By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
Coming off his tenth NBA campaign and the first as a member of the New York Knicks, Evan Fournier is looking forward to the 2022 EuroBasket and helping France go all the way in the tournament. He discussed his goals with FIBA.basketball.
“I am so hungry for this, like so hungry,” said the 29-year-old swingman, “That’s one of the goals I have in my career and I want to bring so many gold medals and titles back home, you can’t even imagine. When you play for your country, you compete at your best level and you want to bring joy to the fans and to your team.”
France captured the silver medals in the 2020 Olympics held in Tokyo approximately one year ago. Losing to the USA in the Final forced Fournier and his teammates to second place. His international tally further includes three bronze medals across FIBA World Cup and EuroBasket tournaments in 2014, 2015, and 2019.
“Last summer was very nice to win a silver medal, but I also think about the joy that it would be to win a title and to get the gold medal,” he noted, “It’s the ‘summum’, the cherry on top of the cake. I am 29 years old, and I want to experience this multiple times before the end of my career. That’s also why I come every summer to play for the national team.”
Nando de Colo and Nicolas Batum will not be available for the Blues in the upcoming EuroBasket.
“We will have two leaders, two experienced guys that won’t join us this summer, but we will find ways to compensate,” explained Fournier, “Rudy [Gobert] and myself will have leading roles, and we will have many young guys I think that are going to get an opportunity to help and show what they are capable of. Guys like Theo Maledon, Kilian Hayes and many more – our pool of players is pretty deep, and we will have talent in our final roster, I guarantee you. Someone like Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot is going to probably be the natural replacement of Nico Batum.”
France will be in Cologne to take on host Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Slovenia in early September. Similar to the remaining groups, the top four national teams of Group B will advance to the knockout stage in Berlin.
Check the entire interview on FIBA.basketball.
Photo Credit: FIBA.basketball