🏀0️⃣1️⃣4️⃣ Michel Rat
Michel Rat (No7, left) with Paris Université Club. Photo: Musée du Basket
Meet Michel Rat, a basketball player, coach, and administrator who helped translate U.S. style basketball techniques to generations of French players from 1962 to today.
Born March 16, 1937 in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, Rat first played with legendary basketball team, Paris Université Club, during the 1956-57 season. There, under it’s American player-coach Martin Feinberg, Rat learned U.S.-style tactics and techniques, contributing to his rising role in the country’s basketball family.
Michel’s Story
When Rat joined PUC, he was training to become a physical education teacher specializing in basketball. He credits his time with the team for upping his hoops IQ.
“I didn't know what a block or a screen was, and I learned all of that with PUC. It was a school of [basketball] learning. We were playing elaborate basketball. We learned to defend. We learned to play with tall indoor players. I learned basketball. This is how I became international.”
Michel Rat (foreground). Photo: Musée du Basket.
In April 1959, Rat suited up for the first time for the French national team and helped Les Tricolores, as the team was then known, to bronze at that year’s European Championship (now EuroBasket) tournament. Then national team coach and DTN (and former player) Robert Busnel wrote of the team’s performance that,
“Technique, tactics, resistance…but also grit, courage and will. These were the strengths of a remarkable French team.”
It was a victory Rat later credited with what he learned while playing with PUC.
The Sports Diplomacy Connection
Michel Rat (No13). Photo: Musée du Basket.
In December 1962, he was part of the PUC squad that traveled (for the second time) to the United States in order to experience and learn from American basketball. Like it’s 1956-57 predecessor organized by Feinberg, this 1962 trip was designed for French players to absorb the U.S. game and learn about and from the culture that surrounded it.
The team played a series of games through the mid-Atlantic, against Gallaudet University, Oglethorpe, and AAU team Brownston. Although they didn’t always win, PUC was able to observe and learn new game tactics and techniques. Rat recalled how he translated technical documents the team acquired so that upon their return home, PUC could incorporate the U.S. systems into their repertoire. During this trip PUC also learned about the shuffle offense, a system to move the ball via all five players through a series of screens. This was just one example of people-to-people sports exchanges that helped to enrich French basketball technical know-how.
Rat also learned about the kinds of basketball-specific kicks in the American market. In France, “tennis shoes” as sneakers were then called, featured a few models such as the Busnel, named after then national team coach and DTN (and former player) Robert Busnel. PUC was given pairs of Converse sneakers to take home. As Rat later articulated, “everyone was crazy for Converses because they were American products.”
Mapping the Connection
From Auvers-sur-Oise, France to Gallaudet University, Washington D.C. (as part of PUC’s first stop on their 1962 U.S. tour).
Further Reading
[E] Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, “Barnstorming Frenchmen: The Impact of Paris Université Club’s US Tours and the Individual in Sports Diplomacy,” in J Simon Rofe (ed.), Sport and Diplomacy: Games Within Games, (Manchester University Press, 2018).
[E] Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, Basketball Empire: A Hidden Story of the (W)NBA’s Globalization (in process).
[E] Michel Rat, Interviews with the author, October 26, 2014, June 29, 2015, and September 24, 2021.
How to Cite This Entry
Krasnoff, Lindsay Sarah. “Voices: Michel Rat,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/014-michel-rat. (date of consultation).