Giannis

by Mirin Fader

  Giannis didn’t want credit. He just wanted to show his team that he cared for them. Because they were looking out for not just him but his entire family.

  It took him time to open up to his teammates. To trust them. Giannis didn’t ordinarily trust people outside his family. He was a Black migrant in a majority-white country. Police often patrolled, stopping immigrants. So he learned from a young age to keep things to himself. Keep quiet. Just in case. “He trusts maybe five to ten people, even now,” Gkikas says. “Some things build your character that you cannot get rid of as time goes by.” But “Giannis is not shy,” Veronica says, smiling. It takes her son time to figure out who is worthy of confiding in.

  Gkikas sensed that Giannis began to really trust him about a year into their friendship, when he’d give Kostas and Alex money, maybe five euros, to go to the Sepolia market to buy a yogurt, souvlaki, or a piece of fruit. Whatever they wanted. Gkikas would ask the younger two brothers to get him a Gatorade even though he didn’t need one. He just wanted to use the Gatorade as an excuse to get them to the market so that they could buy food for themselves.

  But Kostas and Alex took the trip to the market very seriously. They insisted on bringing back the change to Gkikas each time. They also made sure to bring him back the receipt, though Gkikas never asked for one. Kostas and Alex didn’t want Gkikas to think that they were taking advantage of him. “I just gave them money and said, ‘It’s yours,’” Gkikas says. “They were proud guys. They’d never accept this.”

  Gkikas didn’t care about their pride. He kept giving them whatever he had. He just didn’t want to see them go home from practice hungry. Especially little Alex. It tugged at Gkikas, seeing the look in Alex’s eyes when Alex would watch him eat.

  And Gkikas himself was not loaded with money. None of the teammates were. “We weren’t any rich guys,” Gkikas says. But he, along with Saloustros, Kamperidis, and other teammates and their families, would try to help as much as possible. They’d give the brothers their old Nike shoes or shirts or jerseys. “We understood their situation. We saw the brothers had the potential to become something great, but they were lacking the money to do it, so we were providing them with whatever we could so they could have a more decent lifestyle,” Gkikas says.

  Saloustros’s mother would sneak Giannis an extra banana or Gatorade before practice. “We were sharing everything that we have,” Saloustros says. “There was so much people looking out for him, not because everybody expected that he will become this that he is now, but because of his character and of him just being Giannis.”

  Kamperidis’s mother would make Giannis rice, which he loved, and pasta, with small cookies for dessert. Another favorite was soutzoukakia, a Greek baked-meatball dish. He and Kamperidis grew closer because they had similar personalities: both quiet, both grinders. Giannis began to confide in him about his family, about his fears. “We love each other,” Kamperidis says.

  The team didn’t help Giannis because they wanted something in return. “We are family,” Gkikas says. “He’s a human being; he needs something, and we’re going to give it to him. We did it from the bottom of our hearts. Nothing but love.

  “I speak for my teammates and I,” Gkikas continues. “Even if Giannis hadn’t made it to the NBA, we’d do it again.”

  When the team won games, they’d all go out to eat at a souvlaki tavern in Zografou and have souvlaki and gyros. Giannis loved the pita gyros koble with tzatziki, tomato, onions, and pork. He usually had two of them with Coke.

  But as much as his teammates and their families tried to help, it was never enough. Giannis would almost always give the food or money to his parents, his brothers. They were all still barely scraping by.

  * * *

  One afternoon, a kid named Rahman Rana walked into the Zografou gym. Velliniatis had found Rana, whose family is from Pakistan, on the street in a way similar to how he’d found Giannis. Velliniatis thought Rana had potential, given that he was six feet tall, and asked him if he’d be interested in playing for Filathlitikos. Rana thought he might as well give it a try.

  For some reason, though, Giannis and Rana hated each other that first practice. And the next couple of weeks of practice after that. They’d go at each other on the court, trash-talk each other. Rana knew Giannis was way better than him, which irritated him even more. But once they started talking, getting to know each other, along with another teammate, Andrian Nkwònia, who was Black, the trio became inseparable. They called themselves brothers.

  Rana and Giannis began to bond over shared experiences of racism.

  Rana remembers Giannis being called “Blackie.” And that some told him, “Go back to your country.”

  Rana was called “Paki.” Some told him, “You smell like garlic. You smell like shit.” “Go back to your country.” “Go eat some curry.”

  Rana would hear about schoolmates making fun of Giannis for selling with his mom in the streets. “People really treated him badly,” Rana says. “We were treated as second-class citizens. We were outsiders in society, so we bonded.”

  Rana was poor too. Like Giannis, he oftentimes came to practice hungry. Rana’s father had had a stroke at forty and couldn’t get a pension. His family was making about ten dollars a day. They had to portion out a small amount of food, just as Giannis’s family did, to last the duration of the day. Maybe a plate of rice. Sometimes his family sacrificed food to pay for electricity. Once Giannis saw that Rana’s situation was just like his, he felt like he could trust Rana. Open up to him.

  It would be a full year before Giannis told Rana about Francis, his brother still living in Nigeria. One day, it just came out. “You know, Thanasis isn’t the oldest,” Giannis told him. “We have a brother named Francis. He’s in Nigeria still.” Giannis wouldn’t talk about him much, wouldn’t explain further. Rana surmised that Francis was staying with Giannis’s grandparents for financial reasons but could never be sure.

  As they became closer, Rana invited Giannis over to his home, and Rana’s mom would share some spaghetti with salsa. But when Rana visited Giannis’s family’s apartment, he was shocked. He thought his own situation was difficult, but Giannis’s was worse. Rana saw two old, broken sofas, provided by the church as charity.

  “Let me show you my room,” Giannis told him. It was an empty room: just a sheet, a blanket, a bed, and his basketball medals. Giannis looked around at the bare walls, the empty space. Told Rana his dream was to have a TV one day and a chair to put on one side of the room. He’d buy a bunch of books too.

  And yet Veronica always found a way to fix a plate for Rana. Even if that meant she wouldn’t have any for herself. That was the way Giannis was with Rana too.

  “Are you hungry?” Giannis would ask him before practice, splitting the croissant he’d scrounged around for. “Eat—we have practice soon.”

  “He was such a nice person,” Rana says. “It was too much sacrificing. He was always making sure we were all OK and not starving like him.”

  When the two weren’t at practice, they’d take long walks around Sepolia. They’d talk about their dreams, if they could run away and live different lives. Giannis often said he wanted to play in Greek’s highest division, A1, or play for another team in EuroLeague. He wanted to emulate his favorite player, Greek legend Dimitris Diamantidis, who was a crafty, left-handed, pass-first playmaker and who is now the general manager of Panathinaikos.

  “Basketball was the only way Giannis could forget about everything happening in his life,” Rana says. “He told me when he plays, the problems are gone. And he’s happy.

  “Basketball gave him a reason for living,” Rana says.

  During their downtime, Giannis, Rana, and Nkwònia would explore the city, trying to take their minds off things. They hung out near the Acropolis. They once climbed Mount Lycabettus, the highest point in Athens, at about nine hundred feet above sea level. It was beautiful, peering out over the pine trees. The trio felt a sense of teamwork, having made it to the top
. There, they caught a glimpse of another life, a richer life: the nineteenth-century Chapel of Saint George, a large amphitheater where famous musicians played, including Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, and B.B. King.

  The trio took a photo together: baby-faced Giannis in a light blue polo throwing up a peace sign; Rana mean-mug smirking in a navy shirt; Nkwònia in a gray tee giving a serious look, eyes wide, pointing at the camera. They were trying to look cool, but deep down, “we were so happy,” Rana says.

  When Giannis was outside, with his friends, or on the court, he didn’t have to pretend that things were OK like he did at home. Smile when his parents asked him how he was. Tell the landlords who came knocking, “We’ll pay you later! We’re just waiting to get paid! We promise!” For a moment, he could forget about everything they were going through. Forget that oftentimes he wouldn’t eat his first meal of the day until 11:00 p.m.

  So he kept distracting himself, making sure he was always on the move. Another place they went after morning practices was Public, a technology store in Syntagma Square, the central square of Athens. The place was upscale, beautifully designed, with tables outside shielded by orange awnings. When Giannis and Rana walked in, they felt rich. Nice. Like they belonged somewhere that fancy. Nobody questioned them, asked why they were there.

  The store had an Xbox that they could play for free, for two, three hours. They’d play FIFA, their favorite, wishing they had an Xbox at home. But for those few hours, Public was home.

  They’d go anywhere to avoid being home.

  “He couldn’t stay in the house because he was really depressed,” Rana says. So Giannis and Rana would stay out late after practice and find a place to sit. Rana could tell that his friend was hurting, though he kept a lot of it inside. Until he couldn’t anymore. Giannis would finally allow his guard to come down and burst into tears.

  “I look at my mother,” Giannis would tell Rana in between sobs. “I see how she is. I see how hard she’s trying to get things for us, and I’m helpless. I cannot do anything. I feel destroyed.”

  Sometimes Thanasis would show up, finding the two on a bench, making sure they were OK. Safe. Thanasis would rub Giannis’s back, try to soothe him. “Don’t cry. Don’t shed tears for anyone,” Thanasis would say. “We will make it.”

  * * *

  Unnoticed, Giannis had started to sprout, to become a little taller, a little more coordinated. He had developed excellent court vision, watching EuroLeague games, soaking in the technical part of the game. He was still skinny, but he knew how to outsmart opponents. Plus, his arms were so long, his hands so big, he could always snatch the ball and go. He was so fluid dribbling the ball up court.

  He showed enough potential to be allowed to practice with the men’s team while still competing with the junior team. Tselios Konstantinos, who had left the team for a period of time, came back to find a completely different Giannis. Giannis was now playing thirty minutes a game.

  “Giannis? Giannis, this small guy?” Konstantinos said to Zivas, walking into the gym on his first day back.

  “Yeah, Giannis,” Zivas said, smiling. “He’s something.”

  Konstantinos couldn’t believe it. “I went to practice, and I saw him, and he was really, really tall. I said, ‘What the fuck? What happened?’”

  Some possessions, Giannis would do something spectacular: block a shot with his left hand, leap up court quicker than guards half his size. “He was really, really tall, and I think that moment, we all knew he would play,” Kordas says.

  Giannis would try to guard the best player in practice. And this time, he was having his way with guys. He was dictating the tempo. He was driving the ball to the basket strong. “Everybody was surprised,” Saloustros says.

  Giannis had worked and worked. And he was becoming more and more versatile. One day he’d be guarding the point guard; the next day he’d be guarding the center. He became a matchup problem. Teams tried to put peskier, smaller guards on him to disrupt him on the break or bigger bodies on him in the post to knock him around. But he held his ground more than he had in the past.

  “We didn’t even pay attention to him in the beginning,” says Trigas, the Panathinaikos U-18 assistant coach, “but then everything in the scouting report had to do with him.”

  Giannis started to gain some confidence. One day, Saloustros remembers Giannis telling him, “I’m going to get better. I’m going to be the best.” He meant it not in an arrogant way but in a determined, focused way. “He never stopped working,” Saloustros says.

  At one point, Giannis, Rana, and Nkwònia were supposed to attend a party. They were excited to meet some girls. The plan was to go after practice, but after practice ended, Giannis wanted to keep shooting. Rana asked why he wasn’t coming to the party as he’d agreed to.

  “When I play basketball, when I’m here,” Giannis told him, “practicing these moves, dunking, shooting, this is my girlfriend. I forget about girls. I forget about everything. I just don’t want to go.”

  “We thought he was weird,” Rana says. “But Giannis stayed for the next men’s practice even after his own workout.”

  Alex started to notice the shift in the way people talked about his big brother. “Giannis is amazing,” strangers would say to him as he’d be shooting around on the outside courts. Alex would laugh to himself. He has known that since he was little. To him, Giannis was practically a Greek god. “Me and Giannis were best friends,” Alex says. “It doesn’t get much closer than us.”

  Strangers began to compliment Alex on his own game. But Alex didn’t feel any more validated. Giannis had already told him that he was worthy since he had picked up a ball. Giannis was always encouraging his brothers, always teaching them. “We never really waited for somebody to tell us that we really have potential,” Alex says. “We all knew what each other could do because we compete with each other every day.”

  They didn’t know much about how good anyone else was, though, outside Greece. Giannis didn’t know much about American players at first. The NBA was some distant, abstract concept they had no way of knowing about. “We didn’t have internet,” Kostas says. “We couldn’t watch NBA games.”

  They didn’t know the names of any teams or players until people began to come up to them on the courts, telling them they reminded them of certain NBA players. Even legends. “You’re long like Julius Erving, Dr. J,” they’d say to Giannis. The brothers would nod, smile, say thank you, but then they’d look at each other, confused, no one wanting to say out loud what they were all thinking: Who’s Dr. J?

  After everyone left, they’d go find an internet café, somehow scramble together three euros to connect to the wireless internet for two hours, and search Dr. J. They’d watch highlights of him on YouTube. Soon, they started to find highlights of other players too, especially Allen Iverson.

  Giannis fell in love with Iverson. His crossovers, his passion. His intensity. The way he’d weave his smaller frame in and out of the paint. The way he’d dance with a defender, crossing the ball back and forth. “Kostas!” Giannis would say. “Look at AI! Look at what he’s doing! Man, nobody can guard this guy!”

  Kostas became obsessed with Iverson too. “We would go and just watch AI highlights every day,” Kostas says, laughing. “Every day. He was so small, and that’s what made us be like, ‘Yo, this guy is so small, and he still gets buckets? Nobody can stop him.’”

  But they didn’t want to just play like Iverson. They wanted to look like him too. One day, they came home and asked Veronica, “Mom, can you braid our hair like Allen Iverson? He plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.” Veronica laughed. Giannis and Kostas didn’t flinch. They were absolutely serious. And so, after a long day’s work, she braided their hair into cornrows.

  The more two-hour slots they could afford at the internet cafés, the more players they discovered. And they were mesmerized, finding LeBron James, watching him blend different positions, his athleticism allowing him to muscle through defenders to the basket.r />
  Finding Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant changed everything for Giannis, though. He wanted to be as creative as Kobe, as hardworking as Kobe; as versatile as Durant, as long as Durant. He began to idolize Durant especially, who was just budding into a star for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Giannis would study him every day after attending classes at 53rd High School in Sepolia.

  He’d practice Durant’s moves, especially dribble crossover pull-ups. “He’d do it at practice and call out [Durant’s] name,” says Kamperidis, who would often watch highlights with him.

  Then Giannis had a chance to see his hero in person. Durant visited Athens for a Nike event at the Mall Athens in August 2010. Two basketball courts were set up. A DJ blasted 50 Cent and Ne-Yo’s “Baby by Me” and Jim Jones’s “We Fly High” as Greek kids huddled around the courts, awed by Durant shooting threes. Giannis and his Filathlitikos teammates were in the crowd watching. Giannis was thrilled seeing Durant up close as Durant went around the court to high-five fans.

  Then, a few hours later, Giannis went to Zografou for practice. Right before training began, Giannis walked up to Coach Melas, looking excited. Almost giddy. Like he was about to burst. “Coach!” Giannis told Melas. “I’m going to become a new Durant. An NBA player. I will have my own signature shoe.”

  But he knew he had a ways to go. He wasn’t strong enough yet. He wasn’t talented enough yet. He believed he could be good one day. That’s why after the team had traveled to Crete for a road game and finished practicing, everyone left the court except Giannis.

  The team bus was pulling away when they noticed Giannis wasn’t there. Then they realized: he was still on the court, trying to master a move. He returned to the bus covered in sweat. They made him go shower, but Giannis didn’t care about showering. He just needed to get back on that court to master that move.

  * * *

  Giannis began to notice the way Rana hesitated during practice. He’d pass up a shot, play timidly. “I see potential in you. I see talent in you,” Giannis told him one day. “But you’re afraid to show it.”