Tony Parker is a retired NBA player who attained stardom with the San Antonio Spurs. A documentary of his life is streaming on Netflix now.<\/p>\n
If there is a word to describe the France-born Parker, it is overachiever. Even if you are not a pro basketball fan, that is an admirable quality.<\/p>\n
The film traces his life from\u00a0childhood to adulthood\u00a0as a basketball player, beginning in France and wrapping up in the \u00a0USA. Parker\u2019s grit propelled him to be an integral part of the Spurs\u2019 four-championship dynasty.<\/p>\n
A part of the Parker story that I found of interest is that San Antonio is a one pro sports town.\u00a0As a result, fans there\u00a0have only the Spurs to support and partly as a result lavished their love on him.<\/p>\n
He comes by determination to excel on the hardwood. honestly. Parker\u2019s father was a pro basketball player who speaks in\u00a0the\u00a0film, along with his mother.<\/p>\n
Spoiler alert. Parker emulated his dad\u2019s work ethic. I also got the sense that his mother was a positive role model, with her video documentation of Parker\u2019s youth as a basketball player\u00a0a high point in the film.<\/p>\n
Tony is one of three sons who shows that in competitive\u00a0team\u00a0sports\u00a0such as basketball, it\u00a0is not the size of the dog in a fight but the fight in the dog. At six foot two and 185 pounds, Tony was up to a foot shorter and\u00a0a hundred pounds\u00a0lighter than many NBA players he\u00a0faced.<\/p>\n
That did not stop him in the least during his\u00a02001 to 2018\u00a0career in the NBA. Parker\u2019s mental toughness is on full display as he suffers a near-career ending injury then rehabilitates\u00a0his way back to playing form.<\/p>\n
The late LA Lakers superstar guard Kobe Bryant speaks in the documentary, humorously, about what it was like to play against\u00a0Parker.\u00a0The Lakers and Spurs play in the Western Division of the NBA.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0two teams went at it extensively and intensely over Bryant and Parker\u2019s amazing careers. The\u00a0lengths that Bryant went to\u00a0achieve a competitive advantage\u00a0over Parker\u00a0are revealing in a delightfully unexpected way.<\/p>\n
Interviews with Parker\u2019s coaches and teammates are revealing. One with Tim Duncan offers a glimpse of how\u00a0sternly\u00a0he tested Parker as a 19-year-old rookie player\u00a0over the course of an NBA season.<\/p>\n
An interesting film angle is the focus on the French youth basketball program that nurtured Parker. He has shown no small support for youth hoopsters in his native nation since.<\/p>\n
Parker has ridden his NBA fame to\u00a0big\u00a0commercial success\u00a0in America, France and elsewhere.\u00a0For example, we learn about his business presence in China, where the NBA is quite popular.<\/p>\n
On that international note, the film\u00a0expands our view\u00a0of basketball abroad. Americans tend to get a US-centric sense of\u00a0the sport and others that changes\u00a0somewhat\u00a0every four years during the Olympics.<\/p>\n
A sports journalist, director Florent Bodin\u00a0has crafted\u00a0a family-friendly film\u00a0that adults and kids can\u00a0watch together.\u00a0At 98 minutes,\u00a0Tony Parker: The Final Shot, \u00a0scores.<\/p>\n
The post A Frenchman in Texas: Tony Parker’s Game<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tony Parker is a retired NBA player who attained stardom with the San Antonio Spurs. A documentary of his life is streaming on Netflix now. If there is a word to describe the France-born Parker, it is overachiever. Even if you are not a pro basketball fan, that is an admirable quality. The film traces More<\/a><\/p>\n The post A Frenchman in Texas: Tony Parker\u2019s Game<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36869"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36870,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36869\/revisions\/36870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}