The French went down flagrantly, with a nut shot from Ronny Turiaf on Rudy Fernandez and a felonious foul by Nicolas Batum against Juan Carlos Navarro.
France missed 11 consecutive shots before getting a meaningless one with 9 seconds left, and a new chapter of crunch time failure was added to Les Blues’ history book in a 66-59 quarterfinal loss at the Olympics in London.
Batum committed an intentional foul that was so flagrant, a hard, long-armed swipe that knocked Navarro to the floor, that it appeared American referee Bill Kennedy (a veteran of several top-level FIBA competitions) wanted to eject Batum from the game only to be overruled by the other two officials (from Greece and Brazil).
The Spanish team was already livid after Turiaf clocked Fernandez near midcourt when France was in a situation in which they were forced to foul to stop the clock. But Turiaf’s fifth and final foul was clearly too hard, and Fernandez had to leave the game. He continued to writhe in pain near the France bench throughout the final minute.
Spain trailed for most of the game, a rematch of the 2011 Eurobasket gold medal game, but made defensive stop after defensive stop over the final six minutes.
Serge Ibaka had a tip-in with 6:26 left and then an assist on a fast-break bucket by Sergio Llull (the Houston Rockets hold his NBA rights) with 5:35 remaining to give Spain a 58-57 lead. They were the first four points in what turned into a 15-0 run that came despite neither team scoring again for more than 4 minutes until Fernandez made two free throws with 1:31 left.
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Fernandez and Pau Gasol then each blocked a shot by Tony Parker to force a 24-second violation, and Marc Gasol fed his brother with a pretty bounce pass off a pick-and-roll for a bucket that put Spain ahead by 5 with 45 seconds left.
Diaw, who shot 3-for-12, missed a 3-pointer with 33 seconds left, leading to all the extracurricular stuff that followed.
Pablo says
A.J., Frankie: Rudy and Navarro probably overreact when they feel contact but what Batum did was plain violence. I understand the criticism on Rudy and Navarro but come on, you haven’t said a word about Turiaf and Batum behaviour.
A.J. says
“Overreact” is the understatement of the year. There’s no reason to say anything about Turiaf and Batum, that was old school basketball. I applaud it. If they want to pretend they’re Vlade Divac having an epileptic fit, then proceed at your own risk. They’re lucky Lonnie Shelton and Charles Oakley weren’t playing for France, a priest would have given Fernandez and Navarro their last rites.
James says
Does this happen in the NBA?
A.J. says
Fernandez deserves whatever he gets. I played back and watched a few of those ridiculous flops in slow-motion, all of the flops fooled the refs. The flop near the baseline, where Fernandez went down in an explosive heap like he’d just been shot in a Sam Peckinpah movie, was particularly outrageous. After playing them back a couple of times, I wanted to give Fernandez the shot in the nuts that Batum never got to deliver.
Frankie says
Diaw shot 6/11 (not 3/12) and Batum fouled Navarro (aka “La Bomba” as said above but aka “the great actor” too) (not Calderon). Pity for France, Spain was in a poor form too.
Will says
How can you confuse Navarro with Calderón? Both NBA guys, past and present. Come on, Chris!
All due respect 😉
Love your articles
Pablo says
Dallas is right, Turiaf to Rudy and Batum to Navarro (known as La Bomba, “the bomb”, because of his signature floater shot).
Turiaf’s foul was really hard, Rudy got injured and couldn’t shoot the free throws. Ugly foul.
But Batum’s punch on Navarro was over the top violence in a basketball court.
And why the french coach kept Batum on the court for the final seconds? after that foul?
Really poor sportsmanship in the french side.
Spain played with poor confidence, only their nearly-perfect defense in the fourth put them in a position to win. They need to fix their offense to face Russia.
Dallas says
wasn’t it Juan Carlos Navarro, aka La Bamba, to whom Batum delivered the nut shot.