From street vendor to surging NBA player, Greek Freak living the American dream
ST. FRANCIS, Wis. – Within the walls of his three-bedroom apartment, Giannis Antetokounmpo
had come to combat the beginnings of a long winter's loneliness with
the preferred passage of untold young NBA players: PlayStation 4.
Thousands upon thousands of hours are unapologetically consumed in the
mesmerizing grasp of the flickering images on screen, and perhaps few
hands so enormous had ever wrapped themselves around the game's
controls.
The cold winds had come sweeping
across Lake Michigan, colliding into glass doors on a balcony that
belongs to the 19-year-old phenom decreed as the Greek Freak. The
solitude and dull drone of those November days and nights had been
constructed for the mindlessness of the PS4 and it left the Milwaukee Bucks'
Giannis Antetokounmpo (pronounced YAHN-iss Ah-deh-toh-KOON-boh) playing
the games the way every NBA rookie in a strange city with time loved to
do.
Only, a gnawing sense of dread washed over him. Only, it felt wrong.
"He felt … guilty," his older brother Thanasis says.
Guilty over the retail price of
$399, the most Giannis had ever spent on something so frivolous in his
life. Guilty over his two younger brothers in Greece struggling with his
parents to undo the immigration red tape to visit him in the United
States. Guilty over all those long afternoons and evenings on the
streets of Athens as hungry, desperate boys, peddling sunglasses and
souvenir trinkets to cobble together money for groceries and power
bills.
"Let's do something with our lives," Thanasis would tell Giannis, "so we never have to do this again."
"Day by day," Giannis says now, "we got stronger."
Yes, Giannis sold his PlayStation 4 to Bucks assistant coach Nick Van
Exel for the retail price and waited the three months until, finally,
his family arrived in the United States to indulge himself in a console
again. There are reasons Giannis sets aside most of his $1.7 million
rookie salary and tries to live on the $190 daily per diem – including
the per diems his veteran teammates sympathetically pass his way. There
are reasons those teammates furnished his apartment with hand-me-down
furniture. Yes, there are reasons why Giannis, together with his
21-year-old brother, Thanasis, who plays for Delaware in the NBA
Development League, sat paralyzed early this season in an upscale
Philadelphia restaurant staring at the menus.
"Get whatever you want to eat," Giannis told Thanasis.
Together, they stared at the entrees.
"Whatever you want," Giannis told him again.
Together, they stared. And they stared.
"I took the salad," Thanasis finally said. "He did the same thing."
To understand the reluctance of indulging into lives transformed,
into the possibilities of excess when so recently there had been
nothing, rewind to the years of the two older brothers – through a
mother's illness, through a father fighting for steady work – refusing
to come back home to a tiny abode near the Acropolis until they could
bring groceries, bring back the dollars and coins to pay the power bill.
"We would be out on the street together, selling a toy, a watch,
something, and we raise $10," Thanasis says. "And that is good, because
we didn't starve today. We're going to go home. We're going to have
something to eat. And it is a good day."
Mere months before he was the 15th pick in the NBA draft, before he
became a starter for the Bucks, before he turned into a star of All-Star
Weekend in the Rookie-Sophomore Game and Skills Challenge, Giannis was
playing in Greece's second division against talent that could be
classified only sheepishly as professional. Out of the grainy video
images, the precise scouting dispatches of Jonathan Givony's DraftExpress website,
out of the deft maneuvering of Giannis' agent, Alex Saratsis of
Octagon, a groundswell of information and intrigue inspired NBA
executives to descend upon Greece for closer inspection.
Now, Giannis Antetokounmpo has grown to 6-foot-10 and could top out
at 7-foot, and most league executives inclined to conduct a re-draft on
the class of 2013 wouldn't let him out of the top five. Giannis had been
a cult following born of the YouTube Greek Freak clips, but he's
evolving into a decidedly mainstream attraction. League executives and
coaches see such an extraordinary blend of talents within him, such
natural and uncanny instincts for the game. His work ethic has been
relentless, forged as a young man without practice time in Greece, who
forever had to make more out of less because of his family's need for
him to earn money. If someone stays after Bucks practice, Giannis won't
leave until he's the last one on the floor. Sometimes, this goes on for
hours.
His statistics – 6.9 points, 4.4 rebounds and two assists per game –
belie an incredible leap in competition level, the most modest to the
most élite on the planet. Every day he does something that leaves people
shaking their heads. Every day he offers a window into a limitless
future.
"I don't want to be a good player," Giannis says. "I want to be a great one."
All around Milwaukee, thancing on a newey look
out for Giannis. He's part little brother, part savior. As Bucks owner
Herb Kohl searches for fin arena, a financial infusion of
ownership with whom to partner, the Greek Freak is mostly the reason
people purchase a ticket to Milwaukee's games. The Bucks have the NBA's
worst record – 13-54 – and everyone understands the burden it's brought
upon Antetokounmpo. From the owner to the general manager, the fans to
the Bradley Center attendants, Giannis is something of a shared
community project.
They love him here: the front office, the coaches, his teammates, the
secretaries. Earnestness rarely walks through the door within a body so
talented, within someone who could someday transform the Bucks into
relevancy again. They think he's going to be a star, but there is so far
for him to go, so much for him to learn.
Bucks front office executive
Dave Dean was sitting in his practice facility office, listening to
Giannis and a driver's education instructor review the rules of the
road. He had never heard such excitement, such a curiosity satisfied
with every revelation of the Wisconsin road.
"OH," Giannis bellowed, "that is … HYDROPLANING!"
Then silence, hushed talking and soon another proclamation.
"Bald tires are bad!"
"I want to take the test right now!" Giannis declared.
"I am ready!"
He didn't want to pass the test, he wanted to learn the rules. He
wanted to understand. Everything is new. Every day is an adventure. Bucks assistant general manager David Morway watched Giannis bite into
Morway's wife's homemade peanut butter bars and howl, "Ooooohhhh," as
his eyes grew wide as saucers.
"He had never tasted peanut butter in his life," Morway said. "Everything is a discovery for him. Everything is a first."
When Giannis walked outside Target to find a carriage for the armful
of frozen pizzas he was carrying – only to have store security descend
upon him – a fan interceded to explain the truth of an innocent mistake.
When Giannis went downtown to send money back home through Western
Union on a game day, he didn't want to bother his close friend,
assistant video coordinator Ross Geiger, for a ride to the gym. He had
sent the money in his pockets back home, so Giannis, wearing a
windbreaker, started running through the cold Milwaukee streets to reach
the arena.
A married couple recognized him, stopped to pick him up and drove Giannis the rest of the way to the Bradley Center.
"Giannis," Bucks GM John Hammond
explained to him later, "if you need a ride, you call someone here."
Hammond started listing team employees, and finally said, "If you need a
ride, call John Hammond!"
Giannis loves the interaction with people – meeting them everywhere –
and that inspired a most improbable jealousy with his older brother,
Thanasis. In the D-League, commercial air travel includes an exhausting
loop of layovers and connections, hours upon hours in airport terminals
to reach the minor league's remote locales. And bus rides, too. Hours
and hours of bus rides.
This
season, Giannis revealed to his older brother a measure of jealousy.
For everyone who loves the NBA travel life – chartered flights, lavish
food spreads on board, the true trappings of the rich and famous –
Giannis has found himself pining for the way Thanasis sees America in
the D-League.
"You can see people in the airport," Giannis told him. "You're lucky. We just come and leave. I never see anyone."
Sometimes, Antetokounmpo still can't believe he's here. Before few
else did, Saratsis, his agent, believed everything could happen so
quickly in the NBA. This time a year ago, general managers were offering
Saratsis – who was born in Greece, but grew up mostly in the States –
guarantees of selecting Giannis in the late second round to stow him
away for years in Europe before bringing him to an NBA roster.
Outside of Giannis' two Greek-based agents, Giorgos Dimitropoulos and
Giorgos Panou, Saratsis had watched Giannis more than anyone in NBA
front offices, and knew he had someone special. He never backed down and
slowly, surely, everyone else began to also understand. Eventually,
most league executives believed they had to get ahead of Atlanta with
the 17th overall pick to select Giannis.
What's more, most NBA teams
believed the Hawks had assured that spot to Saratsis as a ground floor
on draft night that Giannis would never fall below. These are common
verbal agreements reached in the draft process, and most teams had
believed Octagon had shut down Antetokounmpo's once he had a spot in the
top 20.
For this reason, teams believed, information had become scarce on
Giannis. As draft strategies go, a guarantee at No. 17 for Antetokounmpo
was a coup. As one league executive called his competition in Greece –
"YMCA level, playing against 35- and 40-year-old guys a lot of days," –
cynicism over his talent was inevitable.
Nevertheless,
Hammond had scouted Giannis for three consecutive days in Greece.
Seventy-two hours before the draft in late June, the Bucks GM had
decided: If Giannis reached Milwaukee at No. 15, Hammond was selecting
him. Toronto's president and general manager, Masai Ujiri, tried
frantically to find a deal to move into the top 15 and select Giannis,
but nothing materialized. In the end, here were the Bucks, choosing a
young player so naive to the sport – the business of professional
basketball – that until late spring of 2010, he had no idea of the NBA
draft concept until reading a newspaper story on John Wall's selection
as the No. 1 overall pick.
"I thought if the NBA saw you, they like you, they take you with them," Giannis says.
On a cold Wisconsin afternoon this winter, Antetokounmpo was watching
NBA highlights on a television over the restaurant bar near the
practice facility and talking about all the NBA stars he gets to play
night after night. LeBron James. Kevin Durant. Carmelo Anthony. In every way, this has been a season – a meteor – out of his wildest dreams.
"Hey, at beginning, Mike Dunleavy, he bust my ass!" Giannis exclaimed
between bites of a steak. Only once, he insisted, though. He studied
his tape, learned how to defend the Bulls forward and tried again. He's
learning everything here, faster than most ever projected.
Back inside his apartment, Giannis shows off his pool table ("I play
for respect, that's what I do!") and the personalized cue that his good
pal on the Bucks staff, Geiger, gave him as a Christmas gift. And once
his parents and brothers pushed through the red tape and made it to the
United States, he was glad to let his agent find him a new PlayStation
for his living room. Now, they're together for hours and hours, the
guilt washed away.
And when it was still so cold
this winter, the Greek Freak slid open the glass doors on his modest
apartment, snow beneath his feet, wind blowing through his Bucks hoodie
and thrust his arms out wide.
"Look at the water!" he says. "Look at the lake!"
On the worst team in the NBA, in
the most remote of NBA outposts, he still struggles to imagine such a
wonderful life. The most earnest young talent in the NBA is learning his
way, and once he begins to figure it all out, yes, the possibilities
are endless for Giannis Antetokounmpo.
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