At 39 years of age, after 17 seasons as a professional, following four years at the highest collegiate level at the University of Kansas, Keith Langford has officially announced his retirement. He gave up not so much to age as to injuries and the need for a new long process of recovery.
Keith Langford spent two years in Milan: he came to Olimpia in the summer of 2012 and left in the summer of 2014 as Champion of Italy. In the Italian league he scored 1,150 points for Olimpia. During his championship season, he averaged 16.7 points per game while shooting 41.1 percent from three. Over two EuroLeague seasons, he scored 509 points in 32 games overall. At the end of the 2013/14 season, he was first team All-EuroLeague and league top scorer. These are the bare numbers. Langford was so much more.
In the 2013/14 season, for example, he was the hero of the big win achieved in Piraeus, which effectively launched Olimpia run towards the first playoffs’ appearance of the modern EuroLeague. A huge and timely three broke Olympiacos’ final assault and gave Olimpia the win. Seven days later, Olimpia also won in Vitoria. The Luca Banchi-led team had won seven games in a row and stormed in the playoffs with home advantage over Maccabi. Unfortunately, Langford got injured during the streak. He sped up his recovery to play against Maccabi. Not only was he not at his best on that series, but he didn’t even have the support of Alessandro Gentile, his “partner in crime” that season. Upon Langford’s return, Gentile got injured too and missed the series. As a fact, Maccabi won the series and Olimpia beautiful EuroLeague season ended at the climax. Nonetheless, Langford was one of the protagonists of the “scudetto” number 25. He did not play a great Game 7, the clinching game against Siena, but it was the only game of the final series in which he did not score in double figures and broke a streak of 14 consecutive double-digit games. When Olimpia won the high-pressure Game 6 in Sassari (up 3-1, Olimpia lost at Game 5 at home putting the win in jeopardy) he scored 24 points. But at the end of the championship night, Langford was the happiest man alive. In his career, he had won other titles in Bologna and Tel Aviv (later in Greece too), but that was the triumph he felt was his, the most wanted, after the disappointment of the previous season. The night of 27th June 2014, when the 26th championship was won, was his last as an Olimpia player. And the sweetest.
Langford moved from Milan to Kazan in 2014. It was not his choice. The market dictated his move to Russia. But he would still play at a very high level, in Kazan, at Panathinaikos, at AEK Athens. Up to almost 40 years of age. Not a surprise at all: Langford meticulously groomed his body and was an exemplary professional. “My family depends on me, I never put myself in a position to screw it up or embarrass them,” he once said.
His story began in Texas, in Fort Worth, where his first love was football. But he was too skinny to absorb contacts and the rudeness of the game and despite it being his favorite sport he decided to try basketball and quickly became a star. Roy Williams recruited him. This is an accomplishment itself because Michael Jordan too was recruited by Williams, as Dean Smith’s assistant at North Carolina. At Kansas, Langford played not just two Final Fours but two championship games. He lost both, to Maryland and Syracuse. In the 2003 NCAA Tournament, he scored 109 points over six games, 24 points in a semifinal win over Marquette. His direct opponent that night was Dwyane Wade. Two nights later he scored 19 points still it wasn’t enough against Carmelo Anthony and Syracuse.
He also tried the NBA, but without much luck. His first Italian stop was in Cremona in the second division. Then he moved up, to Biella, to Virtus Bologna, then Khimki and landing in the EuroLeague where he would remain for years. In the EuroLeague, he scored 2,289 points. His 16.0 points per game is the seventh-highest average in history. Keith Langford was a legend of European basketball. The concept also applies to Olimpia Milano.
