A large, thick black curtain surrounds the entire court no. 2 of “The One Ball”, the largest indoor basketball center in the Paris region in Noisy-le-Grand (Seine-Saint-Denis). Behind, away from prying eyes, the Paris Basketball team trains. The few who pass through this opaque veil take a vow of silence: chatter prohibited and phone in their pocket in airplane mode. Even the clicking of the camera should be muted.
On the floor, the only language spoken is the universal language of basketball: English. A meticulous man, sometimes to the extreme, Tuomas Lisalo, the Finnish coach, does not tolerate any interference in his work. This applies to the rare observers as well as to its players obliged to follow an almost military discipline. “At the start of the season, with his assistants, they got down on all fours to measure the ground. They demanded to push back the lines by 30 cm on each side,” confides a center manager.
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