how African basketball or volleyball and handball rub shoulders with their French counterparts. And it's perhaps a somewhat complicated relationship, but certainly kind of keeping it under that. You could make the argument what we see with the growth of basketball in Africa, it's kind of a connection to the US and to France more than to other basketball playing countries.
- [60:02]
Keith Rathbone
Absolutely. Look, I, I wish we could talk for another hour, but we can't. But I, I, I did want to ask you kind of two, if you could give two quick responses to, to two quick questions, which is basically the questions of the future. So what's, what's the, you talk briefly about it in the book, but the future of French basketball. But I also want to know what you're working on, on Lindsay and what we can look forward to reading next. You know what, what you're so busy with with France and US and with the run up to the Olympics. I'm following you posting every day on social media. It's unfair to ask you about a book but, or, but anything you want to talk about and definitely tell us what France and us are up to for the Olympics.
- [60:48]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Thank you. Yeah, so these are all interrelated questions. So France and US is a campaign or project I started two years ago to highlight French and American relations through sport and sports diplomacy, past, present and among the rising generation. Obviously there's a whole heck of a lot of basketball involved, not just those who are featured in the book, but also those who are not featured in the book, but who are very much a part of this story and particularly those who Are current student athletes in NCAA programs or recently student athletes so really kind of having these very current voices and how they think of themselves as sports diplomats either in France or the United States and the different permutations. It definitely does feed into the Paris Games 2024. But that brings us to your question of what's next for this kind of basketball empire. It's very clear that there's going to be a continued pipeline of French players into the US Leagues, the NBA, the wnba, the ncaa. That is not going to stop. If anything, there's going to be closer cooperation between the two. Earlier in November, we had the first NCAA women's basketball regular season game kickoff on foreign soil in Paris. There's Notre Dame, Notre Dame and South Carolina. And I was there. It was a sold out arena. It was a smaller arena, but it was not. All US Alumni is easily quite a lot of French there and certainly the NCAA level is another one to look at. So there's going to continue to be closer cooperation at the basketball level, on the professional, on the university level, going in both ways. Across the Atlantic. It is aided by the interconnectivity of the Paris 2024 Louisiana 2028 Summer Games. It will be aided a little less so by the likely connectivity of the French Alps. 2030 Salt Lake City 2034 Winter Olympic cycle. But when you look at who is engaging in proactive sports diplomacy efforts and policies, it's really the French and they're working very closely with the American counterparts in the lead up to Paris 2024 across a variety of sports, basketball being one of the key ones. My crystal ball. The Olympic basketball tournament at Paris 2024 is going to be super exciting even as the first stages will be in the north in Niel. Certainly given that neither country won the FIBA World Basketball cup this past fall, that was Germany. You are going to have several strong teams coming into the Olympics. On the men's side. On the women's side, we will remember that the women's national team won bronze at Tokyo. The US women's team won gold. Sorry. French women's 3x3 basketball has been consistently ranked the top in the world over the past several years. The men less so. And of course Les Bleu, the men's team, they lost the gold medal in Tokyo by two plays at the very end of that game. So I predict it's going to be anyone's gold medal. And you know, does. Does home soil advantage help? So I think that's kind of what we're seeing. What I am working on nothing right now. I'm still enjoying kind of the bounce after Basketball Empire, which came out this fall.
- [64:30]
Keith Rathbone
Just came out this year.
- [64:31]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Yeah. But I am thinking of and I actually we just had a case study come out through Georgetown University on Les Blues Basketball in China, talking about Franco, the Sino French basketball diplomacy, 1966, 1980 and then in 2019, which was kind of a byproduct of Basketball empire research. But so that came out. I am thinking of trying to write part of some of the story into a historical fiction, maybe short story, looking at basketball players in the Cold War, particularly those from France, including with their American players who traveled frequently behind the Iron Curtain. That sounds into places where US Teams typically did not in the same way.
- [65:28]
Keith Rathbone
That sounds amazing.
- [65:29]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Yeah.
- [65:30]
Keith Rathbone
Oh, well, that would be fascinating, too. And I'm always looking for, for good historical fiction. So when that comes out, you have.
- [65:37]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
To let me know for sure. For sure.
- [65:40]
Keith Rathbone
Thank you so much. We've been speaking with Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff, who's the author of a fabulous book you should all be picking up now, Basketball Empire France and the Making of a global NBA and WNBA, out with Bloomsbury in 2023. Thank you, Lindsay, so much for joining us.
- [66:00]
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnov
Thanks so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun.
- [66:03]
Keith Rathbone
I am Keith Rathbone. You've been listening to the new Books in Sports, a channel on the New Books Network. Thank you very much for listening.