Nicolas Batum did not film his retirement video in Los Angeles or on a podium in Paris. The 37-year-old French forward walked into Gym Even in Pont-l’Évêque, France, sat on the bleachers with his son Ayden, and made the announcement in a nearly 10-minute Instagram post on September 21.

The date was chosen.

“It’s the 35th anniversary of my dad’s death on a court,” Batum said in the video, as reported by Sports Illustrated. “It unfortunately ended his career in a way he didn’t choose, with me sitting in the stands.”

Richard Batum, a Cameroonian forward who had moved to France to play professionally, collapsed at the free-throw line on September 21, 1991, and died of a ruptured aneurysm. His son was two years old and in the stands.

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Thirty-five years later, in the same building where he first learned to shoot, he turned to Ayden and told him what came next.

“I can finally start a new life, one I didn’t get to have as a kid: A life like yours, with your dad,” he said. “I can do what my father couldn’t.”

From Portland to the Clippers

Drafted 25th overall by the Houston Rockets in 2008 and immediately traded to the Portland Trail Blazers, Batum built the kind of career that rarely announces itself. He was never an All-Star. He was almost always in the rotation.

Across 1,205 regular-season games with Portland, the Charlotte Hornets, the Philadelphia 76ers and the LA Clippers, he averaged 9.6 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.0 assists while shooting 37.1% from three, according to NBC Sports. His scoring peak came in Charlotte in 2016-17 at 15.1 points a night. In his time with the Clippers he shot 40.3% from deep and helped the franchise reach its first Western Conference Finals in 2021.

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Silver medals with France

For France, Batum was the connector between the generation that changed the country’s basketball and the one that reached the Paris final. He won Olympic silver at Tokyo 2020, where his late block against Slovenia sent France into the gold-medal game, and silver again on home soil at Paris 2024, the campaign followed by millions in Netflix’s “Court of Gold”. Playing in front of Ayden at the Paris Games was, he said in the retirement video, his favourite basketball memory.

“No. It’s over.”

The final exchange in the video was the shortest.

“You don’t want me to retire?” Batum asked his son.

Ayden said no.

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“No. It’s over,” his father answered.

Reactions arrived quickly. Patrick Beverley, a former Clippers teammate, posted “My brother. True Legend” on social media. Kawhi Leonard, rarely visible on social media, simply liked the post.

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