Turkish Airlines Euroleague champion CSKA Moscow has reached a new agreement guard Nando De Colo, the season and Final Four MVP, to keep working together for three more years, until the end of the 2018-19 season. De Colo (1.95 meters, 28 years old) comes off an outstanding season, his second with CSKA. He averaged 19.4 points on 46% three-point shooting and 90.8% free throw accuracy, 3.6 rebounds and 5 assists in 27 Euroleague games last season. At the Final Four, De Colo boosted his averages up to 26 points and 5.5 assists to lead CSKA to its first Euroleague title since 2008. De Colo also won the Alphonso Ford Top Scoring trophy, becoming the first winner of that award to ever be voted Euroleague MVP. He also helped CSKA win the VTB League title in each of the last two seasons. De Colo was chosen to the 2014-15 All-Euroleague Second Team and to the 2015-16 All-Euroleague First Team. He first played in the Euroleague in the 2010-11 season, averaging 10.1 points as a reserve on a Valencia Basket team that reached the playoffs. A product of the Cholet Basket youth system, De Colo led his boyhood club to the Semaine des As crown in 2008 and was the MVP of the French League all-star game that season. He joined Valencia in 2009 and helped the club to win the 2010 Eurocup as a member of the All-Eurocup First Team. He has also played for San Antonio and Toronto of the NBA. De Colo has also been a regular with the French national team, helping it win a gold medal at EuroBasket 2013, the silver at EuroBasket 2011 and the bronze at EuroBasket 2015.
"I am very happy to continue playing for CSKA," De Colo said. "It wasn't a tough decision to take. I came back to Europe to play, to use the opportunities and carry more responsibility day-by-day. This is what I did, what I had here with the club. This year we had an amazing season. And this is what I want: to play, to do it for the best team in Europe, and to be one of the leaders of this team. This is what is the most important for me, this is why I signed with CSKA."
"I can say only good things about Nando," Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach, said. "He immediately adopted the role that the coaches asked him to perform. He is an important factor of the success we had all together. We are happy to have him for another three years. I wish him and his family to stay healthy to come back to Moscow with even bigger motivation. We already talked with Nando and we said once again about what was written at the back of our championship T-shirts: 'Hungry for More'."