By Antonis Stroggylakis / info@eurohoops.net
European basketball veteran Matt Lojeski may have played the last game of his career.
After the loss of AEK Athens to Promitheas Patras in Game 1 of the Greek League third-place series, Lojeski revealed that he’s traveling to the States this Friday (4/6) and that this match was possibly the last for him.
“I’m going to go Friday,” Lojeski said to the Greek National Television. “My family is here. They’ve only been here for 10 days the whole year. It’s been a difficult season. Just being away from them. This could be my last game ever. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Lojeski, who will become 36 years old in July, is seriously considering to retire since he doesn’t want to spend long periods away from his wife and children.
“I haven’t completely decided it yet,” Lojeski said. “But my kids are getting older. My wife… she wants me home. She doesn’t want to live [at a] long distance. I’m getting to that age now that I’m getting older and I feel that I need to be there in their lives to support them.”
Since he moved to Greece in 2013 for Olympiacos Piraeus, Lojeski won back-to-back championships with both the Reds (2015, 2016) and Panathinaikos Athens (2018, 2019). The American-Belgian swingman established himself as an elite shooter in EuroLeague and made the 2015 and 2017 Final (he was down with injury) with Olympiacos.
He was the top scorer of the 2015 EuroLeague championship game of Olympiacos vs. Real Madrid with 17 points.
“It’s been amazing,” Lojeski said. “It’s hard to talk about. Everybody knows how I feel about Greece. It’s kicking in now that’s probably really over. I had my two children here, I won championships with different teams. It’s like a second home for us. We’re going to miss Greece.”
Lojeski said he believes that he can play for two more seasons and and that a potential retirement decision will have to do with family reasons only.
“As a player, I feel like I have a year or two to be honest,” Lojeski mentioned. “I feel I can still play on a decent level. It’s just decision of being with my family or at a distance. Right now, my heart is kind in the U.S.A and my body is here with sports. It’s just not a good mix right now. Maybe later in the summer my wife and I will sit down and discuss what’s best.