PARIS (France) - The end of the road has arrived for France national team coach Vincent Collet.
What a journey it has been.
"I started coaching in 1998," he said during a press conference with Federation Francaise de Basketball (FFBB) yesterday.
"So the National Team is more than half of my life as a coach. And coaching France, it's the most intense part. The one where I've experienced the strongest moments. Championship finals, Coupe de France finals, Leaders Cup finals are important but they're not comparable to the knockout matches of international competitions."
A privilege and an honor
"Two Olympic Finals, three EuroBasket Finals, it's a privilege and an honor to have experienced these emotions. It's magnificent."
Collet guided France to a second straight Olympic Final this summer in Paris. He also was named best coach of the competition.
Now he has relinquished the reins of Les Bleus but will remain involved with the national team as special advisor to the national technical directorate.
"We are at a point of rebuilding", he added. "This year, we went to the Games at a crossroads, with the end of one generation and the emergence of a new one. For the upcoming goals in Los Angeles, we will have to build on a young generation that might be the most promising we’ve ever had. It’s hard not to think about that when you’re passionate and committed.
"But time has allowed me to realize that sometimes, you need to know when to stop. It's a real opportunity to do so after a successful campaign and an exceptional second week. It's good to close things out in this way. I’m satisfied with having participated in every possible international campaign over these 15 years—something that’s taken for granted today but wasn’t always the case before."
There were many more highs than lows for France with Collet at the helm.
His teams were nearly always in the reckoning for a spot on the podium. They finished among the top three on eight occasions.
"That's the most important thing, consistency," he said while announcing his departure. "And that's the goal that French basketball faces. To perpetuate while continuing to grow, to progress.
"Knowing that it's always more difficult. There are other very strong teams and we tend to forget that. We only see ourselves. But our sport is very competitive and staying up is difficult."
It's accurate to say that international basketball and especially the game in Europe has been ultra competitive during Collet's 15 years in charge of France.
FFBB turned to him when they were in danger of failing to qualify for the FIBA EuroBasket 2009, after missing the 2008 Olympics and a disappointing EuroBasket 2007. Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, the Pietrus brothers, Ronny Turiaf and many other great players were already with the National Team yet something was not clicking.
Collet immediately took the team to another level. That year, not only did he get the team to Poland for the tournament - the last with 16 teams before its expansion to 24 in 2011 - but he made the right decisions as Les Bleus won their first five games. They ultimately fell to Spain, the eventual champions, in the Quarter-Finals. But the method was there. Then came the medals.
In 2011, at the EuroBasket in Lithuania, the French left nothing to chance and loaded up with a star-studded roster that made it all the way to the Final to clinch a spot in 2012 Olympics.
Spain, who were becoming a nemesis, took some of the joy out of the celebrations by beating France in the title game, but the French sealed their place in the Summer Games for the first time since 2000, when they claimed a silver medal.
Collet steered France to the Quarter-Finals in London, where Spain again beat them, yet the following two summers, the country had success.
At EuroBasket 2013, Collet made the right calls and France marched to the title, beating Spain in the Semi-Finals and then Lithuania in the title game for the first and only title so far in the French national team history.
Then at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2014, Collet engineered a famous run to third place despite having a roster that was without Tony Parker and Nando De Colo. That team relied on big contributions from inexperienced players.
One of the keys to that team was the emergence of Rudy Gobert as a tower of power. He famously blocked a shot of Pau Gasol when France upset Spain, the hosts, in the Quarter-Finals. It was one of the biggest victories in Collet's career.
France went on to finish third behind the spectacular play of Nicolas Batum, who made the event's All-Star Five.
At EuroBasket 2015, France again loaded up for a run at the title on home soil but in Lille, Pau Gasol's best game ever with 40 points ruined the party in the Semi-Finals by defeating Collet's team in overtime. The team rebounded with a triumph over Serbia in the Third-Place Game.
By coming up short of the Final, France had to survive the pressure of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Manila, which they did, to reach the Rio Games in 2016.
Then started a rough sequence for Collet and France. In Rio, the team struggled and lost to Spain in the Quarter-Finals. One year later, EuroBasket 2017 was disappointing with an event-low 12th place. His journey with Le Bleus could have ended there but the federation kept faith in Collet and his ability to help players grow and to build a system for the new qualification system that was set in place for the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019.
In 2017, Vincent Collet started from scratch once again and ushered in a new era for French basketball, giving numerous players their national team bows and guiding the side to a spot in the 32-team competition in China.
Once there, France again had an extraordinary high by upsetting the USA in the Quarter-Finals, only to then slip up against Argentina in the Semi-Finals. The team did not leave Beijing empty handed because it reached the podium with victory over Australia in the Third-Place Game.
France followed up that success with a triumph over the USA on the opening day of the Tokyo Games in 2021, and Collet again pulled all the right strings as the team made it to the Gold Medal Game where it took an incredible effort from Kevin Durant and the USA to deny them.
After an appearance in the EuroBasket 2022 Final, France had high hopes of a strong World Cup but came in a disappointing 18th.
The Men's Olympic Basketball Tournament in Paris did not look promising for France despite the presence of Victor Wembanyama as they struggled in the Group Phase with a narrow overtime win over Japan and a loss to Germany.
Yet Collet showed his savvy by shaking up the French lineup, putting the ball in the hands of Isaia Cordinier and also relying more heavily on the likes of Mathias Lessort and Guerschon Yabusele.
With Victor Wembanyama upping his game and revealing himself to be the future of not just French basketball but the sport itself, France defeated the star-studded teams of Canada in the Quarter-Finals and then Germany in the Semi-Finals before falling once again, in a hard-fought Final, to the USA.
Vincent Collet leaves Les Bleus as the best coach of french basketball history. One of the best ever to do it in Europe at the national team level.
FIBA