– Who wouldn’t want the best young coach in all of Europe in their ranks?
President of Paris Basketball David Kahn begins his answer with a rhetorical question when asked why he wanted to Tuomas Iisalon to coach his team.
Then the actual annealing begins.
– He is everything we want from a coach. Extremely demanding and focused on details, but also has a gentler side. He can discuss all kinds of topics. He has been hugely successful in recent years, especially last season. His balance was 54 wins and 7 losses. It is an unimaginably hard performance.
Iisalo made a really big mark in Germany when he coached Bonn to win the Champions League and the Bundesliga final. At the end of the season, he was named coach of the year for both competitions.
Not a crazy achievement from a 41-year-old Finnish coach. Iisalo is really on the rise. It has also been noticed by the person who coached Germany to become the world basketball champion Gordon Herbert.
– In a few years, Tuomas will be on the list for the head coaches of Europe’s toughest club teams, Herbert said fresh after the World Cup.
The Terminator followed Iisalo to Paris
In the summer, Iisalo moved from Bonn with a three-year contract to Paris Basketball, the French premier league. The club, founded only five years ago, has tough goals for the future, but first let’s talk more about Iisalo as a coach.
The cornerstone of Iisalo’s coaching style is an extremely high level of requirements, and this was not unclear when the team trained in Kisakallio at the end of August. We go hard from end to end, and Iisalo is not flattering when giving feedback to the players.
At the end of the exercises, Iisalo shouts “murderball”, and the pace accelerates even more.
The term that translates to “murder ball” is the Argentinian soccer coach Marcelo Bielsa developed by a highly intensive and merciless game format where there are no breaks. The idea is to push the players to their limits.
– It is one of our most important exercises, because it reveals the worst sides of every person, not so much the player, Iisalo says.
– Someone starts complaining to the referee, another to a teammate and someone gives up. In that moment, we are able to intervene in the behavior, and help the players to change and develop, instead of such behavior appearing in the matches.
The process is difficult for the players, but it will not come as a surprise to them. No fewer than six of the team played under Iisalo in Bonn last season. The fact that so many people followed him to Paris speaks of great appreciation.
One who moved from Bonn to Paris was selected as the most valuable player of both the Champions League and the Bundesliga last season TJ Shortswhich Iisalo calls the “terminator”.
The American defender also had options in Europe’s toughest league, the Euroleague, but he wanted to continue sharing the sky with Iisalo.
– I have achieved a lot with him. He is everything you look for in a coach. I’m happy he’s on my side. Hopefully we can continue to build together, says Shorts.
Strong Finnish representation in Paris
Kisakallio’s camp was missing one of the Parisian team’s fresh reinforcements. Moved from Treviso of the Italian Seria A to Paris on a two-year contract Mikael Jantunen was still with the national team at the World Championships.
So at this point, he still had no personal experience of the severity of Iisalo’s training, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
– I have heard that he is demanding and the training is hard. But Tuomas has taken the players forward. I know he is liked when the players seem to follow him from club to club, says Jantunen.
The national team winger does not expect, nor does he want, special treatment from his compatriot.
– I think that nothing will be easier with the Finnish connection. I do get to hear if something goes wrong, but it’s educational. I look forward to the hard work.
“Hard” is a word that is repeated every once in a while when talking about Iisalo. The French premier league has been characterized as the most physical of the European premier leagues. Club boss Kahn expects Iisalo to whip up a strong and fighting group from the Parisian bunch.
– His teams play really hard. So incredibly hard. And it is often the deciding factor between winning and losing.
Seurapomo’s famous reservation hut
American David Kahn was founding Paris Basketball in 2018. The team played its first three years in France’s second tier, before moving up to the Pro A League for the 2021-2022 season.
Kahn has a background in, for example, the NBA, where he served as the general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves from 2009 to 2013. In basketball circles, he is best known for going undrafted in the 2009 draft Stephen Curry’sthough Minnesota had two chances to do so.
Instead of Curry, two other playmakers grabbed the wound, Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn. Curry then went to the Golden State Warriors in the seventh round, and the rest is history. Curry, who has won four NBA championships, is now unanimously considered the best long thrower of all time.
Rubio has had a great NBA career, but almost no one remembers Flynn.
Kahn has received plenty of flak for his selections, even though four other teams left Curry unselected. In addition to Rubio and Flynn, Curry was booked Blake Griffin, Hasheem Thabeet, James Harden and Tyreke Evans. There has also been speculation that the golf-loving Curry would not have been comfortable in Minnesota, which may have influenced the booking decision.
In any case, Kahn is influential in Europe these days, but the visions are huge in the American style.
The corona pandemic put a brake on the initial acceleration of the club, but now the intention is to step on the gas and build something big in Paris. The goal is to create a global brand that is not limited to basketball only.
– Basketball is in an interesting position in our society, because it is strongly linked to culture, fashion, music and lifestyle. Paris as a city represents all these things. We hope that our team will also become a strong part of this world, Kahn envisions ambitiously.
“At the moment there is only one team in Paris”
There are already two impressive teams in the Paris area, Nanterre 92 and Metropolitans 92, but Kahn feels that the city has a huge untapped basketball potential.
The sport is followed, but the main focus is on the NBA. The local teams do not attract similar interest, with the exception of the giant football club Paris Saint-Germain.
– At the moment, there is really only one team in Paris that everyone knows, and that is PSG. There isn’t really another team behind it, but I think there is enough space no matter how much, says Kahn.
Paris Basketball will move to a brand new arena in February. The spectator capacity of the arena being built in the Chapelle area in the northern part of the city is 8,500. Iisalo has described the new arena as an “incredible-looking complex”.
The Parisian team’s average attendance last season was 3,602, which is the ninth highest among the league’s 18 teams. According to Kahn, the number of supporters is growing.
Last fall, the Parisian team took their home match against future champion AS Monaco to Roland Garros, better known as the tennis sanctuary. About 10,000 spectators watched the match, so there is clearly growth potential.
– Now that we have Tuomas as a coach, I believe that the team will open up new opportunities for us, says Kahn.
Last year, Paris Basketball was ninth in the French league and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Eurocup. The team is going to improve these rankings.
In addition to the coaching work, Iisalo is expected to make a big contribution to the development of the club’s culture and brand. In sports, winning is of course the key, and he has shown that he is capable of that.
Iisalo also has enough ambition outside the parquet floor.
– The big long-term goal is to create a connection with fans and a city where people want to identify with us and feel that they can be proud to support us. It’s a big challenge, especially in a young club, he says.