By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant said that while he respects EuroLeague basketball and is a fan of the games, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be playing there, even when his career is reaching its end. Durant had mentioned that he’d want to spend the last season in Europe and Barcelona in particular before he retires.
“I was just excited at that time a few years back,” Durant said about the comments three years ago on joining Barcelona during an interview with Serge Ibaka. “We had just won a championship, I was playing great. I guess that has you thinking about the end a little bit too much… when you reach the pinnacle of what it is to be an NBA player. I got a lot of respect for the EuroLeague, I got friends in EuroLeague, I love watching the games but I really doubt that’ll happen. It sounded good when I said it.”
Last April, Durant actually attended Game 4 and 5 of the EuroLeague playoff series between Olympiacos Piraeus and AS Monaco, to watch his former Nets teammate and friend Mike James. He first went to Monaco to see James and the rest of the team tie the series 2-2 and then traveled to Greece for the decisive fifth match where he witnessed an atmosphere unlike anything he’d seen before.
His tweet in the finale of the match when Olympiacos got the win and the ticket to the Final Four was pretty self-explanatory…
The apocalypse pic.twitter.com/uYdeAS24Mw
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) May 4, 2022
“Isn’t [Nikola] Mirotic over there? Barcelona?” Durant mentioned when asked if he has any contact with anyone at Barcelona. “I don’t know a lot of people over there. Mike James who played with me some years ago so I try to follow him as much as possible… some hoopers over there. I try to tell a lot of guys that they should pursue that route as well along with trying to get to the NBA. It’s the second-best league in the world.”