🏀0️⃣4️⃣6️⃣ Vincent Collet
Coach Vincent Collet. Photo Credit: Bellenger/IS/FFBB.
Meet Vincent Collet, the former player-turned-coach whose transatlantic hoops influences and relationships inform his work with professional teams, as well as that with Team France.
The Normandy native was born June 6, 1963, into a family of basketbal enthusiasts. His father coached local club AL Montivilliers, and the Collets opened their doors to young legend-in-the-making Jacques Cachemire during his tenure with the team. Thus from an early age, Collet fils was immersed in the game and he progressed as a player: in the late 1970s, he earned Most Valuable Player (MVP) at the Jacky Chazalon basketball camp, and first played professionally with Le Mans alongside his friend Bill Cain. Whether as a player, or later as a coach, Collet took inspiration from U.S. influences in crafting his approach.
Vincent’s Story
Growing up, the Collet maison was one in which there was admiration and respect for their ami américain. He recalled how that regard stemmed from the U.S. role liberating France from Nazi occupation, which commenced June 6, 1944 with D-Day for Operation Overlord’s invasion of strategic Normandy beaches and left an indelible imprint on the population. This outlook was tempered by society’s adjustment to France’s new post-war status within the U.S.-USSR bipolar world. But despite this duality of sentiments, there was a fascination for U.S. sport.
“When you play basketball, you have to accept that it’s been dominated for 133 years by Americans, and to share the experience with them,” Collet said. “When I was young, this was something very special for French people.”
During his childhood, French basketball struggled for relevance. The men’s national team of the 1960s and 1970s lacked results: it failed to qualify for the FIBA World Cup (then known as the World Championship) after 1963 and was demoted to the lower tiers of European Championship competition. Players like Cain, who became a citizen after marriage to a Frenchwoman in 1975, helped Les Bleus revive. Simultaneously, within domestic competitions, an influx of U.S. players brought French players like Collet regularly into contact with American counterparts.
“There is always a special relation with the United States,” Collet noted.
“We watched them as an example to follow. I have very good friends in Serbia, Montenegro, and they…are a little bit scared of U.S. players. They think U.S. players are selfish. We saw them as the best players.”
Le Mans, 1982. Vincent Collet (#13) and Bill Cain (#15), 1982. Photo Credit: Musée du Basket.
During his professional playing days in the 1980s, Collet noted that U.S. basketteurs were dominant. “They were better physically, they were better technically,” he recalled. Thus he, like other French of the era, sought to learn from them.
The tables have begun to turn in the twenty-first century, and as a coach within France’s top division (ProA) since 1998, Collet had an insider’s perspective on the evolution of basketball relations between France and the United States. As he noted,
“Sometimes when [the U.S. players] first arrive, they have good athletic potential, but they still need to learn many things. When they come out of college basketball, they are not always ready to play at the professional level–this is something that has changed.”
As this post published in June 2024, half of the top six players selected in the 2024 NBA Draft were French, just one testament to how generations of informal sports diplomacy has made France a basketball breeding ground and helped revive it’s game. For Collet,
“I still try to learn from U.S. basketball, but some of the things we are doing now in Europe are as interesting as those that are done in the United States. It has changed the level of relations. Fifty years ago, you had to get everything from the United States. Now, while I think the U.S. has the highest level, things have also evolved in Europe and some of the things I think are better, such as the way we form our kids. Sometimes we do interesting things that could be done in the States.”
The Sports Diplomacy Connection
Coach Vincent Collet. Photo Credit: Bellenger/IS/FFBB.
Coach Collet engaged in informal sports diplomacy with international colleagues, including at the pre-Draft European Prospect Camps in Treviso, Italy, of the mid-2000s. At the time, the top European NBA prospects were coached by some of the league’s assistant coaches. Collet was one of the few Europeans invited to participate and took the opportunity to exchange with U.S. counterparts. One of those was Kenny Atkinson, who played in France (1999-2004) and helped Collet integrate into the camp’s coaching staff. “We were very close to each other,” the Frenchman recalled.
“After that, he introduced me to others, and I began to do the same, to explain what I was doing with my team. They explained to me what they were doing with their NBA teams, and this exchange of knowledge was a way to develop your know-how. This is, I think, a very diplomatic way to bring both sides closer.”
The communication, representation, and negotiation that occurred as the coaches exchanged on basketball culture, technique, and knowledge helped everyone. It also began the nearly two-decade long relationship between Collet and Atkinson, who joined Les Bleus’ coaching staff for the Paris 2024 Games.
As head coach of Team France, Collet engaged in formal sports diplomacy, too, representing the country on the hardcourt sidelines. Since he took the reins in 2009, Les Bleus have won the EuroBasket crown (2013), silver (2011, 2022), and bronze (2015); FIBA World Cup bronze (2014, 2019), and Olympic silver medal (2020).
There, too, sports diplomacy’s knowledge exchange played a role. “I remember what Pop said about me when we played against each other in the [Tokyo] Olympics,” Collet said Team USA Coach Gregg Popovich’s praise of him and the French.*
Coach Vincent Collet. Photo Credit: Bellenger/IS/FFBB.
“I think you couldn’t see that 20 years ago. Something has changed, but I see it all coming from these exchanges. That creates an understanding that we are all human beings living in the same world. It isn’t the old continent versus the new one. More and more, I see [basektball’s evolution] comes from all these exchanges.”
He pointed to how during the 2023-24 season, he traveled to the United States several times to meet with the French NBA players likely to be called up for national team service for the Paris Games. “Every time I go, I learn from these travels,” Collet noted. “It’s an opportunity to learn something and see how they work.”
*During his post-gold medal match press conference, Team USA Coach Gregg Popovich said, “We are happy with the result. Great respect to French basketball, to Coach Collet, his staff, they played well, with aggression. They have a great group. It makes the victory more exhilarating, because they are an excellent team. The credit goes to them. We are honored to have represented the country. The team progressed so quickly, faced a lot of things, it makes the victory sweeter.”
Mapping the Connection
From Normandy, France to San Antonio, Texas (and many other U.S. locations)
Further Reading/Resources
[E] Vincent Collet, interview with the author, June 23, 2024.
[E] Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA (Bloosmbury, 2023).
How to Cite This Entry
Krasnoff, Lindsay Sarah. “Voices: Vincent Collet,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/046-vincent-collet. (date of consultation).