By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Eavesdrop as Trajan Langdon visits with Kyle Hines and discusses his childhood in Alaska, his basketball playing career, retirement and life as a basketball executive on EuroLeague’s ‘The Kyle Zone’ podcast.
“There were a lot of expectations and some pressure,” Langdon said of the 2005-06 season, his first with CSKA, in which the team ended a 35-year drought to win the EuroLeague. “It was basically chip on our shoulder, us against the world, nobody believed in us and that’s what drove us the rest of the year.”
“I remember how much emotion came out when we finally won. One, because nobody believed we were going to win,” Langdon went on. “Personally I had lost in a [NCAA] national championship game in ’99, which I had never forgotten. Then I had a chance to get to a EuroLeague title game again in ’03 with Benetton that we lost to Barcelona, so I had two times where I hadn’t finished. So for me now to finish it and accomplish something and be a champion, just a lot of emotion came out.”
A three-time All-EuroLeague selection and the MVP of the 2008 Final Four, Langdon has many great stories from his six seasons with CSKA and nine altogether in the EuroLeague. It was a tough decision when he decided to retire, one that he explained to Hines in this episode.
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Source and photo credit: EuroLeague