Ready or not, France's Batum, 19, eyes move to NBA

French forward Nicolas Batum is committed to entering the draft this year. Jose Luis Roca/AFP/Getty Images

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MILAN, Italy --

5 Scenes of draft prospect Nicolas Batum

5. The meeting. The lobby of the Quark Hotel on the south side of Milan was overwhelmed with stylish blazers, wavy hair and exasperated Italians speaking with quiet urgency into the cell phones pressed to their ears. Thursday was the deadline day for transfers in the Italian football Serie A -- among the world's most powerful soccer leagues -- and the team presidents and general managers, as well as the agents and players themselves together with the TV crews, Web site producers and radio and print reporters, were milling around and bumping into each other like caffeinated atoms.

Standing in the back of the lobby, dangling a pair of orange-trimmed sneakers from his long fingers and talking via cell phone to his mother, was Nicolas Batum, the 6-foot-8 French forward who expects to be playing in the NBA next year. After he hangs up his phone, we drink in the menagerie of self-importance alongside Arnaud Leproux, media director of the French club Le Mans Sarthe, for whom Batum will star in a Euroleague game tonight.

Leproux stares blankly at the vast navy-blazered sea of power brokers and says, "In the beginning they come in, and they are all hugging and kissing to greet each other. But now'' -- and here Leproux extends his hands before him in forceful demonstration -- "now you can see them saying to each other, 'No, you cannot do this to me!'

"Then you can see downstairs there are many couches arranged for them to have more private meetings and negotiations between the teams and the agents. And if they are serious, then each team has a private space or office where they can finish the deal.''

It is not unlike dynamics of the Red Light District in Amsterdam, I offer. "But here's the thing,'' I say, thumbing at the 19-year-old Batum standing next to me. "This guy has a chance to make more money in the NBA than any of the football players here. Here he is and they have no clue about his value.''

"Maybe in the future, yes,'' Leproux says. "But right now, I think there is more money here.''

4. We go downstairs. For the interview, we walk down a spiraling case of stairs around and under a modern chandelier arranged like long organ pipes made from three dozen tubes of lighted glass. The teal couches are occupied by the soccer executives and agents engaging in the foreplay of their pillow talk. One of the conference rooms has been rented by Euroleague TV, whose interviewer directs Batum to sit in a chair in front of the league's official backdrop displaying the logos of its commercial sponsors. It is a low-budget operation, and the pale fluorescent light overhead emphasizes the shadows under Batum's brow and his day-old beard. The poor lighting makes him look thin and tired.

"I want to be in the NBA next year,'' Batum tells me a few minutes later. He says he will definitely enter the draft in June, when he and Danilo Gallinari of Milan promise to be the first two international players chosen.

For Batum, the choice is simple: He could have joined the NBA last year but chose to wait; he doesn't plan to wait an additional year.

But the leaders of his French team are in a more nuanced predicament: acknowledging on the one hand that the best talents must seek the highest level of play, and yet wanting Batum to remain in Europe until he is a bigger star, to their benefit as well as his own.

"All of the team and all of the players wish the best for Nicolas to go to the draft and the NBA,'' Le Mans team president Jean-Pierre Goisbault says. "But personally, we don't want him to go to the NBA and stay on the bench like a lot of French players do right now. He has so much talent that it is better for him to stay one more year in Europe, to really dominate in Europe, and then to have a good role when he goes into the NBA. The situation that we know right now is that these players who are able to play basketball, they stay on the bench in the NBA and play two minutes in the garbage time and it's a disaster. We don't want it to be that Nicolas will do that.''

3. The father's lesson. His father, Henry Batum, was a professional player in France for 10 years. "He died on the court when I was 2 years old,'' Nicolas says. Henry Batum was at the free-throw line when he suffered a massive heart attack.

Unlike his son, he was a thickly built player, a 6-7 rebounder who played under the basket. "Me, I am a wing, so we have not the same game,'' Batum says. "I think he is watching me.

"I try to finish what he begins. I play basketball also for him. If he is there, I think his wildest dream is to watch me go in the NBA. So I try to make that for him.''

His mother, a nanny, raised Batum and his sister, who was two months old when their father died. "My mother is very, very important in my life,'' he says. "I think if I go to the NBA, she will follow me next year with my sister. Every time I make a good game, she is there. She is telling me, 'You are good, you will be good next year.' She is trying to keep me comfortable, to just think about basketball. Don't think of the girls, the agent, the money. Just think basketball.''

2. The Hoop Summit. Last April, in an All-Star game in Memphis between U.S. high school players and World Select team of young professionals, Batum exploded for 23 points (on 9-of-13 shooting from the field) with a trio of three-pointers, several skyscraping dunks and four steals. "One week before I was in the Hoop Summit, nobody knows me,'' he says, laughing. "And one week after, my phone rings every time. I was very surprised.

"But now I understand everything. I try to listen to good people to help me -- my agent [Bouna Ndiaye], my mother. So now it's cool for me and I want to be in the NBA next year.''

Per the routine, Batum is playing two concurrent seasons in Europe. In the French league, he ranks as one of the top players while averaging 12.8 points and 4.9 rebounds in 28.9 minutes for Le Mans. In the more challenging Euroleague, however, he has averaged 8.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists in 26 minutes. Batum has been the uncertain leader of one of the league's youngest teams; a good game is followed by a bad night, and up and down he goes.

"We must give him time,'' says his coach, Vincent Collet. "He is really young. Two years ago he was 17, but he was not really 17 -- he was much younger than this. Now he is 19 and there has been a lot of improvement with his consistency. The most important thing for him is to improve more mentally than in his basketball, because he has been given many tools to be great. But sometimes I have to remind him.''

Batum's perimeter shooting is still at issue, and some scouts believe the unreliability of his jump shot may hurt him in the draft. But Batum maintains that he doesn't worry about where he is picked. "The most important thing is to go to the NBA,'' he says. "It don't matter the team. So if I am No. 1 or No. 10, it don't matter.''

And if it turns out that he moved to the NBA too early? Europeans who are buried on the bench, he says, should be willing to return home to renew their careers. "Boris Diaw plays, [Tony] Parker plays, maybe [the Lakers' Ronny] Turiaf plays a little bit,'' says Batum, referring to his fellow Frenchmen. "The other [French] players didn't play. So it would be better for them to go back to Europe and play in the Euroleague with clubs like Barcelona or Panathinaikos.''

But that would mean accepting less money, I warn him. "I say it every time: Basketball is not my job; it's my passion," he says.

1. The consensus. There is no consensus. More than a dozen NBA scouts are in Milan, and they appear to make up 10 percent of the audience. Both teams are out of contention in the Euroleague, and Gallinari, the 19-year-old star of Milan who is expected to compete with Batum for the top European pick of the draft, is sidelined by a strained knee.

"We all came to see the top two guys go at each other,'' an NBA scout says.

They focus on Batum instead. They watch Collet bench him after a disinterested beginning, then watch as he works himself into the game for 12 points (3-of-9 shooting), seven rebounds, four turnovers and three assists.

"He should have been in the draft last year, when he would have been a lottery pick,'' one international scout says. "Now I don't know where he'll end up. This is the sixth time I've watched him this year, and I have not seen him have a really good game yet. I know he's got it in him; I just haven't seen it.

"He should be making a big difference in the game, but he doesn't. He could be a hell of a player, but he's so passive. Every once in a while he'll do something, but then he disappears.''

But there are other perspectives. Over a stretch early in the second half, Batum makes a brief difference with a jumper, then a three-pointer, then a blocked shot to set up a teammate's three in transition as Le Mans opens up a 56-37 lead. They win 83-63 to finish 4-10 in the Euroleague, which will proceed to its second round without them.

"He has the ability to be an all-league defender after a couple of years,'' another scout says. "He has the wingspan of a pterodactyl, and even when he looks like he's loping, he's moving past other guys and just gobbling up space. He's going to be one of the top five athletes in the draft.

"There are times when he makes jump shots that he looks like a young Grant Hill. I don't know if he'll ever be a great scorer. He's a pretty good passer and not a bad ball-handler for his age, but he is a bit tender -- not a fiery kind of kid. He's one of the top seven or eight guys in the draft.''

And if he were to stay in Europe for another year? "His agent is known for doing the unexpected, for making a deal with a team to put his guys into the draft early,'' the scout says. "Why hold him back? Then teams will spend more time looking for more holes in his game. He should come out this year.''

And so he will.

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