By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
With the French flag around his neck and after a hug by former player Richard Dacoury, Nicolas Batum was ready to speak. Not for his great game in the final, but for what it meant to the French team to finally get the Eurobasket title: “We have made history. We were beaten, but we never gave up, we never had a doubt and we gave everything we got. And it’s great. We have made our mark in the basketball history, we have made our mark in France’s sports history. It’s great to do that, it’s great to win”.
The story of the game was inspired by Tony Parker himself who motivated Batum and his teammates the night before the big final: “We wanted to intimidate them. We have talk a lot with Tony (Parker) the night before the game. It was only this game, it was only this team and we attacked them with our defense, I had a mission over Kalnietis and we had to attack, attack, attack for everything that happened the past 20 days. We wanted to kill them and we did”.
Still, Batum with a smile admitted that: “I haven’t fully realized yet what happened. I am here, I know, I live the moment, but probably tomorrow I will grasp what it really happened”.
What he was fully aware of, however, was the fact that this gold medal meant a lot to Tony Parker and Boris Diaw, two players six years older than him who have been U18 European champions back in 2000 and since then they were chasing the gold medal in senior level: “I told them, when I got to the national team in 2009 and you can asked them about it, that I am ready to help you, to offer you anything, I am at your service. You know what happened year after year and they have done everything for French basketball. Tony (Parker) and Boris (Diaw) were always there all the time, sacrificed a lot and really deserve this”.