PARIS — The NBA and WNBA stars hyped to compete in the Olympics this summer will be playing their first week more than 100 miles away from the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre museum, despite intense lobbying from the sport’s leaders to stay closer to the global tourist destination.
In a twist that has confounded basketball’s leaders and even bucked the wishes of city officials, badminton took precedence to stay in Paris over basketball, which was bumped 136 miles north to Lille in a displacement of several major events. Now, top national basketball teams are planning for the men’s and women’s Olympic tournaments while feeling shorted by a bureaucratic shuffle that moved their competitions for gymnastics while badminton stayed untouched in an arena specifically built for hoops.
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And because of scheduling and distance, some of the world’s biggest basketball stars, including French star Victor Wembanyama, could miss the grandiose opening ceremony, a boat parade down the River Seine.
“Wait, for real?” Kevin Durant, the most decorated American Olympic basketball player ever, said when told that the top NBA and WNBA players would be competing in Lille, closer to the beaches of Dunkirk than the Champs Élysées.
Durant told his NBA rivals of his intention to play at the Paris Games before he won gold with the United States in Tokyo in 2021. His enthusiasm is one of many examples of the strong allure of these Olympics and this city for basketball’s top names, three years after the Tokyo Games were heavily muted by coronavirus restrictions.
Diana Taurasi, who has won five gold medals for the U.S. women over the last 20 years, had just draped No. 5 around her neck in Tokyo when she predicted she would put off retirement to play in Paris. LeBron James last appeared in an Olympics in 2012 in London, but wants to run it back once more in no small part because of Paris playing host.
It is common for Olympic athletes to compete in places far away from the host city. Men’s and women’s soccer, for example, will compete in six different regions of France, including Nice and Marseilles, during the Paris Olympics. For the Los Angeles Games in 1984, some soccer games were played at Harvard Stadium in Boston.
But the series of maneuvers bringing basketball near the Belgian border prompted sharp criticisms of local organizers and created new problems, including a need to quickly add air conditioning to a stadium usually used for soccer to minimize the chances of injury.
The logistics have drawn so much attention in France and in the basketball world that they became a topic of discussion last year between NBA commissioner Adam Silver and French President Emmanuel Macron, with the president assuring Silver that the tournaments would go smoothly. Olympic organizers are working to meet that promise.
“They understand we independently need to be satisfied,” Silver said in an interview in Paris, where The Athletic spent more than a week last month reporting this story.
When local organizers first envisioned the 2024 Games nearly 10 years ago, they had the full, two-week basketball events planned for Accor Arena, a 16,000-seat venue in Paris that is very similar to many NBA venues. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Brooklyn Nets played there Jan. 11.
That changed in early 2022, with soaring Olympic costs brought on in part by the pandemic that prompted Paris organizers to nix construction of a new swimming venue. Because of that, officials had to rethink numerous events, and moved swimming to an arena originally expected to be used for gymnastics. Now, Accor Arena will host gymnastics while the basketball tournaments’ group stages unfold in Lille, and then basketball will move to Accor for the medal rounds after gymnastics concludes.
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“My job is to balance the different sports,” Tony Estanguet, a three-time French gold medalist in canoeing who is president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, said in an interview at his Saint-Denis office. “The power of the Games is to make sure that there is a good place for (track and field), for swimming, for gymnastics, for basketball, for volleyball, for handball, for judo, for 54 sports.”
The International Olympic Committee groups sports by popularity, and the most important get the most money and preference, according to the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations. Gymnastics is one of three sports in the top group, with swimming and track and field, while basketball is in the second grouping. Multiple presidents of basketball federations around the world say the IOC’s tiered system is why gymnastics has often been staged in arenas that are normally used for hoops outside the Olympics.
But badminton, instead of basketball, at the other basketball arena in town — that is different.
On the north end of Paris, near a station for express trains to Lille, is the sparkling new, $200 million Adidas Arena with NBA-caliber amenities. It was built with the help of Olympic funds as a basketball arena and its main tenant is Paris Basketball, a pro team that competes in the French Ligue Nationale de Basket and the EuroCup. That team opened Adidas Arena with a game there on Sunday, and the gym was called “a pure gem, right down to its finishes” by the notable French basketball journalist Arnaud Lecomte.
“This arena was requested by us,” said Andreas Zagklis, secretary general of FIBA, the international governing body for basketball. “It was not offered to us, and I would leave it at that.”
Paris organizers still wanted to keep basketball in Paris, and considered an auxiliary conference hall on the southwest side of the city as an alternative.
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Exhibition Hall 6 at Porte de Versailles, Paris’ main convention center, has low-hanging rafters and open air ducts. Huge steel beams in the middle of the concrete floor stretch to the ceiling. It’s a perfect venue for a giant trade show. But not for an elite basketball tournament.
“It was nonsense,” said Jean-Pierre Siutat, president of the French basketball federation. “People begin to react. FIBA said no, come on. We want to be in Paris. But you have to find another place than this one. So for us, the best would be in (Adidas Arena).”
Adidas Arena had been earmarked for badminton, a sport that is extremely popular in several Asian countries, with nations like China, Indonesia and South Korea having strong showings at previous Olympics. Plans for the sport had not been touched amid the shuffling of other major competitions.
With basketball in flux, its stakeholders turned their attention toward the Paris 2024 organizing committee and Étienne Thobois — its second in charge under Estanguet. Thobois is a former Olympic badminton player who is on the executive committee for the World Badminton Federation.
Zagklis lobbied Thobois, then Estanguet directly to move badminton to accommodate basketball. Officials for the city of Paris said they similarly pushed without success.
Estanguet disputed the characterizations by FIBA and city officials of the negotiations, and Paris 2024 denied a request by The Athletic to speak directly with Thobois. Estanguet called it “ridiculous” to suggest that it was Thobois’ decision to keep badminton at Adidas Arena.
“He was not involved in particular on this topic,” Estanguet said. “I had the discussions with FIBA, I had the discussion with the IOC.”
Paris city officials said the reason given to deny their request wasn’t a simple diplomatic rejection. Thobois, they said, cited a height requirement for a badminton ceiling — a minimum of 39.3 feet, which Adidas Arena met. (International basketball rules call for ceilings of at least 29.5 feet. Exhibition Hall 6 meets the threshold but would have trouble with a high-arcing, midcourt heave from a player like Stephen Curry.)
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“We studied it after (Thobois) said no, because he had a lot of pressure, especially because he played badminton,” said Pierre Rabadan, the deputy mayor for sport in Paris, adding that badminton’s only other viable option was “going somewhere like two or three hours from Paris.”
Rabadan said city and Olympic officials determined that the costs to move badminton outside of Paris weren’t feasible. Building a temporary venue in Paris, like organizers are doing outdoors for three-on-three basketball, was also out of the question because of badminton’s need for wind control.
The leaders of badminton appreciated the lack of disruption for its events.
“We are very happy with the badminton competition being played at the world-class (Adidas Arena) based on the specific technical requirements of our sport, and this has been the plan from Day 1,” Thomas Lund, secretary general for the World Badminton Federation, said in an email. “We have not had any conversations with Paris 2024 or the IOC to suggest anything other than this original plan.”
Basketball, with the star power in both the men’s and women’s divisions, is expected to remain a huge ticket seller in Lille.
The decisions aren’t sitting well with some people in the basketball world, who see Thobois’ ties to badminton as a conflict of interest in the decision-making.
“The idea that you can’t do a pop-up badminton stadium … it’s absurdist,” said David Kahn, the president and co-founder of Paris Basketball, and one of the lead consultants on the development of Adidas Arena. Kahn was also the point person for the Indiana Pacers in the design of Gainbridge Fieldhouse, which will host the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday.
“It’s especially absurd when you compare it to the impact of basketball here culturally,” Kahn added. He echoed the sentiments of several basketball officials The Athletic spoke with when he said: “Everybody in Paris knows the No. 2 person in Paris 2024 is a former badminton player and high-ranking badminton official. How he could co-opt the only new indoor arena being built for these Olympics — and for the city’s basketball legacy — is a question that needs to be answered.”
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Estanguet said the higher capacity at the Lille soccer stadium — 27,000 seats vs. 8,000 at Adidas Arena — is a good thing for the basketball tournaments. They are still likely to attract big crowds, he said, while badminton can draw fans, too, by competing in the heart of Paris.
“Basketball is now in the position of the top sports,” Estanguet said. “If I could have this idea at the beginning, I would have loved it. I did not have it, but I strongly believe that this is the best we could have.”
Lille has much of its own charm, and USA Basketball is taking measures to help its players and their families see plenty of Paris during the Games. Olympic organizers are building a satellite village for athletes in Lille, but the American men and women — along with the French men — won’t stay there. The French men’s team has its own hotel. USA Basketball, whose officials declined to comment for this story, has made concurrent arrangements in Paris and Lille for the men’s and women’s teams, and will figure out how to use both.
“I did hear about (Lille) and I was like, ‘Ooooh, that’s gonna be a drive, or however we’re gonna get there,’” said USA women’s star A’ja Wilson. “But, no, I’m excited. At that point, we’re at the Olympics, so I’m good for everything.”
Beyond transportation, another practical concern looms.
Just outside of Lille, the Pierre-Mauroy soccer stadium being converted to host basketball, is a 50,000-seat venue with a retractable roof. Olympic organizers gave The Athletic a tour of the stadium last month. The north half of the field lifts off the ground and folds on top of the southern half, creating a hole 23 feet deep, with plenty of room for a basketball court. Stadium workers will run a massive curtain across the middle of the stadium, separating temporary practice courts from the rest of the venue. The EuroBasket — a tournament for European men’s national teams — was held there in September of 2015 and was regarded as a success.
But the EuroBasket in Lille was a fall event, when crisper air led to more comfortable court conditions. The stadium does not have air conditioning — a problem for FIBA and the NBA for Olympic games in the middle of the summer.
Lambis Konstantinidis, director of planning and coordination for Paris 2024, said the solution is a temporary, “typical sort of cooling system.” But there is a catch. Because soccer is in season, the system will not be installed until mid-June at the earliest.
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That has drawn the personal attention of Silver, with basketball executives fretting about the possibility of cramping and other injuries if star players compete in less-than-ideal conditions.
“We’ve all engaged with independent engineers who are going to certify for us that there are appropriate circumstances in the arena,” Silver said.
In January 2023, while in Paris as part of the NBA’s Global Games series, Silver was so concerned about the Olympic tournaments being moved to Lille that he raised the issue directly in a face-to-face meeting with Macron at the Champs-Élysées presidential palace.
Macron, Silver said, gave assurances about the air conditioning and other items like support for travel to and from the heart of the Paris Games. An aide to Macron confirmed Silver’s account of the meeting to The Athletic.
The challenges at play will likely keep some athletes from experiencing the audacious opening ceremony, a 3.7-mile ride along the Seine, winding near many of the city’s most famous landmarks. Full schedules have not been released, but there are men’s games the next day, July 27.
“(USA) or us will play the day after,” said Siutat, who heads French basketball. “It’s difficult to be in Lille, to come back, go on the boat. … Then after you take the bus and go back to (Lille). So we are not going to be (on the boats). And that’s a problem for the players because we know that some players want to go to the opening ceremony, especially in Paris.”
Jérôme Rosenstiehl, director of basketball for the Paris games, said organizers are crafting plans to get the basketball players back to Lille late Friday if they want to attend the opening ceremony. But he said “it’s not an issue” for Olympic organizers.
“If you look back in history, some teams that are playing on Day 1, the day after the ceremony, so they don’t go. This is a fact,” he said.
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Zagklis, the secretary general for FIBA, said his planners are working with Olympic officials so that basketball teams that do not advance past Lille can still spend a few days at the athletes’ village in Paris, so they do not miss out on the experience. He said he feels better about the tournaments than he did a year ago, and certainly better than he did when organizers considered moving basketball to the exhibition hall.
Silver, while acknowledging the challenges to host the Games, conceded that basketball would be without its top pick.
“If we had been given a choice between being in Paris the entire time or playing the group stage in Lille, I know we would have chosen Paris,” he said.
On a frigid Paris night in January, a trendy rooftop bar with a view of the Eiffel Tower, snappily dressed clientele and a DJ spinning electronic music served as a reminder of the allure of Paris.
Boris Diaw, a past NBA champion who is now general manager for the French men’s team, met with The Athletic there to discuss several topics, including Les Bleus’ prospects of upsetting the Americans and the Olympic competition moving to Lille.
Diaw, 41, who played for Team France, scanned the bar scene and shook his head over what he and many others characterize as a missed cultural opportunity by not keeping both weeks of the tournament in Paris.
“Playing in (the exhibition hall) would have been a mistake,” Diaw said. “Playing in Lille, itself, is not a mistake. What is not ideal is not playing in Paris.”
(Top illustration of Adidas Arena, Paris’ new basketball arena that will host badminton at the Olympics: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Foc Kan / Getty Images)