“The leg is no longer useful.” Timofey Mozgov explained the decision to end his career

Former basketball player Russian national team Timofey Mozgov explained why he could not continue his professional career.

– I need to spend an unreal amount of time at the gym to prepare. It’s been a long time since I trained like I used to. I still go to the gym, sometimes I even play basketball with amateurs, but it’s far from being a professional sport.

You don’t even understand how difficult professional sports is when you’re in it. When you do this, it’s like you’re the pilot of a ship: all the buttons are clear to you. And when we don’t know how it works, we get into the cockpit and think it’s impossible to learn. While I was playing sports, everything was clear to me: in some places I was in better shape, in others – worse, but everything was simple. And now, when we don’t train as much, we look at what people are doing and we realize that it’s obviously very difficult.

I doubt I can do it all again. And to be honest, I don’t see the point. My same leg is still not doing well: I can run and jump, even play basketball, but it is no longer suitable for professional sports,” Sports.ru quoted Mozgov, 37, as saying.

In the 2021/22 season, Mozgov played nine matches for Runa in the Super League, averaging 10.4 points, 7.0 rebounds and 1.2 assists. In March 2022, he left for the United States for family reasons.

Mozgov, as a member of the Russian national team, won bronze at the European Championship (2011) and the Olympics (2012), became a three-time silver medalist of the Russian Championship with Khimki (2008- 2010) and also won the Russian Cup. In 2008. Mozgov played in the NBA from 2010 to 2019. The Russian played for the Knicks, Denver, Los Angeles Lakers, Brooklyn, Orlando and Cleveland, with whom he became NBA champion in 2016.

Sports.ru