Euroleague Basketball

Milos Teodosic brings the ball up-court, and after calling a play sets up one of his fortunate CSKA Moscow team-mates for the finish. The fans, regardless of whom they support watch on in awe, but the Serb himself, who makes the game seem effortless, just focuses on defence on the following possession.

Then post-game, journalists rush to the mix zone where they have the opportunity to get the players comments before the first reporter puts his butt on a seat in the press conference room. But Teodosic, incredibly chooses to walk past the hoards of press like he had put on an invisible coat to shield himself from the people holding voice recorders and notebooks.

“He isn’t one for talking off the court to be honest,” Panathinaikos coach Aleksandar Djordevic told TalkBasket during the final round of Eurobasket 2015 in Lille, while coaching the Serbian national side.

“On the court though, he is incredibly vocal, emotional and expresses his desire to win to his team-mates a lot. He’s a joy to work with though as a coach, but for the media, I can understand that he can be frustrating.”

But it isn’t too much of an issue – think of it this way – most people have day jobs, and when the day is over and your work is finished, the last thing that you want to speak about truthfully is work.

The same applies to Teodosic.

“It’s not that I don’t like journalists,” Teodosic told sport-express.ru. “I just like to speak on the court, playing basketball.

“When a game is over, I want to forget everything about basketball, clean my head and relax. I know that the media are part of our job, but sometimes [it] is just difficult to think and say something smart.”

But Teodosic isn’t saying that he dislikes his job, or dislikes basketball, in fact the basketball wizard has drafted out his plans for what he wants to do when he finally hangs up his sneakers. But, if he opts to go with this plan, it will involve mandatory interviews with the press before and after the game plus he needs to find a woman, too.

“I want to be part of basketball,” he clarifies. “Maybe I will become a coach, something that was not in my mind two years ago.

“When I am thinking that I may have to coach a player like me, this desire goes away,” Teodosic continues with a grin on his face. “Now that I am a little bit more mature, I understand that the coach must be more flexible. And of course I want to have a family, but I just haven’t [found] the right girl yet.”

Milos Teodosic has plans for when he retires, including looking for the right girl. But he is strictly focused on basketball. Photo: Euroleague Basketball

But first up for Teodosic, before he can even think about retirement, there is one issue that needs to be sorted: winning the Euroleague.

“My dream is to win the Euroleague,” Teodosic says. “If I got the first one, then I will want the second and then more.”

It is hard to believe that Teodosic or CSKA Moscow for that matter have not captured the European club crown at least once more since their 2008 triumph in Madrid. Heavily fancied last season in the Spanish capital, they fell to Vassilis Spanoulis and Olympiacos in the semi-final and going back to the infamous Final Four in Istanbul in 2012, they were again strongly favoured and boasted the might of Andrei Kirilenko, Ramunas Siskauskas and Alexey Shved but Georgios Printezis wrote his name in the history books with that floater along the baseline with less than a second left to give Olympiacos the glory in the title encounter.

Teodosic was a key figure in both games and has experienced the heartache of Final Four defeat. He has a few things on his hit list, and lifting the Euroleague trophy instead of walking past it with faded dreams will be top of his list of priorities.

Maybe then Teodosic will open up to the media a bit more.