Before Marine Johannès was electrifying the Barclays Center with her one-footed 3-pointers, she was a WNBA fan girl.
At home in France, Johannès leaned in close to the family computer, watching highlights of players such as Diana Taurasi and Candace Parker on YouTube. But the league itself seemed far away, and not just geographically.
"The WNBA wasn't even a dream for me," she said. "I didn't think it was possible."
Then, Johannès signed her first professional contract, playing for USO Mondeville as a 17-year-old. In the early days of her professional career, Johannès faced several of the players she grew up idolizing.
"My teammates were so excited for me," she said. "They knew how I was about American basketball."
That marked a turning point in her young career. Johannès dared to dream. Then, she dared to make those dreams a reality.
By design, French players have historically remained in France. Lucrative contracts in the French league, lack of incentive to travel overseas and strict rules from the French Federation meant a local product grew but never went global.
Getting players to compete in the U.S. has been complicated.
In 2019, when Johannès signed with the New York Liberty, she was the only French player in the league. Now, there are 13, including three playing in Brooklyn. She's been a catalyst for a French basketball pipeline, helping make France the most-represented foreign country in the WNBA.
"She has inspired lots of people," said Pauline Astier, a French WNBA rookie who plays with Johannès in Brooklyn.
Johannès and Astier are two members of the French national team, which will be competing in the FIBA women's basketball World Cup starting Friday. The team, which has eight WNBA players, is considered a potential to knock Team USA off its throne.
| Team France player |
WNBA team |
|---|---|
| Pauline Astier |
New York Liberty |
| Valeriane Ayayi |
Phoenix Mercury |
| Marine Johannès |
New York Liberty |
| Leïla Lacan |
Connecticut Sun |
| Carla Leite |
Portland Fire |
| Dominique Malonga |
Seattle Storm |
| Janella Salaün |
Golden State Valkyries |
| Gabby Williams |
Golden State Valkyries |
But when Johannès was pursuing her WNBA dreams, the French Federation did not share her affinity for American basketball. When she opted to sign with the Liberty, it came with risks. They came to fruition in 2023, when she was left off the EuroBasket team due to WNBA commitments.
But Johannès is used to making things happen. She learned to play basketball by re-creating moves she watched on YouTube. Despite not attending a high-level athletics academy, she became the youngest player on the French national team. Ultimately, the risk was worth it.
Her decision helped change the way the French Federation operates, opening the door for her countrywomen to join the WNBA. Their arrival has birthed an intriguing new rivalry between France and the U.S., which started in the 2024 Olympics and will continue to unfold this month in Berlin.
But Johannès is not the only reason Les Bleues started flocking to the WNBA. Johannès opened the door, but several factors, including increased WNBA salaries and NIL contracts, added opportunities with WNBA expansion and cultural shifts pushed them through it.
The WNBA is officially experiencing a French takeover.
Since 1996, Team USA has collected eight straight Olympic gold medals. Which is why, with France hosting the Games in 2024, expecting anything other than a Team USA victory would have been ludicrous. Yet the absurd notion nearly became a reality.
In the final, Les Bleues held the Americans to 34 percent shooting, including 17 percent from beyond the arc. As the game progressed, it became clear that the Americans weren't going to pull away. France lost by just 1 point.
Team USA finally had a challenger.
"We all know that Team USA is the best in the world," Johannès said. "But I think it can happen one day — they can lose."
That's a possibility that many American fans had never considered. Especially since, other than Johannès and Gabby Williams (now with the Golden State Valkyries), many of the French players who nearly took down Team USA weren't playing in the world's best league, even though they were clearly among the world's best players.
French talent has always stayed on French soil. It's a reality that recruiters and scouts had to accept, and one that has shifted in only the last few years.
Rachel Galligan, a global scout for the Minnesota Lynx, has spent the last decade helping international players match with college programs in the U.S. with her business Go Global Recruiting. Since her company's inception, Galligan has worked with only one French player.
"When I would go over and watch a EuroBasket competition, if you saw France on the schedule, you knew you would see a lot of really good players, but it was a waste of time to some degree, because they just weren't coming over," she said. "Now I've got to be at those games."
There is an exception to every rule. Adeniyi Amadou, who is beginning his first head coaching job, at New Mexico State, became known as a French basketball recruiting savant. But he had a distinct advantage: Amadou grew up in Paris before moving to the U.S. to play college basketball.
Before joining New Mexico State, Amadou served as an associate head coach on Tammi Reiss' staff at Rhode Island, helping the Rams earn an NCAA Tournament bid last season with the team's first Atlantic 10 tournament victory. Six of the 13 Rams players were from France.
When Amadou recruited in France, he looked for a specific type of player. The youth basketball system is different from that of the U.S., where top talent competes on elite circuits. France's elite talent attends sports academies such as INSEP, which prepares athletes for a professional career. It also serves as a pipeline to the French national team. WNBA players Dominique Malonga, Janelle Salaün and Leila Lacan all attended INSEP.
Until recently, players of that caliber were encouraged to sign long-term professional contracts at a young age, which almost ensured their loyalty to the French league. When professional basketball and the money that comes along with it are readily available, going to the U.S. for college becomes a much harder sell – even for a Frenchman.
"My pitch was always that if you want more out of basketball you should come to college," Amadou said. "If you want academic opportunities, cultural opportunities, linguistic opportunities, why not use basketball to get them?"
That was before name, image and likeness. Now, money is at the forefront, and it's changing everything at the college level.
Not only does NIL give Amadou an added talking point while recruiting, but it also opens up the landscape for other coaches. South Carolina signed 6-foot-7 Alicia Tournebize midway through the 2025-26 season, and in May UConn signed 5-10 guard Marine Dursu.
France has always been protective of its young talent, especially when it comes to those in line for the national team.
"Agents saw no profit in sending kids to the United States," Amadou said. "But now, with the money, everyone sees a benefit in having these kids go. Suddenly it seems more worthwhile."
With the salary increases and more opportunities, the federation no longer has a choice but to support its players joining the WNBA, otherwise risk appearing disingenuous. When Johannès was left off the EuroBasket squad in 2023, she was caught between the French national team's staunch requirements and the WNBA's prioritization rule, which required her to be present for opening day. She chose the WNBA.
The federation's decision met with backlash from some of France's most notable basketball players, including four-time NBA champion and former national team point guard Tony Parker and current NBA player Nicolas Batum.
"What's happening around her is unfair," Parker told French media at the time. "She's an incredible person. She wants to play for the French team. She hasn't missed a single call-up since 2015. We want Marine on the French team."
The federation has changed course: She was not left off the 2024 Olympics squad — the one that nearly knocked out Team USA. Yet negative perceptions of American basketball and its influence persisted in France.
"The U.S. game was viewed as not very refined, but more so a game that was based more on athleticism and raw talents," Amadou said. "As opposed to the narrative in France that in Europe we teach how to play the game the right way."
Each country's style of play can be traced to its cultural philosophy, Amadou says. In France, the system is king. Everything from medicine to politics to basketball is based on the idea of working as a collective. Meanwhile, America is considered a culture of individuality. Players score in isolation, using signature moves, and even while playing within the confines of a team, personalities are on full display.
Through that lens, it's easy to see why Johannès gravitated toward the WNBA. There's a magic to her game that can't be shoved into a rigid structure. Johannès is France's most popular women's basketball player, so her commitment to the WNBA has appealed to other young players.
When Liberty teammate Marine Fauthoux was drafted in 2021, she didn't even know she was eligible for selection. Now, players have more awareness about opportunities outside France. Suddenly American basketball seems both desirable and attainable.
Williams, who grew up playing basketball in Nevada and California, has done the same thing, just from the other side.
While Johannès was watching WNBA highlights on YouTube, Williams was also at a computer, but she was learning French. No one has been more influential in Williams' life than her 4-foot-11 grandmother, a Parisian professor who helped foster Williams' love for all things France, including basketball.
But transitioning from American to French basketball was a culture shock. In one of her first tournaments with the national team, heavily favored France was upset. Williams was furious about losing. Her teammates took it in stride.
"We grow up in that super-competitive culture where it doesn't matter who steps on the court, I'm beating you," Williams said. "In Europe, they grow up in these academies and play against the same people. It almost is like more competition between each other than versus others."
Williams has been a lightning rod for change in the French locker room, bringing American bravado and ambition to the polished system. Galligan calls her a "bridge between the two basketball worlds."
The younger generation also brings a different spark, Williams said. When they lost the gold medal to Team USA, Williams saw anger, tears and resolve from Salaün, Lacan and Malonga. "They have a different kind of swagger to them," Williams said.
Despite the initial pushback by the federation, this new age of French basketball is now embraced.
The best moneymaking opportunities are no longer in Europe – a point Williams discussed with the federation after the WNBA's new collective bargaining agreement. The final string tying players to their home country seems to be cut.
The WNBA has imported a new wave of talent, and French players are now competing regularly with and against the best players in the world. But the partnership is about to be severed — temporarily, that is. Despite playing alongside American teammates every day, French players have the 1-point loss in the 2024 Olympics festering in their minds as they begin World Cup play.
"This time we are going to beat them," Astier said, eyeing a potential rematch later in the tournament.
Her sentiment captures the changing dynamics within French women's basketball and on the world stage.
"I love that from her," Williams said with a smile. "That's not something I ever would have heard before."
The U.S. has a challenger, and a rivalry has been born. This is the new normal.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic .
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