A fair bit of sour losing on the french side (and I am French). Truth be told yes Gasol had the refs in his his pocket, but once a pattern is established, it is the team's job to adjust accordingly : Gobert is a great defender already, but still young and left repeatedly 1on1 against Gasol, he suffered. Gasol isn't as tall but he is mighty tall too and so technical. The french should have varied the looks, sent hard doubles from time to time to force Gasol to pick up his dribble early and then try to recover, etc.. they just didn't defend him that well.
Nevertheless this wasn't the deciding factor. The key was poor execution on offense in the 4th and OT when the french should have killed the Spaniards : missing FTs is criminal, Parker and Diaw's misses were actually worse than Batum's : Paker missed 2 FTs in a row at 70 all, than Diaw missed a critical FT that would have made it +4 with 1:27 to go.
Gobert, Lauvergne and De Colo were very good again, sure they did some mistakes, but overall very good. France was let down by its 3 established stars :
- TP 4/17 with 3 TOs for 6 assists
- Batum 3/14 (even though he almost redeemed himself with that corner 3)
- Diaw 2/7.
That's it : the 3 established stars didn't execute on offense during most of the game and the 3 of them failed at the FT line in the critical OT. No need to look further : Gasol was somewhat protected by the refs ? Sure but it happens all the time and it is no coincidence that it happens to players dominating the game. The team failed to adjust on defense but lost the game when it didn't execute on offense.
I hope the 3 established french stars rebound next summer for the pre-olympics and olympics, but we might be witnessing the transition from one generation to another and the very real decline of Tony Parker as seen this NBA season too.... Had to happen at some point.