Jokic dominates with 20/9/8 as Serbia beats France 90-87
Despite going up against maybe the greatest defensive center rotation of all time (Wemby and Gobert) ðŸ˜, Jokic shines and Serbia wins in an exciting game!
Got close at the end
Frances offense is horrific
No playmaker at all but they got hella centers for some reason.
Can Tony Parker suit up?
He’s only 44, I don’t see why not lol.
Tony Parker is only 3 years older than Bron???
I mean draft class 2001⁄2003.
Basketball’s Phillip Rivers
Where’s Roddy Beaubois when you need him?
Still being held by the Mavs, waiting for the right trade.
Certainly, idk how a dinner party is going to help France tho
It’s a deep problem in France youth formation. We value athletic potential way too much over basketball talent. So we have a lot of fast and tall guys but no guards or even playmaking forwards.
But we have amazing defenders
Sounds like exactly what the US does, except France has a much smaller population and weaker basketball culture. So it’s just a worse outcome. doesn’t make sense
So we have the same problem than in football great .
Kinda tired of this focus only on physical abilities instead of technical
Theyre almost the opposite of Canada which has like 17 legit NBA guards and no bigs.
If France and Canada could combine into one team they’d be great, you’d have the big men that Canada doesn’t have and you’d have the guards that France doesn’t have
The Quebec Republic team
PG: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
SG: Jamal Murray
SF: Nickeil Alexander-Walker
PF: Victor Wembanyama
C: Rudy Gobert
Bench: Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin, RJ Barrett, Lu Dort, Dillon Brooks, Andrew Wiggins, Alex Sarr, Zach Edey
I’d swap positions for the guards, but yeah that team would theoretically be unreal.
E: Also if we’re going off international performances, Murray would probably be benched. I love the man to death, he won my nuggets a chip, and I’m Canadian. But his game doesn’t translate well to international and I don’t think he’s even been with team Canada for a bit now.
Im taking Yabu on the bench for international ball. Theres enough iso guys, would put him over Benn or RJ
Yabu over RJ Barrett be fr dawg
Is he moving the ball around and playing D nowadays? Be unbiased. And also I am genuinely asking, I havent paid attention to him much in recent years.
And no, im not saying Yabu is the better player. But the amount of players im seeing that need the ball in their hands, makes ball stoppers like Benn and RJ (at least from few years ago) limit the team. Yabu not exactly playmaker either, but he not stopping the movement and is a good in international play
RJ definitely isn’t a ball stopper anymore, he is a pretty decent playmaker, we have him run pick and roll a decent bit, and he’s averaged around 5 assists per game for the last couple seasons. Top tier off-ball cutter and transition player too. Doesn’t play great D though.
Shai and Wemby in the same team makes me puke a lil’ bit but that is a 74-8 NBA team
And nary a Frenchman nor a Canuck to be found.Â
Defense wins gamesÂ
Not this one, apparently
Serbias defense did. Even Jokic played defense, shocking.
He always does when it comes to country lol, it’s funny when you compare that to the NBA. Or perhaps the rules there are more suited to his play as well
NBA he has to play 82 regular season games then playoff games. That’s probably why
Jokic is always a good zone defender, he has great awareness.
Problems start when he’s forced to defend an area by his own with pick and rolls which leaves him on an island.
That’s why he’s good when Gordon’s healthy too.
Respect for being a Thunder fan and acknowledging that Jokic isn’t trash on D
I mean he isn’t good for NBA standards as zone is not easy to execute properly in the NBA, but he’s such a monster on offense that him needing a guy like Gordon on D can be excused.
Curry got carried by Draymond, Jokic can get carried by Gordon. That’s how this shit works.
He’ll look bad on D without AG or someone like him when the league starts though, it’s just the reality of the NBA.
Basically it’s not possible to be the #1 guy on offense AND defense in the nba
yeah but haters say he’s not even serviceable on d.
honestly great call from the haters.
He also plays defense in high stakes games when he has defense around him. He has had really good playoff runs as a defender. People just obsess over him letting randoms get easy lay ups in random regular season games.
He’s not a rim protector but he’s significantly smarter than every player on the floor at all times. And it should be noted that because of him not trying for blocks early, it often leads to him getting blocks late in games. He has many game winning blocks.
Something something 50% of the game.
When you’re that bad at scoring, the other team gets good defense for free
Nahh France’s frontcourt had no answer for his vision and footwork today
Dead ringer for Year 1 Wemby’s squad. They have no guard play to speak of
The Wemby piece
where’s the box score
Here
led pts/rbds/assists for the game and tied leading steals (led team)
My boy is good at basketball
Imagine leading both teams for pts rbs ASS+
Plus steals and blocks
For a whole 7 game series
Against a 73 win team
While coming back from down 3-1
In the NBA finals
I’ve seen enough.
2 free throws for SGA
This isn’t emphasized enough.
LeGOAT
Looked a little rusty around the rim, but dude could legitimately pass in his sleep
This box score style is horrific, holy.
What’s wrong with it? It’s easy to see that Jokic put up a classic stat line of
20 38 4 10 40 1 3 33 9 12 75 6 3 8 3 3 0 1 2 10 33 0
6/3/8 shooting 3/3/0 from the field? Guys awful
most crazy stat here is that 33 and it will get overlooked and buried, but eurobros know what Val 33 means in a friendly preseason game
second 33 that is
How many candles he prefers on his cake
The play-by-play section is almost as horrific looking
It’s also wrong missing several players.
Here is a better one :
https://www.teamfrancebasket.com/game/860261
It reads as
Minutes, 2FGM/2FGA, 3FGM/ 3FGA, FGA/FGM, FTA/FTM; OR, DR, AS, ST, TO, BL ,Pts,Eff
Wondering what Fv, Ag, Rv and Val mean. Any Euro basketball fans who can help here?
Assuming Val is Value of some sort, like a one-stat-for-all to determine how well the player played, like a PER or PIR or Game Score.
No clue about Fv Ag Rv
[deleted]
ppl dont realize how much of his bad season were caused by untimely injuries that kept piling up. it got to a point that pat riley pointed it out at the end of season press conference
Literally no one in Serbia calls Nikola Niko.
Most often Johnny, or by a last name abbreviation.
Of course, nikola durisic is the best Niko on that team
Niko is great in Fiba play/rules but can’t consistently put it together under NBA rules.
wtf. I can’t believe wemby took 17 fucking 3’s…
better never go Andrew Bynum on us lmao
edit: nvm I read the box score wrong lmao.
he took 6, made 1. 17 is the percentage
2⁄2 from two and 1⁄6 from three. Wemby is letting the nba game get to him a little too much. Put your back to the basket bro, forget the skyhook, he could have the orbital hook.
both 2 pointers were fast break dunks, no half court interior presence on that end at all. Just chucking 3s. At least should’ve had some attempted 2 pointers from half court. Drew a couple fouls though
Interior presence lacking is true and problematic. Tbf he was asked to play as a 4 which is dumb imo. I wouldn’t call it chucking tho, the 3s were all good shots apart from a couple late game where he was the only one taking responsibility on a low clock
Can’t remember, his alley-oops was from a fast break?
He had a weird position, very often quite far from the rim, but IIRC most of his 3s attempts were in the last quarter when they had to pull a come back.
That’s 17%. He was 1⁄6.
He didn’t
France needs glue guy Batum
What in the actual fuck is that box score?
Jokic out rebounded Wemby + Gobert combined 9-8
That’s brutal.
3 rebounds for Gobert feels horrific. I didn’t watch the game, so I can’t comment on his play overall, but that’s one of the more damning stat lines I’ve seen in recent memory. He’s legit 7 ft tall and has averaged about 11.5 rebs per game across his NBA career.
3 rebs seems incredibly checked out for him
Gobert barely played
He barely played because he got subbed out after picking up 2 quick fouls in the first 4 minutes of the game, came back in 10 minutes later, immediately picked up a 3rd foul and went right back to the bench. He was awful.
Jokic hard out bodies wemby.
All the fat centers, Jokic, Kat, Embiid, eat against Wemby. When asked to give an advice for Chet, Jokic said get fatter, and Chet just laughed it off.
I mean, Chet can add bulk but his knees (and ankles and shins and metatarsals) would crumble if he approached Jokic bmi
weird but i guess
This French team deserves a better coach. They can’t get half-court offense going.
France has a PG problem, Avramović cooked as he usually does
Milutinov played his best game for Serbia since the 2023 World Cup. He held his own against Wemby and Gobert on both ends of the floor.
Ayayi earned more minutes tonight. Great energy, super agressive, always valuable traits for the international tournamentsÂ
Fournier is super washed
Serbia still needs the captain Bogdanović more than anyone else and it shows in the 4th
I feel like this has been the case for at least half a decade yet somehow we still keep seeing him.
He was amazing at Olympics somehow. And still our best Euroleague player
Not being good enough for NBA does not mean you are not good enough for Europe
Unless you are Kemba Walker, bro suuuucked in Europe too
He was the best french player in Europe this season and won euroleague finals MVP, no way he wasn’t going to be hereÂ
he was solid in 2020 and 2024, but father time remains undefeated
Every time I see Avramović play for Serbia, I’m surprised that no NBA team has picked him up. Obviously NBA scouts must be well aware of what he can do, so he’s probably just not good enough, but from the eye test he seems like the kind of 3+D guard that every team could use.
Hes not that great of a player while playing at club during season, but he’s something else with Serbia jersey.
Backup pg for nuggets?
It’s 1 game and we’re taking about a better coach. Shit takes time
One game? We had entire Eurobasket not even a full year ago my guy. I held the same position back then. Collet had his issues but he knew how to adjust quickly.
The list of players missing in this Eurobasket for France would have made a nice champion. We were missing our 5 best bigs.
Games without Wemby
It was France B team last year, lots of players missing
Risacher not even in the squad..
Who?
Our number one pick from the generational draft between Wemby & Flagg ðŸ˜
he skipped. Yabu and Coulibaly too.
I wouldn’t judge Fautoux on that game alone, he was mostly experimenting and winning wasn’t the objective. He had a very good Eurocup run and managed to win it all with a middle of the road roster, he is decent. He can’t be worst than Vincent Collet anyway.
It’s hard to judge when players are clearly not in their usual shape and the team hasn’t already clicked as a collective but yeah, our lack of playmaking and lack of a star-level PG has been crippling our game for a very long time and we don’t have anyone better than Strazel who is good in club but never shined with the national team.
He is out of shape. But Fournier was the MVP of the Euroleague Final Four and the MVP of the Greek league Finals 3 months ago. Don’t forget that’s his first game of the summer.
How does a wemby gobert defense lose
Jokic
Wemby shooting only threes and doing it at 1⁄6 helps, too
France didn’t have a good ball handler and Gobert couldn’t catch a ball to save his life. Serbia got some dawgs on defense
Dildo fingers
That seemed to be a problem for the last few tournaments for them. De Colo is/was too old. And the other playmakers were combo guards, not being able to playmake at all
HORRIBLE guard play from France, like unbelievably bad lol
Don’t they have the Traore guy from the Nets? He’s alright
He didn’t play, sadly.
What about Ajay Mitchell?
Belgian
Any chance SGA is Quebecois
LeBron? sounds French
Good catch. I believe it translates to The Bron
DNP - Belgian
Damn
Was their weakness in the Olympics too. It’s a shame for France that Tony Parker and Wemby didn’t overlap
We will never have a star pg ever again after tony
Serbia took advantage of the in between areas. Their guards would overplay on defense but they’d get caught sleeping off ball. The rest would just ball watch thinking their athleticism would overpower Serbia but it doesn’t work like that in Fiba. So Serbia would run countless motion counters to get their players in between midrange shots or floaters.
Well for starters facing the best player in the world is a pretty big deal.
Respect Nikola Milutinov
Wemby and Gobert can’t play together tbh
Wemby actually played well on him surprisingly.
Nikola Jokic
Offense
The offense around them sucks.
They have the same issue as in the Olympics, they just don’t have a single guard that’s capable of handling the ball.
No offence
Need to put ball in basket
Still need to put the ball in the basket, and France’s guards are atrocious
Wemby with 3 boards and 6 turnovers
Old Chungus still got it
Sucks that Traore couldn’t play. For those of you who watched, how was the French PG situation without him?
It was terrible
Horrendous. Zero chemistry and none of their PG’s are playmakers. Nadir can’t pass or rebound, doesn’t play like a pg. Sylvian can’t really pass but he can get to the rim. And Strazel is basically a shorter Frank Ntilikina who can’t see over defenders, doesn’t like looking at the rim, and can’t manipulate defenses.
Nadir and Sylvian can create off the dribble but they need to put up alot of attempts to make a difference and that doesn’t work against a team like Serbia.
Traore will hopefully be their guy by the 2028 Olympics
Francisco was playing well for France, but overall their half court offense was a little off in my opinion
I only caught the last 2 mins of game time and it was bad. it’s like watching wemby play with the spurs his rookie year
Reminded me of Sochan at PG
Strazel is OK. He started well, didn’t play much after that, hit a big 3 to make the game competitive but lost the ball bringing it up and cost us the game. Francisco is good but is a scoring guard and may have hit his ceiling already. He was the best point guard in Euroleague this season so he’s good but maybe not enough at this level. Hifi has offensive flashes but can’t survive on defense. Okobo is a combo guard and probably our best guard overall. He was missed yesterday. None of them is as good as De Colo was and of course not in the same league as Tony Parker.
That’s the weakest point in our lineup. We really hope Traoré is the answer and we don’t really have another great prospect at this position.
And nobody gonna talk about how wemby was ass. Weird.
I’ll talk about it. He looked like ass
How/where do you watch these games
DAZN I believe.Â
L’équipe TV, next game Sunday 6pm
I don’t think Wemby scored in the second half
They barely passed to him, the few shots he got were shot clock hopes lmao
He’s in their heads
They did hold him to 38% from the field for what it’s worth
Try again, Jokic shot 4-10 from the field.
Nah I’m good, but you can try again
Let me know if you need helping reading it, you seem to be getting tripped up that they list out 2 point attempts and 3 point attempts separately.
My apologies
All good, different than how nba box scores read
It’s a shame that Frances strongest point the center position is most dependent on their weakest point the guard play.
Let’s gooo
The French Twin Towers combo was not working. Wemby can’t be chucking up 3 pointers like he’s some 6’2 guard.
They started the 2024 Olympics with the twin tower idea as well and it obviously wasn’t working in the friendlies prior to the tournament.
Dawg I literally watched them look him off everytime he had position in the paint
I mean holding Jokic to 38% is pretty good.
Jokic led the game in points, assists and rebounds, in fact had more boards than Gobert and Wemby combined.
That’s not pretty good.
But he shot 40%
He didn’t, he shot 5-13. 4-10 from 2, 1-3 from 3….38%
The stats are right here
Funky box score difference fooled me, you’re correct
Not when you let him get to the line 12 times.
I mean it still means he is being ineffective from the field. Shots where he was fouled down count towards FG %.
France played some really lazy and uninspiring basketball. Serbia tried in the end giving the game away by missing every free throw possible. Wemby looked like hotass on offense. For France like other people said the guard play in setting up the offence was ass but they did actually get some buckets themselves and played some solid d at times. Some of the wing players off the bench looked decent aswell. Abramovic, Jokic and Milutinov looked to have the most impact on the court. Refs cooked a pretty much non existant lane violation and a travel for France in the end of game
Wemby with the NBA Finals type performance
Does anyone know why Kusturica didn’t play?
He did not receive permission from his college, UCLA, to compete in the August qualifiers.
Serbia had like 5 players where the clubs did not give permission, but in kusturicas case its totaly understanable, kid is just 17 years old and signed a 12m dollar contract, he has to work on his body.
Wish there was a VOD. Any Jokic v. Wemby footage is gold.
There’s highlights on youtube if you’re interested
Aren’t there like a ton of French players in the NBA? Did they not make the team?
Jokic is the greatest offensive player of all time
Damn didn’t know this was on. Would have watched if I could find it somewhere
It’s just a friendly. There’s rematch in few days.
Why did rudy and wemby play low minutes?
Where was Sarr and Bilal this game?
Donde está Wembanyama?
Wembanyama donde está?
I hope Denver can put something together because we just fucking need a Wemby/Jokic series.
Jokic will sign with the Spurs in free agency next off season
If there is a team he’d sign with instead of Nuggets, it is Lakers to play with Luka. Jokic doesn’t care for chasing rings, he is in it for vibes.
First game for the team on the international window. First game for Wemby with coach Fauthoux. First game back from the previous season for several players. That went exactly how it was supposed to. Both teams struggled on offense, but Serbia had more cohesion and made a break in the third quarter led by Milutinov. France made it close at the end with a few spectacular plays from our guards.
Wemby had flashes in the second quarter but was not good overall with very little impact and a lot of turnovers. Gobert was ok but missed two easy buckets that cost us the momentum in the second and third quarters. He was even more clumsy than usual, losing the ball on rebounds several times. Fournier was hesitant and trying to find his place. He struggled defensively and obviously not in season form. Our guard rotation (Hifi, Strazel, Francisco) had some success attacking off the dribble but couldn’t hit anything from 3 except Strazel who started hot but didn’t play much in the 2nd and the 3rd. Our best players were our wings who were efficient in finishing the few offensive possessions that went right.
On the Serbian side, Jokic dominated when he played and was his usual self, destroying the french defense in the high post, hitting a three in Wemby’s face and getting fouls from every French player. Avramovic and Milutinov made the difference in the third on a series of high post pick and rolls for which we didn’t have an answer. Jovic was pretty good too.
Overall, it was an enjoyable game with two teams wanting to win and playing hard but heavy legs and poor execution from both sides.
Km
I was at this game, it was was the equivalent of a preseason game. There were no stakes and the crowd was half dead, but both teams played with a good amount of energy anyway.
I wouldn’t take this as a true indicator of the teams’ strengths, especially because both teams were missing key players like Yabusele and Bogdanovic.
Just to emphasize how unimportant this game was, wemby shot a fadeaway corner 3 in the early in the 4th quarter lmao
wemby cant do it all alone
Wemby 🤣🤣🤣 Washed
You know how people say Europe is better?
This is the perfect example that essentially Europe is good at training very tall people to be waterdown guards.
To be a good guard there is a reason why the USA essentially has that market cornered. SGA isn’t foreign really he played HS and college basketball in the USA and Canada’s model is more like the USA vs Europe.