From “Court of Gold” to Global Hoops in 2025
In the aftermath of a magical Paris 2024 Olympic Tournament, the dynamism of basketball across the continents illustrates that the world’s got game beyond the Games
They say that Paris is the City of Love, but last summer Steph Curry broke my heart in the City of Light. With three minutes left in the Olympic gold medal match and Team France just three points behind Team USA, Curry unfurled a series of three-point shots that put to bed French hopes for a victory on home soil. Lovers of the game, even those like me, who were rooting for Les Bleus, had to admire the artistry and dedication to craft that enabled those shots to sail clear through the net by the undisputed king of the three-point shot.
I’m from Boston, so I’m accustomed to the intermingled feelings of heartbreak and awe that I first experienced growing up part of Red Sox Nation during their decades of drought. My professional basketball allegiances have been kinder, as the Celtics are the winningest club in the NBA. But my FIBA hoops loyalties are a bit different.
Three years earlier at the Tokyo Games, Kevin Durant also broke my heart as he closed down Team France in the last 10 seconds of that Olympic men’s final. As Les Bleus’ osteopath Fabrice Gautier relayed to me in Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA of that August 2021 evening, “three points and maybe one missed call at the beginning of the game,” were all that stood between France and the gold medal.
Some might find it strange that I wasn’t all-in for Team USA to win gold (yet again). I served my country for several years, working for the U.S. Department of State, and well appreciate the values and ideals that it has stood (and fought) for over nearly 250 years. And in the end, I had no quibbles with the U.S. teams banking the top spot at the Olympic tournaments. Those historic men’s and women’s finals were captivating, exhilarating, exciting basketball games—and that’s good for everyone. But as a French sports specialist, one who has tried to translate how the United States’ oldest ally became a basketball breeding ground to audiences at home and overseas, it was bittersweet.
Since research began for Basketball Empire in 2014, I’ve followed the ups and downs of Les Bleus and Les Bleues. I’ve come to know some branches of the French hoops family quite well, and consider them my home-away-from-home. Thanks to them, I’ve not only learned about France, its people and its culture in different ways than through my work as a historian or U.S. government civil servant, but also about myself. That’s the beauty of sports diplomacy: the cultural, technical, or knowledge exchanges that also consist of learning more about “the other” and yourself in the process. For sports diplomacy is a people project. But I digress.
So there I was on August 10, 2025, two days after returning State-side after several months based in Paris, kitted out in my Team France tee-shirt with a broken heart as I watched France receive the silver medal for the second Olympiad in a row. That’s no small feat, this “white gold” that my French friends spoke about. The next day, I nearly had a heart attack as Les Bleues came inches away from forcing Team USA into an unprecedented overtime, which would have challenged U.S. women’s dominance of the tournament dating to 1996.
You can thus imagine my keen interest to watch the “Court of Gold” documentary produced by the Olympic Channel, Netflix, and Higher Ground Productions. I recently rewatched it, thinking about this series on storytelling the global game, and commend Director of Content at Olympic Channel Services Benny Bonsu and her team for their efforts.
“Court of Gold” is a powerful piece of global sports storytelling as it follows the United States, Canada, France, and Serbia on their pursuit of the 2024 Olympic podium. It is the first series to go behind the scenes and detail the global game. While the focus was on the U.S. “Team Avengers” of star players, the series also surfaces storylines from key competitors.
Elements that help make this a good piece of global sports storytelling include:
the use of relevant music to set the scene, such as when Les Bleus are first introduced with French rap as the soundtrack
crosstalk and banter between different country members about legitimate claims to the podium, thus setting up narrative tensions for how these players will meet with their national teams when they already meet on the hardcourts during their professional seasons
deep dive with Team Canada about how special it is for their basketball team to be in the limelight, given how hockey as the national sport eclipses all else back home
the dry humor of Team Serbia during the episodes focused on their quest for gold, as well as what their Summer 2024 campaign meant for Serbians, which builds characters that transcend stereotypes
That’s why “Court of Gold” is a good starting point for this week-long celebration of international basketball. It illustrates that everyone’s got game, and the competitive nature of the last Olympic competition is good for all.
It’s important to recall that although basketball was invented in the United States, and U.S. coaches and players are considered by some to be long-term “masters” of the art, it is not “America’s game.” Basketball was invented by Canadian James Naismith in the United States in 1891 but recent research by Dr. Ross Walker unearthed the fact that the father of the game “considered himself to be a Scot, lived in a Scottish community and spoke with a Scottish accent for much of his life.” For Naismith’s family hailed from Scotland. Read more about this fascinating finding in Walker’s February 2025 article for Sport in History, “James Naismith: the creation of basketball and the Scottish connection.”
Moreover, basketball is what I’ve coined the world’s first global-born team sport. Within a decade of the first recorded game in December 1891, basketball was exported and played around the world: France (1893), Brazil (1894), China (1895), and Australia (1897). By the eve of the First World War, it was played throughout Western and Central Europe, while the 1919-1940 era was one of the game’s democratization and popularization as basketball was played in the Baltics, the Balkans, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and had become a national sport in China for both women and men. As the great basketball chronicler Alexander Wolff describes in Big Game, Small World, these indigenous hoops histories and cultures meant that the world could appreciate an elite version of their homegrown game in the NBA once the league and its coterie of stars, led by Michael Jordan, surged into a globalized sporting world in the 1980s and 1990s.
That’s the case for France, one of the main protagonists in “Court of Gold” as both Olympic hosts and potential podium claimants. Basketball Empire delves deeply into this story, which has been in the making for more than 130 years since the game was first exported beyond North American shores to the heart of Paris. There in the City of Light’s 9th arrondisement you’ll find the world’s oldest original basketball court at the Paris YMCA at 14 rue de Trévise. I recently wrote about this and other terrains for “Secrets of Paris” here.
It was thus with great joy and curiosity that I followed their “Court of Gold” storyline. There’s much that they got right, including how young phenomenon Victor Wembanyama is drawing new interest and fans to the game back home (and within the NBA, too). The efforts to illustrate the ties between captain Nicolas Batum and head coach Vincent Collet, or Evan Fournier and the City of Paris, are well placed. You can find deeper dives into these and other inter-generational and intra-territory relationships in Basketball Empire, which was published a year prior to filming “Court of Gold.”
But a deeper connection to the culture and backstory would really help non-French audiences appreciate the stakes involved – and dial up the narrative tension, too.
For example, cleverly weaving in France’s late 1940s-1950s rise, post-1960 fall, and 21st century return to international tournament podium finishes could go a long way in further developing the underdog storyline. Critically, better grounding their budding “friendly” (or not so friendly?) rivalry with Team USA is vital.
Contrary to what is stated in the docuseries, this rivalry does not date to the Tokyo 2020 Games. The historic rivalry was first notched with the 1948 “David versus Goliath” France-USA gold medal game at the London Games, then furthered at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics as the two teams again tipped off in the final. The contemporary rivalry began at the FIBA 2019 World Cup, when France knocked the United States out of the tournament entirely during the quarterfinals and snapped their 58-game winning streak in international competition. Les Bleus went on to garner bronze while the U.S. team finished in seventh place.
That knockout was significant. It proved to the French that they could win over a U.S. team and subtracted the mythology of an unbeatable Team USA from the equation. That mental shift was important, and played out during the two teams’ first matchup during group play at Tokyo 2020. Despite the U.S. team bringing some of its stars, like Durant, who were absent at FIBA World Cup, the French mentality that they could beat the U.S. was an important sixth man to that game. Les Bleus won that match, 83-76. When they met again in the gold medal game, there was no fear, just determined grit. Until the last 10 seconds when Durant cinched the game for the United States.
Storytelling the return of France to international podiums through the sports diplomacy prism, notably the trickle-up impact of generations of French who have played on North American NCAA Division One, NBA, and WNBA hardcourts, would also provide an extra salience and “so what” context to the plot.
Thus two key takeaways from a global sport storytelling perspective:
Don’t underestimate how sporting cultural heritage can help strengthen your narrative, plot, tensions, and characters. History is about much more than “pretty” history – cultural artifacts or game summaries; the lessons it provides informs today’s actors to innovate for future wins, to paraphrase an excellent conversation about the uses and abuses of historical memory from the “Diplomatic Immunity” podcast.
Telling the story, or part of it, through the sports diplomacy prism and its impact on participants on both sides can provide unique value-add that strengthens the relevance and importance of sport. It is more than a game, it’s an investment in people.
Applying these to the non-U.S. teams featured in “Court of Gold” would really amp-up the significance and influence of this exciting series.
👉 Which leads to a call to action: more storytelling about non-U.S. basketball, please! That Team USA barely eked out a semifinal win over Serbia, were closely chased by France throughout the final, and had a close-miss near-loss to South Sudan during pre-Olympic preparations showcases that the world’s got game. And to better appreciate how the basketball world got better, we need more storytelling about the game in hoops strongholds like Lithuania, Serbia, Angola, and Mozambique in English so that journalists, content creators, and the public alike are better informed.