The basketball Blues are back in France! After their silver medal at the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, the French basketball players are competing in the qualifications for Euro 2025. They are in Poitiers at 5 p.m. Sunday November 24, at Futuroscope, to face Cyprus, just a few days after their victory in Nicosia (75-59). The French team, in which the young Nolan Traoré is playing for the first time at this gathering, as leader. The new phenomenon of French basketball.
It seems that the source is inexhaustible. After Victor Wembanyama, Zaccharie Risacher, Alex Sarr and Tidjane Salaun, France will once again be talked about next June, during the NBA draft, where the franchises share the best hopes in world basketball. The new tricolor comet is called Nolan Traoré. He is only 18 years, and many see him as the successor to Tony Parker. In the big American league, but also in the French team, which he discovers this week. “It’s an honor to represent your country. It’s France that trained me”explains Nolan Traoré.
The boy is already a man, of few words, but with clear ambitions. And bluntly, for him, it’s the NBA. “This is clearly the objective for this year,” explains the French player. “I want to be as high as possible and play as well as possible.” Nolan Traoré knows what he wants, and he has the talent for it. He is already impressing his teammates in the French team, like Paul Lacombe. With Nanterre, he faced Nolan Traoré at the beginning of the month, and it’s hard to forget him : “He’s barely 18 years old and he’s already a boss on the pitch. Three weeks ago, at home, he scored us 20 points. I remember that at his age, I didn’t do that at all. that he did. It’s still impressively precocious.”
Because before joining the NBA, Nolan Traoré chose to stay in France, in the elite, where he revealed himself: at the SQBB in Saint-Quentin, in Picardy. “Today, Nolan is really a young person who has enormous potentialestimates Julien Mahé, his trainer at SQBB. By staying with us, he knew he was going to have a lot of responsibilities. It’s never easy for young people with so many things around them to stay focused on basketball in relation to their game, in relation to the team. We try to put it in the best possible conditions in any case.”
Nolan Traoré does not go unnoticed, especially not at the Palais des sports Pierre Ratte in Saint-Quentin. The phenomenon attracts all eyes, particularly those of recruiters. “You should know that at each home game, there are between three, four, five NBA scouts present in the roomexplains Anthony Ottou, who follows Nolan Traoré and his team for the regional daily, Aisne Nouvelle. I think it’s the first time in the history of Saint-Quentin that there is a player of this talent and with so much expectation. He was very courted by Euroleague teams, American faculties and those in Australia. There’s no secret, he’s a big future.”
Nolan Traoré is regularly announced in the top 5 of the best prospects that the NBA will snap up in June 2025.
Nolan Traoré, new nugget of French basketball: Report by Xavier Monferran
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