For the first time in nearly 50 years, France has won a medal in basketball. And it’s the Suns who couldn’t be happier.

That’s because Phoenix's back-up point guard Boris Diaw used the recent European Championships as a springboard to showcase the skills they hope will help ease the burden of starter Steve Nash when the NBA season gets underway in just over a month. Even though his French National team left Belgrade with a bronze medal, the Suns are seeing “gold” when it comes to the 23-year-old.

“Obviously he can play one, two, maybe three,” Suns assistant coach Marc Iavaroni said. “He can defend pretty well. He’s got size and quickness. We’re excited about him as a sleeper kind of guy.”

Diaw’s overseas highlight reel included an 18-point, 11-board and three-assist effort in last week’s 63-47 quarterfinal win over defending champ Lithuania. It was his biggest scoring outburst since he dropped 23 on Bosnia & Herzegovina the week before. Diaw averaged 14 points in Saturday’s loss to eventual gold-medal winner Greece. The guard’s overall 13.7 ppg average was tops for a French team that also featured fellow NBA ballers Tony Parker and Mickael Pietrus.