By Romain Brunet
Gravelines started to assemble its roster at the beginning of the 2008/09 season. During the summer of 2008, they hired coach Christian Monschau, who is the younger brother of coach Jean-Luc Monschau from SLUC Nancy, the French champ last year that played in the Euroleague this season and players like Yannick Bokolo, who plays for the national team, Cyril Akpomedah and JK Edwards. They added pieces every season: Juby Johnson in 2009/10, Dounia Issa and Rudy Jomby in 2010/11 and Andrew Albicy, Ludovic Vaty and Pape Sy in 2011/12.
Τhe biggest difference of Gravelines in comparison to other French teams is that they build around good French players. I thing that they emulated what Olympiacos, the new Euroleague champion, tried to do, combining a lot of young players with some veterans. Andrew Albicy (1990), Pape Sy (1988), Ludovic Vaty (1988), Rudy Jomby (1988) are youngsters, but Yannick Bokolo (1985), Dounia Issa (1981) and Cyril Akpomedah (1979) are not so young any more.
The players weren’t developed in the team but Gravelines collected the best young French players who played in the league. Albicy was signed last summer from Paris-Levallois, Pape Sy and Rudy Jomby learned basketball at Le Havre and Ludovic Vaty at the Centre Fédéral and Pau-Orthez.
The rising star of the team is Pape Sy. He was drafted in 2010 by the Atlanta Hawks and played for them in 2010/11. He actually spent most of his time being injured and then with the D-League team, but eventually made the Hawks team at the end of the season and got to play a little bit during the playoffs. With the lockout, he chose to sign with Gravelines and went back to Atlanta in December when the training-camps started. But he was cut by the Hawks just before the beginning of the season. So he came back to France and decided to finish the season with Gravelines.
Until the draft of 2010 very few people knew him because he had a limited role with Le Havre. So when he was drafted, everybody was like: “Who is this guy? And how come the Hawks drafted him???” But we saw this year that he is now a good player, still young but who could make it back to the NBA someday.
Andrew Albicy hopes to go to the NBA too and will cross his fingers on June 28th when the draft takes place. He’s very fast and talented and already has his spot with the national team. He played the 2010 World Championship (he notably had a tremendous game against Ricky Rubio in the very first game of the competition when France beat Spain) and the 2011 European Championship. After playing his entire career in Paris, he signed with Gravelines last summer and matured this season because he had to lead a top team. Ι’m not sure if he’ll make it to the NBA, but he has a bright future. As for Ludovic Vaty, he is probably too small to make it to the NBA but can become a very good player in France or in Europe.
After that, Gravelines finished on top and hopes to go all the way to the title…