Monday, August 22nd, 2011 at 4:00 pm  |  12 responses

While London Prepares, France Gets it Done

What we learned from the Olympic warm-up event in England.

by Ben Taylor / @benitaylor

Last week saw the opening of the brand new basketball arena at Olympic Park in London, the host venue of the Olympic basketball event next summer. To test it out in style, British Basketball invited Australia, France, Serbia, Croatia and China over to take on Great Britain in a week long tournament that would give all of the teams some much needed time on court ahead of the upcoming FIBA qualifiers. I was lucky enough to be at a few of the games, and caught the rest online. Here’s what went down, in a handy ‘10 things’ list format.

1. France stole the show, going unbeaten the whole week. Tony Parker was a cut above everyone else in the building, averaging 22 points, 3 dimes and 5 boards per game. He even had a special guest in the stands on Tuesday: Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.

2. Parker’s French teammate Nicolas Batum was on a mission—to posterize at every possible opportunity. And he succeeded. This was my personal highlight, topped off by some nice moves from Ronny Turiaf.

3. We learned a valuable and very practical lesson for next summer—ballers do not like the cold. Apparently the new arena was too cold for the players, who complained to the organizers. By the end of the week they had security at every entrance to make sure the doors stayed shut and the heat stayed in.

4. Joel Freeland is one tough MF’er. The Great Britain big man dominated all week and showed his ability to take over a game when needed, scrapping for loose balls, grabbing key rebounds and taking clutch shots. I can’t wait to see this guy in the NBA if/when he eventually joins up with the Blazers.

5. British crowds are too quiet. This could partly be down to the arena being one third full (the organizers were only allowed to sell 3,000 tickets per night for health and safety reasons), but in my experience of various games here, British fans do not know when to make noise while watching basketball. I also got the feeling that a lot of fans only got interested in the fourth quarter, or if they saw a dunk. This tweet from GB big Robert Archibald sums it up nicely: “Thanks to the fans that came this week. On a side note it’s ok to make noise while we are on D down the stretch in a close game. #TooPolite”

6. China doesn’t have a lot going on without Yao. The team averaged just 53 points per game and hit only 33 percent of their shots.

7. Keep an eye out for 18-year-old PG Devon Van Oostrum, Great Britain’s youngest ever international. If you recognize the name, he’s the kid who did this a couple of months back. Throughout the week he showed glimpses of what he could do, and then in the final game against Australia he proved he could get it done, dishing out 5 assists and hitting some big shots (including a huge clutch three in the fourth to give GB the lead). He earned his spot in the team, and will be one to watch at Eurobasket.

8. It will be a huge shame to see the arena go after the Olympics. The UK has never had a facility of this quality, or anything resembling a ‘home’ for the sport. GB’s Luol Deng has pleaded with the authorities to keep the venue in place, but it seems destined to be taken apart and shipped to Brazil for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

9. It would be a typically British thing to do to get too optimistic about a national team after a couple of good performances, but last week definitely showed that on its day, GB can mix it with the stronger international teams. No doubt, the squad has a lot of work to do (particularly keeping hold of the ball and execution in tight games), but it was more than enough to get me excited about Eurobasket. In terms of the other Euro teams, France look very strong (as you’d expect with a team featuring Parker, Batum and Joaquim Noah, among others), while Croatia and Serbia didn’t really seem to get going.

10. The Olympics are going to be huge. The whole Olympic Park setup is incredible, and my brief experience of watching ball there confirmed that having Lebron James, Kevin Durant and the rest of the world’s best over here for a summer is going to be epic. If you are heading over to London next summer, you are in for a treat.

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  • Sunny Side Up Posted: Aug.22 at 6:17 pm
    I was there every day and do agree with the crowd not making noise, but it is very hard to get any sort of atmosphere going when they only let a third of you in. This was supposed to be a ‘test’ before the olympics (hence the name London Prepares Series) and yet apart form the court and toilets nothing was built, including burger vans outside. Completely disagree with you on ‘The UK has never had a facility of this quality, or anything resembling a ‘home’ for the sport.’ Have you not seen the NBA games played at the O2 arena!? Now that place has the real feel of a basketball home. Infact I really don’t understand why the O2 arena isn’t being used for the olympics, instea dof spending 42 million on a new arena only to knock it down next year.

  • Ben Taylor Posted: Aug.22 at 7:15 pm
    Cheers for the comment. I’m not having a go- when the Olympics are on, I’m sure the place will be rocking. I get what you are saying about the O2, but it’s hosted a few games. By ‘home of basketball’ I’m talking about a permanent basketball venue, not a temporary event space (which the O2 is, and does really well for stuff like the Nets games and exhibition games). In an ideal world we’d have a permanent home for the national teams, for kids to use and aspire to play at, build a legacy, all that good stuff. Don’t get me wrong though, the O2 is great, and I hope we get more NBA games there. Pretty sure they are actually playing the medal games there, by the way.

  • Morgan Posted: Aug.23 at 5:21 am
    Joel Freeland is a beast in the key but I can’t see any benefit for him going to play for the Blazers (to play behind LA). He’ll do very well for GB though if he can keep up that work ethic. And completely agree with you about China, their only offensive threat was Yi Jianlian and defensively the zone they play isn’t going to cut it against the elite International squads.

  • jokerman Posted: Aug.23 at 5:34 am
    It’s a shame the Olympic Basketball arena will go, however there are rumours that the BBF want the Handball arena as their ‘home’ which def will be staying. Although smaller it still holds almost 8,000 and would be fine as a permanent HQ, with matches undoubtedly taking place across the country and the 02 around if demand for 20,000 exists for certain games.

  • Will Clapton Posted: Aug.23 at 5:48 am
    I’ve got courtside tickets to the Olympic basketball quarter-finals. 50/50 chance I’ll get to see the USA (since the QF tickets are for a ‘session’ which is actually two games). I’d love it if Team GB got through to the QFs. The atmosphere was pretty poor at the Nets vs Raptors games earlier this year. However, I expect the fans will raise the volume for the Olympics.

  • Sunny Side Up Posted: Aug.23 at 9:32 am
    Thanks Ben for the reply. I see what you mean now about a basketball home and you’re it would be pretty cool to have an arena liek to to stay put, also something like the BBL championship game could be played there etc. I suppose we have to be grateful we even ahve the O2 as the plan was to knock that down after 1 year of being the millenium dome, not sure who or what convinced London to keep it and use it for other things. Fingers crossed the same thing happens with the olympic arena. Didn’t know they are playing the medal games there, that makes a lot more sense. Just wish I had a ticket for the gold medal game, I mena even in those nosebleed seats at the O2 would be a dream!

  • Sunny Side Up Posted: Aug.23 at 9:34 am
    *you’re right it would be pretty cool to have an arena like that to stay put Damn my typing is awful.

  • EmCee Posted: Aug.23 at 11:16 am
    Does anyone know if Eurobasket is going to be on in Canada\ the US? And if not is there a site where you can stream some of the games… Help me out I need to see some quality ball soon before my head implodes.

  • Ben Taylor Posted: Aug.23 at 11:50 am
    @Will Clapton – Those are sweet tickets man. I didn’t get any in the ballot. Keeping my fingers crossed I can get hold of a couple somehow. I have a theory on the noise – they need to ramp up the alcohol consumption, and get a party section going (like Sam Neter from Hoopsfix had going last summer with the GB games).

  • Ben Taylor Posted: Aug.23 at 11:52 am
    @EmCee You can normally watch it all on the FIBA site, even from the US/Canada. You have to pay (it’s not expensive), but I watched the Worlds last year on their site and the quality was really good.

  • Darksaber Posted: Aug.23 at 11:02 pm
    Solid recap but not much on the other teams that participated, saw a few of the games online and was suwas rprised at where some of the powerhouses of Eurobasketball stand.
    Serbia a disappointment, after an equally lackluster performance at the preparation tournament two weeks ago in Slovenia, the World Championship semi-finalists brought a deep squad (too deep?) Mr. Overrated (Theodosic) and his boys didnt have their way.
    Australia was strong, good seeing Maric back out there.
    Tony Parker is still an incredible scoring guard, man he ate defenders up. The french squad looks stronger than the one they sent to Turkey (duh, Noah and Parker added) might be a medal candidate.
    China actually seems to have regressed, they had a few good games in Turkey, but the last few times i’ve seen them play, they’ve looked lost.
    Good group of teams for the London invitational test event, cant wait for Eurobasket to start next week.

  • Darksaber Posted: Aug.23 at 11:21 pm
    The 4 team tournament on Germany last weekend was also interesting, the BEKO Supercup. Germany with Nowitzki and Kaman (uh oh, that was a bad pairing back in Beijing), Greece without Dofo and Papaloukas, Turkey with all their Nba players du jour and Belgium battled it out.
    Greece killed all opponents, the dismissal of Turkey, same squad that won silver last year, was shocking. They just thumped them.
    Belgium sold their hides very well, lost in single digits to the 3 bball powerhouse nations, and Germany beat Turkey and Belgium to finish second.
    Nowitzki did not shoot well, especially againt the greeks (who have frustrated him for years), and Turkey needs to gel quickly, otherwise Eurobasket will come to a premature end for them.

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