By Aris Barkas/ barkas@Eurohoops.net
Since 2008, when Keith Langford decided that his career as a professional basketball player will be centered in Europe, he emerged as a trademark name in European basketball and despite being 37 years old, he does not intend to stop anytime soon.
The former player of the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA, Angelico Biella, Virtus Bologna, and Olimpia Milan in Italy, Khimki and UNICS Kazan in Russia, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Rishon Lezion in Israel and also Panathinaikos and AEK in Greece, talked to Eurohoops about a sporting life spent in Europe.
With US players being a big part of the European basketball scene, Keith Langford is the right guy to explain the mentality of import players, the trials that a career in Europe includes, and the perception or even stereotypes that those players have to face.
The two-time top EuroLeague scorer (in 2014 and 2017) had a long talk with Eurohoops about his ongoing European basketball journey, explaining what means to be an American player in Europe, the way those players are treated back in the States, and the time he owes to his family and friends.
– After three years in Greece, playing for Panathinaikos and AEK, do you still have a lot of gas in the tank?
“I do. Of course, I also realize that the end is near. Once I stop playing, I understand that it’s really over, that I will never play basketball again. When you know the end of something is coming, you try to maximize it as much as possible and enjoy it. I have a freshness in my mind about the end of my career because I know when I am done, I am really done.”
– Do you feel you have been part and you are still part of the heydays of European basketball?
“It’s the weirdest thing. So, I am 37. I played against guys like J.R. Holden, Matjaz Smodis, and Gregor Fucka. I have also played against the younger generation of Vasilije Micic and these guys. So, I am stuck in the middle of two generations. It’s kind of a cool thing. I have been able to see both sides. My career has covered a lot of time. It has been extremely fun. I am proud of it.”
– Do you consider yourself a typical US player in Europe or do you have a different mentality?
“It’s different. There was a point in time in my career where I finally let go of the NBA and let go of anything basketball-wise happening in the United States. And I put two feet in Europe, and I put my mind, my body, and my soul in what was happening in Europe. From that point on, not only my career and my game go to another level, my mentality, and acceptance of Europe and the culture, and all of the countries I was playing, it gave me a different level of appreciation and enjoyment.”
– Do you feel that the mentality of guns for hire, one more day one more dollar, this kind of mentality ultimately hurts you when you are trying to make a pro career in another continent?
“It can. I think what happens a lot of times in Europe and in the States is people mistake your style of play for your character as a person.
For example, I am a scorer. People will think he shoots a lot, maybe he is selfish or this and that. I am very aggressive on the court. Off the court, people may look at me and feel the same way. ‘Oh, he is arrogant and unapproachable’. It’s totally different. Being a gun for hire is negative in that aspect, but in the positive aspect when you are a very very good slash great at what you do, there is always a need for you.
You can always get paid at a high level. That’s what I have been able to do for fifteen or sixteen years now.”
– I am talking also about the mentality of the players. There are a lot of guys missing their families staying on another continent for eight or nine months. Do you feel this kind of grind is something that is not conceived by the general public in Europe because they generally consider every US player a star?
“That comes with the territory. I think the sooner that Americans coming to Europe start to look at it and treat it as this is your career, your craft, your profession, and stop looking at it as a ten-month jail sentence or I am a gun for hire. All that stuff does not matter. You are here to play basketball and to be really really good at basketball. I think it takes away from your game and from your focus and concentration, building your career and your name. The thing to do is embrace it. Once you are over here, be over here all the way in. Forget the mentality. You are a basketball player and you get paid to be really good at it. That’s all that matters.”
– It was a totally conscious decision from your side to have your family also in Europe, to not be alone, to enjoy the culture with you?
“I have done both. I have spent six or eight months without my family at times because I felt that was necessary for whatever reason. And I have played at places before where it wasn’t very family-friendly. My career was my priority. I would make the sacrifices so later on in my career I could be in a family-friendly place or I could make a decision based on comfort. Before that, it was all about how high can I achieve in my career and how far I can take basketball, how far I can push myself to be as good as I can possibly be.”
– Are you pissed off about the fact that you are still known from your Kansas days in the US?
“It’s funny. It’s weird because it just doesn’t go away. In the States, being a big-time college player is probably just as impactful as being a high-level NBA player. It’s not as much as it used to be, but every now and then people will ask me. It’s just amazing, I played in the Final Four like 18, 19 years ago, people still remember that. I find it hilarious.”
– Is it strange that you have sometimes to explain that you are still a basketball player?
“As soon as people say ‘You have played at Kansas. You played Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade’, I say ‘Yeah, that was me’ and then they ask me what I do now so excited and I reply ‘I am playing in Europe’, and they are not excited anymore. The conversation totally changes. “OK, good luck, it was fun watching you on TV”. They cared nothing about the last 16 years. It’s funny. I love it though. I really do.”
– Do you feel like a star?
“Sometimes. It depends on the country. I spent five years in Russia. Hockey players are the stars there. You can literally go everywhere in Russia and nobody knows who you are. Unless you played for CSKA. And even then, the CSKA basketball players aren’t as important as the CSKA hockey players. In a place like Greece or Israel, the fans are incredible, you get more of the star treatment. In other places, you are just a guy walking up and down the street.”
– What would be your advice to a guy starting right now his career in Europe when the NBA salaries have skyrocketed and every guy, even from Europe, wants to end up there?
“This may a bit old-fashioned. I truly believe that if you have one foot in anything you do, you can’t maximize the opportunity.
I would encourage anyone who wants to go in the NBA to stay in the States until you don’t want to play in the NBA anymore. Then come over here, be two feet in, and give all of your attention and focus. It is very difficult the other way. It has been done by Shane Larkin, Malcolm Delaney, and other guys, It’s not easy, but as soon as you focus on where you are at, that’s when your career takes off.
Guys who want to be in the NBA stay two or three years, until they can realize ‘OK, my dream is not happening’, ‘OK, the NBA does not want me’, whatever the case may be. Then come over here, lock in and focus. And see how far you can take things.”
– Do you think – because you said that – with basketball becoming more and more global, and the world becoming smaller and smaller than Europe can also be an alternate path to the NBA?
“I really don’t think so. Financially, the NBA is just able to do things and be in a different place. From a standpoint of being able to really develop a serious and significant career, it’s on the same level. Vassilis Spanoulis or a guy like Dimitris Diamantidis, Juan Carlos Navarro, any of your greats, they get the same love in Europe that LeBron James may get in America. It’s not global, but in the regions, the continents where they live, these guys build the same type of career. From that standpoint, you can build the same type of legacy, but there is no way you can have a comparison in basketball. The NBA is just too far ahead. There are just too many resources in its advantage that Europe does not have.”
– Do you believe that US players can create a really big legacy in Europe?
“Some players have. Because it’s Europe, not your native country, very rarely you will be able to create a legacy bigger than a European player can. The best way to do that, which is very difficult and is one thing I tried to do, is trying to take a non-traditional team that has never been there and then try to break through and be a Final Four contender, make a Final Four, be a Final Four champion or something like that. The guys who go to CSKA, Barcelona, Real Madrid, as foreigners. If you win the championship there, you just fall in line with everyone else. But if you break through with a team like UNICS Kazan, Lokomotiv Kuban, or Olimpia Milano, if those guys win the EuroLeague I think it changes the landscape and their legacies. Even making a Final Four, sets them apart from foreigners who are at normal powerhouses.”
– Have you seen a guy from the US who is a young Keith in recent years? Because some players arriving in Europe seem ready for big stuff from the get-go.
“I have seen guys where I was and then take it to another level.
Mike James is a great example. I remember Argyris Pedoulakis when he first came to Kazan, he had Mike James. I didn’t know who Mike James was at the time. He told me that he had found the next Keith Langford. When I finally was able to watch Mike and see him play, ‘Oh no, this guy is better than me’. When I saw Mike, I was able to recognize how special he was. He was able to do what I did and take it to another level. I would even say Daryl Macon. I think he has the tools to do something like that. I really hope he does.
Daryl has not yet decided if he wants to be in the NBA or Europe. I think once he can focus on where he wants to be, he can do the same things. But Mike James is the name that pops out in my mind.”
– Do you feel that sometimes US players have too many options, NBA, the EuroLeague, the local league, the BCL, the EuroCup, and that creates confusion? They don’t have a stable environment to flourish.
“I told the same thing to Daryl. I am not trying to bring up his name a lot but he is the most recent example. Here is the thing with Europe and the options. You can play so well that you put yourself in a bad position. A guy comes to Europe, he is on a smaller team but he plays incredibly. He beats a few EuroLeague teams in his domestic league. He has played so well that he has five or six contracts that he has to consider, but in his mind, he has always wanted to play in the NBA. So now, you have to put these two things on the scale. You have done so well, that you are in a bad position. Do you turn down 500K, 800K, and 1M to stay here and start building something or do you go back for nothing and chase your dream? It’s a tough thing, but it’s a good problem to have. That’s the way I look at it. I tell every guy, the way you solve that problem is you should have a number in your mind. How much is a contract offer worth to make you stop pursuing your dream? If a team is willing to offer you that number, then you drop everything and come to Europe. But if it’s anything below that number, go ahead and chase your dream.”
– You have a lot of guys saying “I am a basketball player, I will think only about basketball and I don’t care about anything else”. Do you believe that this way of thinking either in political issues or even in personal life, in this era is really naive?
“I really would say that’s the only way you can be great. Maybe there is an exception, maybe Steph Curry is the exception or somebody else. For the majority of players, basketball has to be the first thing. You have to be ready to have difficult moments in your relationships, difficult moments with your family, difficult moments in your personal life because basketball has to be a priority. If it’s not, the guys who are ready to go home early, the guys who want to cut corners, the guys who think they can cheat the process, they will never be as good or make the same money as the guys who sacrifice everything for basketball. It just does not work that way.”
– If you combine this with having made a lot of moves outside basketball after your playing days you can be set up for the next step…
“I did that. I made up my mind a long time ago. I stopped having an American agent. I pursued the biggest contracts that I can possibly pursue.
This may not be a popular opinion, I decided to be as good as Keith Langford could be and let everything else settle where it may. I am going to get the biggest contract and I am going to be the best player I could be. The winning and the losing will take care of themselves. The coaches and all of those things will fall in line. You are going to get the best Keith Langford possible. I am going to make the sacrifices I need to be able to be that. I did that early in my career. I made a lot of sacrifices so at the end of my career I could spend time in a beautiful place like Greece, do whatever I wanted to at the end.
I am really happy that I did things the way I did because I sit in a position now where I have control over every decision I make in my last few years of basketball.”
– Did you feel at some point that it was very hard to leave money on the table for an offer or an option that could have been better basketball-wise?
“Here is the thing. When anybody does something, there is no 100% security in that thought. They were plenty of times when I doubted if I made the right decision.
Should have turned down a bunch of offers to stay in Kazan, should you have turned down Maccabi to go to Milan, should I have to turn down Fenerbahce to stay in Milan? All these things. I second-guessed myself sometimes. But at the end of the day, I knew what I wanted to do and I had my goal and I just stayed focused on that. My advice for anybody dealing with the same thing: Υou are going to have doubts but if you are secure in what is you are doing and want to accomplish that, you have to keep going forward. To answer your question, yes I did, I had a lot of moments, but in the end, I am glad I did the way I did it because I am never going to be comfortable being a role player essentially when I knew how great I was.
I had offers to be the seventh man or sixth man, play smaller minutes, or things like that, but I didn’t want those things. I wasn’t going to be happy playing that way. In the end, I never regretted it, but I did have doubts.”
– What’s your favorite stop so far?
“People think I am crazy when I say this, but I honestly enjoyed my time in Russia from a basketball perceptive. I never had more fun playing basketball than I did in Russia and during that time. From a lifestyle perceptive, maybe Tel Aviv was really nice, but Greece, Athens is not close. This has been a paradise to spend the last three years. I enjoyed it thoroughly. From a lifestyle perceptive Greece, but basketball-wise and… restaurant-wise it was Russia.”
– Do you think that Maccabi could have been your team for many years?
“Yes. Yes and yes again. Maybe the hardest decision I made was to leave Maccabi. I was released from Khimki, we had a bad situation there with Rimas Kurtinaitis. I didn’t have a job for a couple of months and then finally David Blatt gave me a call. I really think he was the reason my career was able to get back on track. It really could have been in a bad situation. I had no confidence when I got Maccabi. But the way I grew and built myself, and the things I learned in that year, and how comfortable I was with everything, it was really really hard at the end of the season to say no. That’s probably the one place where I could have saw myself up until maybe one or two years ago.”
– I am asking you because of the conjunction with Milan and you playing against Maccabi and them winning the EuroLeague.
“That’s the way things work out. Maybe if I was in Maccabi, maybe we don’t win the title, who knows; I thought about that and so on. The way things happened, they happened the right way for Maccabi. They had all the right players. I can’t say if you put me in for this guy, then maybe that’s my championship. Maybe the guy that was in there could have made some shots that I wouldn’t have made. I am unbiased when it comes to that. Basketball does not work that way, switch one guy out for another and it’s an automatic answer. As I said, that was the hardest decision I made in my career for sure.”
– Do you feel strange about the fact that you are one of the trademark players of EuroLeague and Europe in general without winning a EuroLeague title?
“It’s strange. At least a Final Four… And that’s the second biggest thing.
But I do understand that with the decisions I made for the teams that I played on in my career, I only gave myself a few shots. I only really had two or three real chances to do it because of the route I decided to take. It’s no secret that the same eight teams make the Final Four every year. If you are not on one of these teams, you are probably not going to go to the Final Four. That’s why it’s so special when guys from Loko can do what they do or when a guy like Bo McCalebb gets Partizan to the Final Four. I wanted to do that. I wanted to be part of something like that.
It does sting, I am very honest about that. But at the same time, I am honest enough to realize that the decisions I made for my career are the reason, not that I was not good enough.”
– Have you already chosen your path for your days after basketball or this is something that you have postponed so far? I can’t really imagine you outside of basketball.
“I can’t either. So that’s why I will play until I am 45 (laughs). But honestly, the first thing I want to do is give time back to my family. Not only my immediate family but also my extended family. I have literally gone through the last twenty years of my life with everything being about me and about my journey in basketball. I have missed so many weddings, parties, and graduations. I am just going to give time back to my family. I am going to go to my son’s games. I will be a stay-at-home dad for a while. After a couple of years, then I will decide. I am really going to take my time and just relax, and put time back into the people the put time into me over all these years.”
– Is this the biggest sacrifice that a US player must endure in Europe?
“It is. The scary part about it is that there is no guarantee it’s going to work. That’s the one thing that athletes want. You can’t guarantee success or the money. But you have to do all these things to give yourself the chance to accomplish it. Now that I did accomplish the majority of those things, maybe eight out of ten, I am in a great position to where I can go back and give the most valuable asset that any person on this Earth has, and that’s time. They have given it to me and I will give it back to them.”