Portland Trail Blazers: Nicolas Batum "Crushes" the Rim
February 8, 2009 — PDXPIPELINE
English, Baby! instructor Jason Simms sent this video of his English lesson with Portland Trail Blazer Nicolas Batum a couple weeks back. Batum is from France and this is his first year with the Blaze-show. He's averaging about 5 points a game in seventeen minutes. But his specialty is “(crushing) the ball in the rim”.
French basketball website BasketUSA.com (real name!) wrote about the video here. Since it is in French and not about fries or kissing*, I asked Jason for a translation:
The site English, Baby!, which gives English classes online, met with
Nicolas Batum during a Blazers training session.The lesson of the day focuses on the verbs “could” and “can” and on
the fact that you shouldn't use the word “to” after these two verbs.
The former resident of Le Mans, during this interview, also gives the
significance of the term “slam dunk.”In addition to this little English lesson, it's also an occasion to
see that Nicolas (I think they make fun of our pronunciation here?)
has made good progress in the language of Britniey Speaks and that
like Alexis Ajinca, he's making it known that we play do basketball in
France…
If you are wondering what was supposed to be after the “…”, I believe they meant to add “how America not know this! Have you not heard of NBA Champion Tony Parker?!!”, but it was 11:15 and they decided they would take their two hour lunch breaks instead*.
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Comedians, poets, and musicians who want to get in front of a microphone, Bar XV hosts an open stage every Monday night. Nitya Prem is a theater artist who brings the sign-up sheet at 10 pm. The show rolls when enough people are in the room. “I've been running it for three months now and it shows no sign of stopping. It's a permanent weekly function of Bar XV and we could use as many creative people as we can get … especially a magician, I've been trying to get a magician for two months now!”
