FRA – Former France national team players call it quits

PARIS (Olympics) - All good things must come to an end at some point.

So it has proved to be for two former France national team players.

Laurent Sciarra, who dazzled fans at the 2000 Olympics with Les Bleus and helped fire them to a silver medal, parted ways with Pau-Orthez by mutual consent earlier this month and shortly after retired from the game at 37 years of age.

A 2.18m center for that France team, 33-year-old Frederic Weis, has also decided to call it a day this week because of knee problems.

Sciarra, capped 112 times by France, had a Sydney Games that he'll never forget.

In addition to averaging 11.2 points and 3.6 assists in more than 24 minutes per game, Sciarra had his best games against the United States.

In the last Preliminary Round game for both sides, a 106-94 triumph for the Americans, Sciarra had 21 points, four assists, three steals and a block.

After firing France to a 68-63 victory over a Steve Nash-led Canada in the quarter-finals with 17 points and then scoring 16 in a 76-52 drubbing of hosts Australia in the last four, Sciarra poured in 19 in an 85-75 gold-medal game defeat to the USA.

Weis averaged five points and 4.4 rebounds in more than 22 minutes per game for that French team.

A former first-round NBA draft pick by the New York Knicks, Weis was on the books of Limoges in France.

“I've had a lot, too many even, recurrent knee problems and we haven't found any solutions," he said on the Limoges website.

“The doctor advised me to leave it at that.

“We tried a number of different treatments and I've actually already gone over the quota (of treatments) by a mile so it's enough."

Weis was capped 100 times by France.

FIBA