Recently on the show As an aside broadcast on Canal +, the Frenchie of the Clippers Nicolas Batum confided in Nathalie Levy on various subjects, from the French team to the next Olympic Games in Paris while passing through certain painful moments of his career. Among them, the death of his father Richard on a basketball court, and the pre-Draft process that followed a few years later when Nico almost saw his dream of reaching the NBA suddenly come to an end.
September 23, 1991, Autun.
Nearly 15,000 inhabitants, about 60 terminals east of Chalon-sur-Saône.
In the middle of a basketball game, on the free throw line, Richard Batum collapses and dies of a ruptured aneurysm at the age of 31, on the floor of Autun Basket.
In the stands are his partner, Sylvie, and her two-and-a-half-year-old son.
This little boy is Nicolas Batum.
Before becoming the NBA veteran that we know and one of the pillars of the French team, Nicolas and his mother very rarely broached the subject of Richard’s death. Like a kind of off-piste subject, like a kind of incomprehension and confusion – also – about the real causes of this sudden disappearance. We didn’t have to talk about it, and Nico could continue to develop his talent on the French courts as he did year after year. But one day or another, he was going to have to face some form of truth.
This truth, it will inevitably come at the time of the Draft. Because during the selection process for the 2008 Draft, it is impossible for the young French winger to avoid the following question: does Nicolas Batum have a family history with heart problems? Filled with emotions, Nico goes into detail about this moment of intense stress and turmoil.
“Just before the Draft, we do batteries of tests in all the cities, the teams, so it’s a long process for at least three or four weeks, it’s pretty crazy. And of course we ask for a family history. I say that here, my father died of a heart attack.
It’s a pretty taboo subject that I have with my mother, it’s that I never really spoke with her. When he died on a basketball court, I was two and a half and I was in the stands with her, so I have some memories of that, some flashes. But it is true that it is a subject that has been taboo.
And in fact, I found myself a few days before living my dream, the NBA Draft, where someone supposedly diagnosed me with a heart problem. »
After heart tests with the Toronto franchise, the results clearly point to a heart problem in Nicolas Batum.
His workout with the Raptors was immediately interrupted, those planned with other teams were suddenly canceled, while the rating of the Frenchman – initially projected in the Top 15 of the Draft – fell sharply. We are in June 2008, 17 years after this tragedy experienced on a floor thousands of kilometers away. What was supposed to be a dream – of joining the NBA by shaking David Stern’s hand – turns into a nightmare, while one of his family’s biggest traumas comes to the surface.
The reason for Richard’s death then becomes the central subject.
The Batum family takes the necessary steps to contact the doctor at the time to clarify the situation and ensure that Nicolas’ father died of a ruptured aneurysm and not of a heart attack. Nicolas, he is leaving for Ohio to carry out a new battery of even more advanced tests.
“I’m going to Cleveland for one last test and at the end of that test, it’s either he’s fit to play basketball, or he’s fit to go home to do something else, and to stop right away. the sport. So it was a bit of a last chance meeting.
I found myself in a room, there was my agent, the doctor, a translator, and on the phone the medical examiner at the time. It was horrible because I had to relive minute by minute by the medical examiner who tells exactly what happened and his diagnosis.
But when I got out of there, I actually left the kid in that room. I left having almost done my mourning, having understood, having gone through something else. »
Receiving in the end the authorization of the doctors to play in the NBA, Nicolas Batum grew out of this experience.
He lands at the Portland Trail Blazers after being selected in 25th position in the Draft. Behind, Nico evolves for 7 seasons in Oregon where he imposes himself as a very solid Swiss army knife in the Big League, so much so that he wins a contract of 120 million dollars over five years with the Charlotte Hornets in 2016. And more importantly, the same year, he becomes a father of a little Ayden.
Everything seems to be going for the best in the best of worlds within the Batum family.
This is where Nico will find himself once again confronted with the trauma of his father’s death.
“When I became a dad myself, in 2016, it’s true that my first year it was complicated for me just to go play. When my father died I was two and a half years old. So until my son was three years old, I went through a little hell actually. Even to go play, it was very hard.
My wife she saw me leaving for matches, I had the impression that I thought I was not going to return. For me the same thing was going to happen to me, I was going to leave them. I know that my wife sometimes I told her, ‘don’t come to the game because I don’t want to see you in the stands’.
I was doing a mimicry and it was very very very hard psychologically for me. And it was almost at the same time as my difficult years in Charlotte. Because that was actually part of the thing. I admit it, I had matches where before going there, I was in tears at home because for me, I wasn’t going to go home. »
Between 2016 and 2020, Nicolas Batum sees his role with the Hornets decrease sharply, and his statistics drop sharply.
Struggling on an individual level, under fire from critics because of his contract, Nico is then really in trouble.
We will have to wait for his next experience with the Clippers, where he signs at the end of 2020 when his son is four and a half years old, to really see him bounce back. And the rest, we know it. Batum rises to become a fundamental member of one of the most competitive teams in the NBA, he lands two contract extensions with Los Angeles, and he releases one of the most iconic actions in the history of the NBA. France team at the Tokyo Olympics. More importantly, he becomes a new father, this time to little Nayeli.
Now in a position to fulfill his ultimate goal of winning a first NBA title with the Clippers, Nicolas Batum knows he has come a long way. The difficult experiences he had to go through finally allowed him to mourn the death of his father, and he can thus approach this subject in a slightly less complicated way with his mother Sylvie. Something tells us that from up there, Richard must be very proud of his son.
Source texte : In aparté (Canal+)
“Sometimes before the matches I was in tears because, for me, I was not going to return”@nicolas88batum confides in @nathalielevy57 in #EnAparté > https://t.co/12TLqsIarC pic.twitter.com/QZ8hrgtuww
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