After Victor Wembanyama last year, another great hope of French basketball should leave ASVEL to join another French club, with the announced departure of Zaccharie Risacher to JL Bourg. A hell of a snub for Tony Parker’s club.
It’s a small bomb in French basketball. According to the BeBasket website, Zaccharie Risacher, one of the greatest French hopes, will leave ASVEL this summer to join JL Bourg. A departure that is reminiscent of that of Victor Wembanyama, who left Lyon-Villeurbanne before the end of his contract to join Boulogne-Levallois last year.
ASVEL had however learned the lessons of the Wembanyama soap opera, and Tony Parker had announced that he wanted to build next season’s team around Risacher (18 years old, 2.05m), Nando de Colo and Joffrey Lauvergne. The Rhone club had even planned a tour of the United States in September, similar to that organized last year by Boulogne-Levallois, which had boosted Wembanyama’s rating across the Atlantic. It is therefore a waste of time, since Risacher has obviously made another choice, joining a club which will undoubtedly guarantee him more playing time and a more important role in the league as well as in the Eurocup.
His brother TJ Parker pointed the finger
For Tony Parker, this is a new blow in his ambitious ASVEL project. While AS Monaco casts an imposing shadow on it in the Euroleague, the Rhone club wanted, according to “TP”, to have a strong French backbone, by attracting some big names, as is currently the case with Nando de Colo, while offering a playground for great French hopefuls. Except that, after Wembanyama, it’s the nugget Risacher who should go elsewhere.
The other blow for Tony Parker is that the departure of Risacher would be due to problems of collaboration with his brother TJ Parker, the main coach of ASVEL. Risacher would prefer to evolve under the orders of Frédéric Fauthoux, former teammate of his father Stéphane Risacher, and Wembanyama, before joining Vincent Collet, was not satisfied with his playing time with TJ Parker last season.
