🏀🗞0️⃣2️⃣6️⃣ Arnaud Lecomte
By Messiah Wambo Fiase
Arnaud Lecomte.
Meet Arnaud Lecomte, a basketball journalist for L’Équipe who has covered and translated the NBA for French audiences since 1992.
Born in 1965, in France’s western region of Brittany, Lecomte’s first two sports loves were cycling and football. It wasn’t until the late 1970s when he moved to Le Mans that he had his first contact with basketball. During this time he developed an interest in journalism, which eventually led to the start of his 30+ year career at L’Équipe one Sunday morning.
Arnaud’s Story
Growing up in Brittany, Lecomte’s first interests reflected the region’s passion for cycling and football. At the time, legendary French cyclist Bernard Hinault was in his prime and dominated the Tour de France. “He won five times when I was a kid, so [he] was my idol.”
Basketball did not become important to Lecomte until he was 13-years-old. That year, his family moved to Le Mans, which is how he discovered the game. Thanks to Sporting Club Moderne in Le Mans, basketball was important, a growing sport as the team climbed its way to the top of the French championship, which made it a great place to watch the game. For Lecomte, the atmosphere at games was “crazy” and fast. Someone who contributed to this atmosphere was the New York native Bill Cain, who led Le Mans to their first national championship in 1978 and then two more titles in 1979 and 1982.
But it was in Paris at age 16 that Lecomte truly fell in love with basketball. He attended Stade Français games and watched players hit the hardcourts in the Stade de Coubertin, men like Hervé Dubuisson (who was the first European-born and trained player to compete in the NBA’s Summer League). “They were really magical players, and so I fell in love with basketball really at that time,” he recalled.
Lecomte knew that he wasn’t going to play at a high level. But did that stop him from being involved with basketball? No, because his biggest dream was to be a sports journalist. Since he was 7-years-old, he spent his time reading newspapers and did what he could to become better. As Lecomte noted,
“When I was a kid, I tried to get better by reading books, by improving my French and my writing and my vocabulary, my grammar, everything to be able to write in a newspaper one day. I was a sports fan,so the idea was to be good enough to write in L'Équipe one day.”
Three years later his dream came into fruition one Sunday morning in August playing football with friends. At the end of the game, Lecomte met a man who learned of his interest to be a sports journalist. As luck would have it, the newcomer worked at L’Équipe and upon learning of Lecomte’s dream to write for the newspaper, invited him to the offices the next Sunday to help out and edit some of the paper’s news stories. One week led to another and Lecomte was soon freelancing at L’Équipe.
“It was like a miracle,” Lecomte said of his huge break. Thus began a long-running (and ongoing) career in sports journalism, one that for the past 30 years has led him to and throughout the United States.
The Sports Diplomacy Connection
Lecomte’s first byline published in L’Équipe. Photo: Arnaud Lecomte
Lecomte was able to learn about the United States and its basketball culture through writing on the NBA, notably the 1992 dream team and staying in America.
One of Lecomte’s first reports of U.S. basketball was the infamous 1992 U.S. Dream Team. He followed them to Monaco for their pre-Olympic preparations. Thus, with his first taste of, and encounter with, the NBA under his belt, Lecomte took his first trip to the United States in February 1993 to Salt Lake City. For Lecomte, there was not only a big cultural shock but a climate shock, too, as it was very cold and snowed a lot. During this first trip , he met a taxi driver with a very thick Utah accent and had trouble understanding the man’s English.
Another culture shock was how Americans covered basketball vis-a-vis their French counterparts. For example, in the United States, American journalists were allowed to interview players in the locker room 30 minutes before the game and 15 minutes after the game, while in France, journalists were forbidden contact with players in the locker room. Another difference was their attire. U.S. journalists wore professional clothes, such as suits; however, in France they wore whatever they liked.
Lecomte also noticed the different atmospheres between the homogeneity of the NBA and the greater diversity within European basketball. As he recounted,
“If you go to Minnesota or Miami, totally different perspectives, and you close your eyes, you don't know that you are on Miami, or you don't know if you are in Minnesota because the sound, the speakers, the, the atmosphere, the music is exactly the same in Minnesota, in Miami, in Los Angeles, or in Toronto, in Atlanta or in Dallas. Exactly the same. In Europe, if you go from Latvia or Greece to Spain or Germany, it's totally different. You can identify that it is not the same languages, not the same culture.”
During his time covering the NBA, Lecomte met his fair share of American journalists. However, he felt that he had a harder time connecting with them than in Europe,
“Almost everywhere in Europe, when you cover games locally, you can speak. And most of the time you have dinner or lunch, or you can have a drink with the local journalist, because it's interesting for them to speak with you just to get some information, and as a professional, you also learn by speaking with with the local press.”
But in his first years covering the NBA, Lecomte did not experience this with other U.S. journalists. He speculated that there might have been some disrespect from U.S. journalists. “When I got back to France and spoke about my experience in the United States I always said to the guys, if you go to the United States, try to have a connection with the U.S. reporters.”
Lecomte, through his work as a journalist, has seen how the relationship between France and the United States helped the game of basketball and the next generation. “The NBA has a small French accent now in the last 15 years thanks to Tony [Parker], Boris [Diaw], and Nicolas Batum,” he said.
“We also have a lot of American players coming to France in the last 60 years…And, and I think the cultural things between Americans and French are really close now for the young generation, especially. I think it helps a lot for both countries to understand each other better.”
Listen to Arnaud Lecomte describe covering the 1992 U.S. Dream Team in Monaco during their pre-Olympic preparations here.
About the Author: Messiah Wambo Fiase, a student-athlete, interned with FranceAndUS during Summer 2022.
Mapping the Connection
From Saint-Brieuc, Normandy to Salt Lake City, Utah
Further Reading/Resources
[F] Arnaud Lecomte, “Devoirs et vacances de rêve,” L’Équipe, July 27, 2022
[F] Arnaud Lecomte, “Stern, l’un des plus grandes dirigeants sportifs,” L’Équipe via Dailymotion.com, January 2, 2020.
How to Cite This Entry
Wambo Fiase, Messiah. “Voices: Arnaud Lecomte,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/026-arnaud-lecomte. (date of consultation).