Books & Publications
Monographs
Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA), founded over 75 years ago, is staging a 21st century takeover. Watched in 215 countries and territories worldwide, and with nearly one in three players born and trained overseas, it is no longer just about America. Asking how and why so many French basketball players have joined the NBA and WNBA, Basketball Empire explores what this has meant for the league and the players themselves. Going behind the scenes, it follows the generations of men and women who, since 1950, have followed their passion for the game to create a basketball breeding ground thanks to sports diplomacy.
“Rich with illuminating context and the voices of pioneering personalities, this fascinating and important book traces the birth, growth and spread of French basketball, highlighting its interplay with both the U.S. and francophone Africa and the Caribbean. BASKETBALL EMPIRE shows how the openness of a younger generation helped France create a powerful diplomatic instrument - a basketball culture all its own.”
“Big ball, small world. Sixty years ago, U.S. pioneers traveled to France to teach basketball. Today, following the Tony Parkers, Sandrine Grudas or Nic Batums, young French ballers cook a new French cuisine in the NBA and WNBA. Chef Lindsay Krasnoff met them all and set the table for us, lucky readers!”
The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010
The Making of Les Bleus traces the Fifth Republic’s quest to create elite athletes in two global team sports, football and basketball, primarily at the youth level. While the objective of this mission was to improve performances at international competitions, such programs were quickly seized upon to help ease domestic issues and tensions.
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“For more than a century, the French have known how to globalize sport...Britain first organized soccer, but France turned it into the World Cup. However, maybe even the French need help in understanding the social upheaval that culminated on July 12th, 1998 with a million people of every conceivable background dancing the night away on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées after Les Bleus became world champions. Everyone there knew a little about why Zinédine Zidane, a player of Algerian Arabic descent, was so central to that triumph. Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff uses a historian’s patience and perspective to draw together political, cultural, and historical strands that make sports reflect a nation.”
“The most detailed history of contemporary French sport to date, The Making of Les Bleus is deeply-researched, wide-ranging, and insightful. By showing how and why the French state invested in unique ways in athletic programs, and interweaving fascinating stories of individual athletes with analysis of institutions, Krasnoff powerfully expands our understanding of the politics of sport in Europe and beyond.”
Contributions in Edited collections
An American in Paris: Sports Diplomacy and Hoop Dreams at Paris 2024
This reflection on sports diplomacy at the XXXIII Olympiad is a series of snapshots focused through the Franco-American lens and the basketball prism. Paris 2024 illuminated French sports diplomacy, and while the 5x5 men's and women's basketball tournaments shined—notably at the historic United States vs. France gold medal matches—it was about much more than what happened on the hardcourt. Throughout the summer, France communicated, represented, and negotiated about itself. Activation of the French diplomatic network in service of sport empowered ever-closer relationships, including with longtime allies like the United States. Sporting results at the Olympic Games, particularly the France vs. United States gold medal basketball matchups, strengthened a “Made in France” brand.
Ch.15 France and the United States
“Paris as a Land of Welcome, Adoption, and Opportunity for ‘American’ Basketball, from the YMCA to the NBA” Co-authored with Christelle Bertho.
This chapter focuses on the ways that Paris has welcomed and imported American-style hoops culture and the ways it began to export the first generation of French basketball talent to mark the U.S. game—each with their own distinctly French flair. This story illuminates the important ties, cultural and otherwise, between the two countries through a unique sporting landscape that endures over time.
An Inside Look at the French Football Federation’s Women’s Football Diplomacy Initiative in Iraq
This article, co-authored with Dr. Daniel G. Kelly II, examines the French Football Federation’s women’s football diplomacy initiative with Iraq as an example of a type of integrative sports diplomacy that empowers the sports world, and those they serve, in new ways. The effort, driven by a non-state sporting actor with support from the French state via its Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs’ sports diplomacy approach, demonstrated sports diplomacy’s short-term “wins” like changing people’s minds, cultural engagement, and sharing technical expertise through sports, creating the possibility of new opportunities, and offering different incentives for the sports world to engage.
The Paradox of French Women’s Football
The paradox of French women’s football is that at both the elite and professional levels, the country can lead internationally and help set the conversation. Yet, there remain startling gulfs, from national team results and domestic competitions to cultural perceptions and attitudes, despite significant twenty-first-century progress. Hosting FIFA World Cup 2019 drove change, including continued favorable public support for the national team, but the women’s game still struggles to overcome Covid-19-era setbacks. It is hoped that the legacy of Paris 2024, combined with the country’s 2024 League of Nations vice championship, will include more concrete advances in women’s football infrastructure and cultural regard to help bridge these gaps and enable France to flex its role more fully as a global football influencer.
Bill Cain’s "Scrutiny," and His Transformation into an Athlete Ambassador in French Professional Basketball
Like many of his fellow athlete protestors, Bill Cain loved the country of his birth. His “Cain’s Scrutiny” columns sought to make people more aware of social injustices and advocate for improved race relations. As an expatriate basketballer, he embodied and thus had to explain the ideals of his two countries—France and the United States—and thus conveyed the Black American experience through sports while also he also helped set French hoops on a course that decades later made it the largest European exporter of players to the NBA.
"Barnstorming Frenchmen: The impact of Paris Université Club's U.S. tours and the individual in sports diplomacy"
This intimate look inside the first two trips to the United States by a French basketball team (Paris Université Club 1956, 1962) provides a window-in to early unofficial sports exchanges between the two countries. Organized by U.S. teammate Martin Feinberg, the trips embodied how basketball enabled the young French players to learn first-hand about U.S. culture and society, including Jim Crow and the two sister republics' differing attitudes towards race. The PUC tours were sterling examples of the merits of sports exchanges as elements of diplomacy, even though they were not government-sponsored or even public-private partnerships.
"Devolution of Les Bleus as a symbol of a multicultural French future"
When France won the World Cup in 1998, the team’s multiethnic composition was feted as a symbol of the nation’s new, postcolonial image. Alas, the feel-good story did not last. Wins became scarce, scandals plagued the team and football was politicized as the public deplored the ‘Playstation junkies’ too individualistic to serve the nation. The infusion of racially charged rhetoric into the discourse of Les Bleus led many to believe that French football is rife with racism and that the national team is not well received by the public. On the contrary, the public is generally supportive of Les Bleus. The negative discourse is an anti-football backlash against the sport’s business climate, one fuelled by traditional disdain for football, and shaded by domestic anxieties. This is the ‘second sports crisis’, an identity crisis less about racial identity and more about the sociocultural norms of being French.
"Resurrecting the nation: the evolution of french sports policy from de gaulle to mitterrand"
"Resurrecting the Nation: The Evolution of French Sports Policy from De Gaulle to Mitterrand" examines the evolution of youth sports policies in France and media's role spurring on the development of elite athletes.