🏀📺0️⃣1️⃣7️⃣ Johan Rat
Meet Johan Rat, a basketball coach, television analyst, and former NCAA D1 player who helped bring NCAA March Madness to French living rooms.
Born December 8, 1976, in Dakar, Senegal, where his father was stationed to work with the Senegalese Basketball Federation, Rat’s first dribbles came as a three-year-old, shortly after the family moved back to the greater Parisian region. From age five until 17, he played with VGA St Maur, just southeast of Paris, but his big break came in 1992 when he attended his first Five Star Basketball Camp in the United States. For four summers, Rat worked on his game, earned the camp’s Mr. Hustle award, and in Summer 1996 was awarded a D1 basketball scholarship at The Citadel.
Johan’s Story
Growing up, Rat watched the domestic French league, but was also attuned to the U.S. style of the game thanks to NBA broadcasts on France’s Canal +. The matchups were animated by George Eddy, whose commentary enabled Rat to “discover American culture,” as Rat recalled. Notably, Eddy brought,
Johan (right) with his father and mentor Michel (left). Photo: ABA Camp.
“...the entertainment aspect, the humor, and the good vibration way that some Americans have, plus a lot of enthusiasm and openness for basketball as a global [endeavor] versus a European or American one…[Eddy] was very futuristic, like my dad [Michel] is, in his view of the game, loving the NBA, and at the same time, loving French basketball, not putting one against the other.”
For kids like Rat, born in the 1970s, Eddy helped translate the game, and the NBA became their culture. “I respected the French players and I liked them a lot,” Rat explained. “But when I discovered the NBA, there was something magic to it that I didn’t find in the French professional game.”
Despite these early influences, Rat’s basketball was markedly formed during his time at the Five Star Basketball Camps, where he became a mentee of founder and NBA Hall of Famer Howard Garfinkel. Rat was one of the first Europeans to attend the camps, and rapidly learned what it took to succeed in the U.S. game. “I knew that intensity is regarded as important and appreciated in American basketball,” he said. “That and your IQ–your brain and your intensity, so I took care of those parts.”
The Sports Diplomacy Connection
Johan Rat, Freshman Year. Photo: ABA Camp.
Rat learned about the United States through attending basketball camp in the summers, but a full-time immersion during college provided greater opportunity for cultural and technical exchanges at the root of informal sports diplomacy.
He arrived on campus at The Citadel for the Fall 1996 semester and went into a form of cultural shock. It was the first time that he discovered how the school’s South Carolina geography reflected a different cultural outlook, especially towards race relations, than he was used to in New York, Pittsburgh, or back home in France.
“The only Blacks you had [at school] were athletes or guys who signed contracts for the military to get out of the hood. I discovered that there was a general mistrust between Blacks and whites due to the [Jim Crow] past, a past that wasn’t that far away, so that was a shock at first.”
But he noted how amongst his teammates, “everybody kind of forgot about that history and we became family” through being in school and working together. “I loved to see how it evolved with time while I was there, how we became brothers because of sports.”
He also learned about discipline in the game. “Every action on the court, everything you did, had to be executed a certain way,” he said. “You had to be very meticulous, it was highly organized defensively or offensively, very disciplined. Even though I had known that in France, it was nothing close to what I discovered at The Citadel.”
Rat tried to teach his teammates about some elements of French culture. He introduced them to French hip-hop, a counterpoint to the American version the team listened to. “They thought it was okay, even though they couldn’t understand the lyrics,” he recalled. Other experiments, notably on the culinary side, were not as appreciated. “Fries with mayonnaise, they thought that was nasty and used to make jokes about me [for eating it].”
Rat playing in France’s ProB. Photo: ABA Camp.
After graduation in 2000, Rat returned to France where he played professionally and helped impart some of the lessons learned from his U.S. experience. He was nicknamed “White Chocolate” because he wore baggy shorts, had several tattoos, and exhibited a perceived American attitude and flair. “When I came back, I was totally bicultural and really Americanized,” he said of his newfound approach to discipline, hard work, and team spirit.
“I didn’t handle the ball the same way, for I had learned all the techniques Americans used, the between-the-legs and in-and-out dribbles, behind-the-back, no-look passes. At the time, I was using moves they didn’t really know [in France].”
Rat transitioned from a career as a player to one as a coach, co-founding the ABA Camp. And, since 2013, he has served as a television analyst for NCAA games to French audiences, including two Final Fours broadcast live from the United States (Indianapolis, 2015; Houston, 2016). And in many ways, he’s replicating for an NCAA-curious audience what Eddy did for the NBA: to bring U.S. culture and perspectives to a French audience, breaking it down for them, explaining how the game is lived in the United States, the U.S. attraction to the college game, and all that goes in and around it.
Mapping the Connection
From Dakar, Senegal (where he was born) and a childhood in Paris to The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.
Further Reading/Resources
[E] Johan Rat, interview with the author, September 24, 2021.
[F] Alexandre Sanson, “[Il y a 25 ans, l’ALM Evreux accédait à la ProA] Que sont devenus les héros de la montée?” BeBasket, June 29, 2020.
[E] ABA Camp, https://aba.camp/.
How to Cite This Entry
Krasnoff, Lindsay Sarah. “Voices: Johan Rat,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/017-johan-rat. (date of consultation).