When we ask the greatest basketball player of all time to name the three best European players in history, we listen to him.
Questioned in early 2020 during a visit to Paris, Michael Jordan had cited three names instead of the five asked: “I appeal to my memory… Tony Kukoc, Drazen Petrovic and Arvidas Sabonis.
"His Airness" quotes players of his time - two Croats and a Lithuanian - whom he challenged with the "Dream Team" at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
Only since his retirement, the world has changed, moreover thanks to him. A new wind is blowing in the NBA, a silent and unlikely revolution when Jordan reigned. For three years, the MVP (Most Valuable Player) the best player of the season, has been a European. After the Greek of Milwaukee Giannis Antetokounmpo elected in 2019 and 2020, the Serbian of Denver Nikola Jokic was crowned for the fiscal year 2020-2021. Until then, only one European had had this honor: the German Dirk Nowitzki in 2007.
“In the 1990s, tells us Tony Kukoc, the three-time NBA champion (1993, 1994, 1995) with the Bulls, America knew nothing about Europeans.
It was as if we were from Mars.
Now every European who arrives is known long before he arrives in the league.
He was followed, detected, chosen.
Unlike me, they have less need to prove themselves and therefore have less pressure.
They can be the leaders of their team, which was impossible for a European in my time.
»On the starting line of this season, 22 European countries are represented by some sixty players.
A figure on the rise every year.
A Frenchman could become the greatest defender of all time
The other prestigious individual trophy, that of best defender, is also held by a European: Rudy Gobert, as in 2018 and 2019. He can become the best defender of all time.
“My goal,” repeats the latter, “is to say at the end that I have had a great career, with titles.
I want people to say about me that I was a winner, ”explains the Olympic silver medalist who puts nothing above a collective title.
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Also for the first time, three Europeans (Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Slovenian prodigy Luka Doncic) were selected in the best 5 of last season with two luxury neighbors Stephen Curry (Golden State) and Kawhi Leonard (Clippers). For the NBA, it's a revolution in a league where players over 2m10 also come from the Old Continent, Gobert in the lead.
So who is the best European of all time? Tony Kukoc? The Olympic runner-up in Barcelona offers his answer: “I'll let others say it for me. I do not have this pretension. I already consider myself very lucky to have been able to play with players of my generation, the Petrovics and others. At the same time, if I played against Nowitzki or Parker at the end of my career, I never got to face Doncic, Giannis and the others. Each of these guys leaves a mark in basketball history, maybe like me. "
Jacques Monclar, 201 caps in blue and voice of the NBA on BeInsport said about it: “My best European five of all time is made up of Tony Parker, Drazen Petrovic, Tony Kukoc, Dirk Nowitzki and Vlade Divac.
To be part of it, you have to take a step back and take players who have stopped their careers.
Who is the biggest ?
Drazen Petrovic was a monster and we will never know how far he could have gone.
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Once upon a time Tony Parker
The Croatian, one of the first Europeans to win in the NBA, was killed in a traffic accident in 1993 at the age of 29: “What makes a player the best is a everything, Monclar resumes: his collective record, his individual titles, his impact on his team, on the game. How then can we contest the place of Tony (Parker)?
He has won everything.
"
The Frenchman was in 2007, the first European crowned best player in an NBA final.
He will join the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame of basketball, in 2023. For the moment, a dozen Europeans are there.
But there are always more every year.
The Spaniard Paul Gasol, who has just put the ball down, also has his place there.