The France team faces Slovenia led by Luka Doncic in the semi-final Thursday at 1 p.m.
The Dallas point guard-winger has crushed all of his opponents so far.
The France team will have to imagine several different defensive systems to extinguish its influence.
From our special correspondent,
The mountains of the Tour de France are barely behind us when we find ourselves again at the top of the Slovenian hype pass. In this regard, know that the jersey of the national basketball team, with a design that seems to pay homage to the snow-capped mountains of the Julian Alps, is out of stock everywhere according to the local press. It must be said that Mavericks fans are also in the ranks, they who have discovered a new passion for Luka Doncic's team. The
Dallas Morning News
even sent a reporter almost entirely dedicated to the journey of the leader of the Mavs, not far from being the last big star of the Games, if one relies on the infatuation / popularity of his sport.
"I like being a star of the Olympics, it feels good, if that's what I am of course," said the 22-year-old boy in the first week, adding "that he was struggling to get to the canteen in because of the number of people who stopped him on the way ”to take pictures.
"Finally, the one who is photographed the most is Djokovic".
The Serbian is no longer there, unlike our maggot, launched like Godzilla in front of the Blues, who must grind their brains on how to stop this monster sitting on a series of unreal 17 wins in 17 games with his team national.
20 Minutes
toured the means of defense of the France team.
Top 4 in the world, a country of 2M people!
What a feeling!
🇸🇮🇸🇮🇸🇮❤️❤️❤️ #mislovenci pic.twitter.com/bK0woXuDRT
- Luka Doncic (@ luka7doncic) August 3, 2021
Let him score as much as he wants and cut him off from his teammates?
Yeah blah
This is the recipe advocated by our sniper, Evan “Ginobili” Fournier: “Doncic?
We don't really care, our goal is to win.
We will make the best possible plan to win.
If it's cutting off all the others and letting it play on its own, we will.
[…] We will put a tactic in place, but the goal is not to stop it, the goal is to win.
"
So there are those who have tried, they have had problems.
Especially the Argentines, crushed in the first game of the competition for trying to force him to play alone.
31 pawns at halftime, 48 at the end, seven small points from the absolute record held by the Brazilian Schmidt since 1988 at the Olympics, hasta luego, buenas noches.
“It's so hard to analyze a loss when a player dominates as much as Luka Doncic did.
We had planned a plan against him, isolating him from the rest of the team, which he dismantled immediately and he murdered us by scoring 15 points in three minutes ”, admitted Argentinian coach Sergio Hernandez, totally annoyed. .
He forced us to change our strategy, we tried everything, to no avail.
I don't remember ever having experienced this once in my life.
I had already said it two years ago, I maintain it: he is the best player in the world ”.
So we forget.
Forcing him to pass to his teammates?
Bof too
If letting Doncic have fun at scoring does not seem to be the appropriate solution, should he then be forced to let go of the ball by two-man holds, even if it means leaving open shooting positions? Vincent Collet is not very hot either, he who explained after the quarter snatched from Italy that Slovenia was doing everything the same, only better.
“There are a lot of similarities, in this very broad game, with the desire to attract our grown-ups far from the basket. It will be one of the keys against Slovenia, but even more difficult, because the playmaker is exceptional and demands to be already particularly focused on him, but without letting go of the others. Because the others have real power. They are never the same, but between Dragic, Blasic, Kankar, we know that there are snipers. We will have to find the right balance between controlling Doncic, in any case making things acceptable, not letting him score 50 points, but without sacrificing everything ”.
Because not content with being the most dominant European player in history at such a young age, Doncic is also a teammate who knows how to be appreciated by his friends.
According to the indiscretions of a Slovenian colleague, this good Luka would have paid nine pairs of sneakers from the new Nike collection to each of the members of the selection before the competition.
The kind of small gestures that bind a group together around its guru.
“We have a wonder, a virtuoso, a Mozart of basketball, and above all an exceptional man off the field, ignites Matej Erjavec, the president of the Slovenian federation.
He created a crazy chemistry within the team ”.
Put several different templates on the overcoat?
To try
If the Slovenes have rolled over everyone so far, they have yet to meet a team with defensive reflexes as established as France, which has always built its playing identity from a group that is physically suffocating without the ball. .
Doncic is both a playmaker, a fullback, a winger, an interior?
We can put on his coat sizes as different as Batum, Gobert, Yasubele, or Ntilikina.
“It's up to Vincent Collet to decide how we will defend, confides Moustapha Fall, the pivot replacing the Blues.
But I will respect the "game play", that's all I can do.
After that, of course, we will have to adapt, put different types of systems against him, different defenders… In any case, something specific will have to be done against him ”.
Without any guarantee either.
Nico Batum, who stuck with the artist in a series of knife play-offs in early June, admitted that not much had worked despite qualifying after the seventh game.
“Whatever we may have come up with, he's had some really high stats throughout the series.
I still hope to be able to use what I have learned, even if I cannot bring Kawhi Leonard back to the French team!
I have other very strong teammates in defense here, I think we can manage to contain it ”.
The best option?
Make him go crazy
Asked about the progress of the Slovenia team since its victory at Euro 2017, where it had beaten France in passing, Vincent Collet spoke of a team capable of surpassing themselves mentally for the national jersey. “I think overall they are stronger. Luka is four years older, he is no longer the same player, he was a lieutenant for Dragic, there he is the indisputable leader of this team, but around full of mature players. We have the impression that they are really possessed, compared to what we know them in Euroleague, they are raising their level in the national jersey. But they are worn by Doncic, that's clear. He gives confidence to the whole team in a way which is quite incredible ”.
This extra soul can sometimes backfire on Luka Doncic, who can be very nervous on the pitch when playing for Slovenia.
We saw him several times take the cabbage with the referees or chamber the opposing bench a little unnecessarily.
The top scorer in the last play-offs (35.7 points on average) has also suffered from three technical faults since the start of the Olympics, which may give the French some ideas.
Winning badly after so many games abandoned to Spain and its strategy of permanent decay, we take.
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Slovenia
Evan Fournier
Basketball
Tokyo Olympics 2021
Japan
Sport
Olympic Games