So, this game... Well, we didn't go the right way into it. We watched Greece vs Russia in the locker room, we knew that we had our fate in our hands. We started to play a certain way but not thoroughly, we calculated without calculating. It was weird, we played backwards, we probably thought that anyways we could save ourselves. Except we didn't save ourselves. And then my foul on Kirk Penney, damn... I've never rewatched it, I don't want to watch that play ever. Well he played well, I was at full speed, I couldn't stop, he grabbed the ball, he stopped immediately. That was well played he got me, royally. I don't like to admit but I ran into him after that and I told him "bastard, that was well played." I tried to run because he's a shooter and I wanted to be on him, not give him space and he stopped dead, jumped right away, straight, but I was in my track, I couldn't stop.
Then we scored. They were still in sight regarding their lead. But then there was the 3 pointer with the board from Abercrombie who killed us royally. I told myself "It's not possible." To be honest, I always thought "the day I make it to France Team senior, I will never live the France vs Greece style scenario, I will do everything not to live it." Bah here it is, I got it. But it's the last time it happens.
So in the locker room, Vincent [Collet, French coach] yelled at us really good about the last play, as you may have seen (Interieur Sport from Canal + [in French]). This is normal, but we should also have done the work before : this play should never have happened. And Vincent has told us about that too. OK, we could have fouled, we didn't. But we didn't lose the match on these 5 seconds, but 39 minutes before, when we had to get the job done. We can't put ourselves in that situation. If you do the job, it's safe. Maybe at this point, late in the game, we can think of calculations but we should not have done in the beginning. But here we've kind of disgraced the French basketball on that game because we did not show values like combativity, competitiveness.
Anyways, there was ample space to dominate New Zealand, let's be honest. And they added a New Zealander for me in Portland, they really want me to mess my season... Though we haven't talked about it yet. Not yet but I fear the day he does. Patrick Mills and Rudy mocked be about that, that was extraordinary. Patrick, I saw him on the same day at the hotel, he taunted me right away. But hey, he couldn't talk too much because he just had a huge loss against Slovenia. In fact, with Australia, he's never lost against New Zealand and he was telling me they were so easy to play.
You need somebody else beside Machado, Barbosa sucks
