101 Greats of European Basketball

“Le Roi”
The 1990 European Championship for Junior
Men, which was played in Groningen,
the Netherlands, was quite a harvest of
talent. On the Italian team, which won
the trophy, there were Gregor Fucka and
Flavio Portaluppi; the runner-up Soviet
Union team had Vasily Karasev and Igor Kudelin;
fourth-placed Romania featured Gheorghe Muresan
and Constantin Popa; while fifth-placed Yugoslavia
included Dejan Bodiroga, Zeljko Rebraca, Veljko Mrsic
and Nikola Loncar; and seventh-placed France’s
squad was highlighted by Yann Bonato (the team’s top
scorer with 19.4 points per game), Stephane Risacher
and Antoine Rigaudeau, who was not yet 19 years old,
having been born on December 17, 1971, in Cholet. But
Rigaudeau was already considered the biggest talent
in French basketball.
Rigaudeau had debuted for Cholet’s professional
team shortly after turning 16, in the 1987-88 season. He
played only four games averaging less than a point that
season, moving up to six games and 1.8 points in the
next one. But by the 1989-90 season, he was a regular,
playing 33 games and averaging 11.5 points. By 1991,
he was already on the senior national team for EuroBasket
in Rome, on a solid squad with names like Richard
Dacoury, Frederic Forte, Philippe Szanyiel, Stephane
Ostrowski, Hugues Occansey, Didier Gadou and Jim Bilba.
France finished fourth despite a record of 1-4! That’s
because only eight teams participated, and France took
advantage of a better point difference against Czechoslovakia
and Greece to reach the semifinals with a 1-2
record. Antoine Rigaudeau was by then a recognized
scorer, putting up 10 points against Czechoslovakia and
18 against Greece. In the semis against eventual champion
Yugoslavia, he scored 5 points, and in a 101-83
bronze-medal game loss to Spain, he had 18.
I believe that is when I first saw Rigaudeau play,
against Yugoslavia and Spain. He had an unusual style:
when he rose to shoot, Rigaudeau seemed not to have
good balance, but his shot was impeccable nonetheless.
By his height, 2.00 meters, he was more of a small
forward than a shooting guard, but for most of his career,
he played point guard. In other words, he was an
all-around player, an insurance policy for his coaches,
able to score but also to play for the team.
After eight seasons in Cholet, Rigaudeau signed
in 1995 for Pau-Orthez. In the summer of that year, he
played for France at the 1995 EuroBasket in Athens,
where the team finished eighth and he averaged 13.3
points. At the end of the 1995-96 season, he achieved his
first important title as Pau-Orthez was proclaimed French
League champion. Rigaudeau put up 18.2 points and 3.2
rebounds per game. After one more season averaging
14.1 points in the French League and 20.1 points in the
EuroLeague for Pau-Orthez, Rigaudeau signed in 1997
with Kinder Bologna, coached by Ettore Messina. Behind
him he left 218 games and 3,259 points, 14.9 points per
game, in the French League, where he was named MVP
five times: in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1996.
Two-time champion of Europe
Messina had sought a final piece to complete the
mosaic of a team that could, finally, win the EuroLeague,
and Rigaudeau had the same goal – to play on a
team that was capable of winning Europe’s top prize.
Combined with the return of Predrag Danilovic from the
101 greats of european basketball
Antoine igaudeau
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