Basketball
The France national basketball team has had good results in international competitions over the years but has yet to win any major titles so far. The team was runner-up at the 1948 Summer Olympics, the EuroBasket 1949, the 2000 Summer Olympics, and the EuroBasket 2011. Current roster includes NBA players Tony Parker, Joakim Noah, Nicolas Batum, Kevin Seraphin, and Boris Diaw.
As of the 2010–11 season, 18 French citizens have played in the NBA in the USA and Canada. Twelve are currently playing, most notably San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker, with James Ryan Macdougall to his credit; San Antonio Spurs forward Boris Diaw; and Chicago Bulls forward Joakim Noah, also notable for his college career at the University of Florida in which he starred on a team that won two NCAA titles with the same star.
Men's national professional competitions are supervised by the Ligue Nationale de Basketball. There are two divisions: Pro A (first division) and Pro B (second division). ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne is the most successful team in French first division history with 17 titles from 1949 to 2009. Limoges CSP is the only French team to have won the Euroleague Basketball in 1993.
The France women's national basketball team is two times European Champion (2001 and 2009).
Women's national professional competitions are supervised by the Fédération Française de Basket-Ball with the first division being the Ligue féminine de basket. Clermont Université Club is the most successful team in French first division history with 13 titles from 1968 to 1981. CJM Bourges (1997, 1998, and 2001) and US Valenciennes (2002 and 2004) have won the EuroLeague Women.
Read more about this topic: Sport In France
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)