by Mirin Fader
The coaches weren’t as impressed with Rana. They thought he was a nice kid but didn’t have much of a future in basketball. Rana always seemed to be afraid of everything. “I didn’t believe in myself,” Rana says. Yet Giannis continued to ask the coaches to put Rana in the game more. He really believed in his friend.
“You’re a great player, but you don’t enjoy the game,” Giannis told Rana. “If you don’t enjoy it, you can’t be successful. Play it because you love it.”
Rana was surprised. Why does Giannis sound so much older than he is? he thought. That’s when Rana wanted to be like Giannis. He saw the ease with which Giannis talked to girls. Rana was the opposite: shy and anxious. His legs would even wobble. He felt like he was the ugliest boy in Athens. Giannis could read his friend’s moods, knowing when he was spiraling into self-loathing.
“Have you looked at yourself!” Giannis told him one day. “Bro, you’re more attractive than me!”
Rana shook his head. “No, I’m not, bro.”
“Look at you! You have good hair. Let’s go. Let’s go and talk to this girl. You will see: no one thinks you’re ugly.”
So Giannis went up to a couple of girls, with Rana by his side, and said to them, “Isn’t this guy attractive?”
Giannis even helped Rana get over his fear of swimming. “You won’t drown. I’m here for you,” Giannis told him, taking his friend’s hand and slowly bringing him into the water at Kavouri, a tranquil beach in Vouliagmeni, a prestigious seaside suburb south of Athens. Giannis wanted to show his friend that if he tried something new, he wouldn’t fail. He might even have fun. “He was just always there for me,” Rana says.
That’s what Giannis did. Giannis recognized Rana was going hungry, as he often was. One day, Giannis took Rana to his church because they’d often have free meals downstairs for kids who couldn’t afford them, plus games for kids to play. Rana protested at first. He wasn’t sure if he would be allowed inside, since he’s Muslim.
“Why? Just come!” Giannis said. “We won’t go pray; we will just go get some food. I’ll tell the priest you’re a Christian, and you can get free souvlaki.”
“OK. Fine,” Rana said.
The two were downstairs in the church, playing Ping-Pong, when the priest walked up to them and said to Rana, “Hello. Where are you from, sir?”
Rana started to panic; his legs started to shake. He was trying to find the words but couldn’t. Giannis jumped in. “Oh, he’s from here! He’s poor too! He’s humble! He’s a Christian! A really good Christian!”
Rana contemplated whether he should come clean and tell the priest the truth, but the priest kept nodding.
“OK,” the priest said. “I’ll go bring some souvlaki.”
Giannis smiled, and the two boys waited until the priest was gone before they burst out laughing. “See, bro?” Giannis told Rana. “You gotta trust me.”
* * *
Giannis and his family moved into a semibasement apartment in a nondescript tan stucco building at the intersection of 46 Christomanou and Dodonis, in the heart of Sepolia. The apartment had shuttered windows high on the wall near the apartment ceiling, peeking out above grade, with a perfect view of the sidewalk.
The landlord, Dimitrios Katifelis, mostly rented to Greek college students and immigrants who primarily came from African countries, as well as from Bulgaria and Albania.
Katifelis signed a lease with Charles and Veronica on July 29, 2009. The rent was €250 a month. A few months later, an Athens-based lawyer named Panos Prokos received a call from Katifelis saying that Charles was late in his rent payments.
Prokos recalls he sent Charles a letter in a strict lawyerly tone that he needed to honor his contractual obligations. In response, Veronica called Prokos and asked if she and Charles could stop by his office.
Veronica impressed Prokos with her composure. “Not that Charles was not serious—it’s just that it was obvious that she was the family’s matriarch,” Prokos says.
Charles was friendly, polite—smiling, even—very much the backbone of the family, but it seemed clear to Prokos that Charles was grounded by Veronica. They asked Prokos to communicate to Katifelis that he needed to be patient, that they worked the street markets and, at the time, were not having much luck selling and therefore didn’t have much income. Veronica told Prokos she had four boys to support, something Prokos and Katifelis hadn’t known.
Prokos relayed the information back to Katifelis, and Katifelis agreed to wait until the family could gain some income that would enable them to pay the rent. But the wait was long—and painful—for everyone involved: they struggled to pay rent or paid late until September 2010, when Katifelis had no choice but to call the family again. They owed part of June’s rent, as well as July’s, August’s, and September’s. Katifelis had unsuccessfully called several times, but the Antetokounmpos didn’t pick up.
Prokos now issued a legal demand calling for Charles to fulfill his financial obligations. A couple of days later, Charles and Veronica came to see Prokos again. They again told him about their struggles to make ends meet. Prokos was empathetic—Charles and Veronica seemed like they were trying their hardest and wanted badly to get back on track with payments.
Veronica was working harder than ever. Sometimes she’d come home from working so tired, feeling so weak, but she would still wash her boys’ socks that were soaked from practice because none of them had a spare pair. But she tried not to show them her fatigue; she wanted to be happy—or rather, she wanted her boys to remember her that way. She wanted them to develop happy memories, conscious of the way kids will remember hardships.
Months passed, and the family got back on track making their rent, albeit with great difficulty. Until another drought: September 2011, when they were three months past due in rent. Katifelis asked Prokos to send a second demand, and this time, Veronica brought Thanasis, nineteen, and Giannis, sixteen. Charles couldn’t make it because he was working.
Prokos could tell the boys were athletes, but what impressed him was their positive attitude. How well they spoke Greek. How polite they were. “They were serious, disciplined, respectful kids,” Prokos says. “They knew exactly what they wanted from life.” Thanasis and Giannis told Prokos that they wanted to receive Greek citizenship; they went to a Greek school, and their friends were Greek. They felt Greek in every way. And they loved basketball.
They told Prokos how they helped the family sell. Thanasis told Prokos that he was fit enough to be able to run away from cops should they raid their permitless outdoor market on the sidewalks of Athens, because at times they sold in illegal outdoor markets. Giannis told Prokos the one thing he couldn’t stand was having trouble falling asleep because of the constant rumbling of his empty stomach at night.
“I was really moved,” Prokos says. “I saw two young men, obviously blessed by nature, mature, respectable, who deserved an opportunity.”
Prokos allowed the family more time to make their payments. Allowed the family grace when few would extend that to them. But Prokos maintains his role was minimal. “I do not wish to make a big deal out of it,” he says. “It was my very small gift to Giannis, who had moved me. It was so that his stomach stopped aching from hunger.”
Katifelis was compelled to help for similar reasons. “We did what we could for them,” Katifelis says. “We weren’t rich; we didn’t have lots of money. But they were good people,” he says.
Katifelis and Prokos were not the only strangers who looked out for Giannis and his brothers. A Greek woman named Marietta Sgourdeou, a respected actress who often performed at Stathmos Theater in Athens, was someone the boys affectionately referred to as their “godmom.”
She’d allow the boys to come to her home in Glyfada, a suburb of Athens by the sea, and she’d sometimes cook for them. Giannis’s friends and teammates aren’t sure how the boys met Sgourdeou but remember them going to her home often. She became close to the family. She introduced the boys to a world of music and liter
ature, taking them to a concert by the famous composer Mikis Theodorakis, where they met Maria Hors. Hors was a legendary choreographer for the Olympic lighting ceremony. She performed at the very first televised Olympics in 1936.
Thanasis and Giannis were introduced to Greek culture, ancient drama. Books like The Brothers Karamazov, the 1880 novel by Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky. But Sgourdeou’s kindness extended beyond the boys. When Giannis brought Rana to her house one time, she cooked a hot meal for him too, realizing that he was also in need. Neither boy had eaten all day.
“She was the nicest woman I’ve ever seen,” Rana says. “She gave Giannis a lot of love. I was like, how is a white Greek woman a godmother of Giannis? How is that possible? Who would do this for us, especially people in the Black community? I couldn’t believe it.”
* * *
Giannis Tzikas, an older gray-haired man with black-rimmed glasses, used to see Giannis and his brothers walk down Dirrachiou Street, where Tzikas’s café, Kivotos Café, was (and still is) located. It’s a narrow street with midrise buildings, cafés, and shops, including clothing stores, electronics stores, hair salons, and bakeries. Kivotos sits at the sharp tree-clad corner where Dirrachiou and Dramas come together.
Tzikas noticed how the boys never traveled alone. They were always together. They were always cracking jokes, play-fighting in the street.
Tzikas could tell by their clothes they didn’t have much. He became curious about them, especially after the brothers started saying “hello” and “good morning” and nodding to him as they passed by.
One day, Giannis took his brothers inside Kivotos, which means “ark” in Greek. It’s a beautiful place, with a brown picket fence enclosing outdoor tables that sit under a white canopy, shielded from the Greek sun. Large picture windows surround the café, opening up to a dark-wood bar inside.
The walls inside are adorned with Greek national-team photos—so many that the white paint of the walls can hardly be seen. Four basketballs sit above a cabinet. Tzikas is a huge basketball fan.
“Do you guys play basketball?” Tzikas asked the boys that day.
They nodded. Alex was a giveaway, though: he was carrying a basketball at his hip. “The basketball was always bigger than him,” says Tzikas, now sixty-six, as his daughter, Maria Drimpa, translates for him inside the café he has now owned for more than twenty years.
Now there are framed pictures of Giannis’s NBA jerseys. His number 13 Greek national-team jersey. His 2018 NBA All-Star jersey. A black-and-white bust of Giannis’s face sits above a row of liquor bottles. Nearby are more photos: Veronica smiling, sitting in a red car in 2015. Giannis wearing his white-and-blue “Hellas” Greek national-team shooting shirt and putting his arm around Tzikas in 2014. Giannis reaching to grab Tzikas’s hand after a national-team game from 2018.
They are family now. But back then, Tzikas just saw four boys in need. As Tzikas got to know the boys better, he saw how polite they were. How they always said thank you. Tzikas gave the boys sandwiches, bananas, apples, and water. Sometimes he’d fix them fresh fruit juice or their favorite: a strawberry milkshake.
He was drawn to them because his own father came from a poor family. “I know how it is to be hungry,” Tzikas says.
White Greeks began to notice how much Tzikas was helping the family. And they weren’t happy about it. “Some people said to me, ‘Why are you feeding the Black kids?’” Tzikas says.
He would hear people on the street say, as the boys walked by, “Look at these Black boys.” Giannis would keep walking. Wouldn’t talk about it. What was there to say? He was just trying to survive. He put a smile on his face as if he didn’t hear it.
“There is a lot of racists,” Tzikas says. “Racism made things difficult here.” But Tzikas was different. “I didn’t care about their color.”
One day, the boys asked Tzikas if they could work at his café. They needed money. Things at home were getting worse. “We were at a really low point,” Alex says. “As a family, our thing is, you gotta work for your stuff. And you gotta explore every option before you ask somebody. So if you ever see me or any of my family go ask somebody for something, that means we’ve done everything we possibly could to get that thing, but we just can’t. We’re truly in need. We don’t just want that thing; we need it.”
Tzikas told them no, they could not work there, but he’d help out with food if they went to practice more regularly. He told Giannis to practice hard. He saw a future in him. “You’re going to be a basketball player,” Tzikas told him.
Tzikas knew there wasn’t much of an alternative. “If Giannis worked here, he would quit basketball,” Tzikas says. “And I didn’t want this.”
They were thankful that Tzikas cared. He had no reason to, other than the goodness of his heart. “We were blessed to be around someone like that,” Alex says. “To this day, he says to us, ‘Man, I wish I could have helped out more.’”
One memory makes Tzikas smile.
One day, Tzikas’s wife, Katerina Drimpa, told Giannis to come and take a picture inside the café. “When you grow up,” she said, “you will be a big basketball player, and you will forget us.”
Giannis just stared at her, blankly, almost hurt at the possibility.
“No,” he said. “Wherever I go, I will never forget you.”
* * *
Giannis continued to frequent internet cafés, watching videos of NBA highlights with voice-overs of motivational speeches about not making excuses, about working hard, such as “Inch by Inch.” Highlights of NBA superstars flashed across the screen, and Giannis was in awe.
Dwyane Wade driving to the hoop.
“Inch by inch, play by play, till we’re finished,” the voice of Tony D’Amato, Al Pacino’s character in Any Given Sunday, said. “We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. We can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back.”
Kobe Bryant closing his eyes before a game… Kevin Garnett pounding his chest.
“Life’s this game of inches; the margin of error is so small that you won’t quite make it.”
Then he’d watch another video, called “Don’t Stop Until You Succeed.” There were Durant and LeBron, running on treadmills while carrying medicine balls.
“When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.”
Giannis started to let himself dream. Really dream. He had to transform himself into the players on that screen. He didn’t know much about who they were, but he knew he wanted to be them. Run faster than them. Outplay them. Be there. In America.
The NBA was no longer some abstract concept. It became everything to him. All he thought about, besides helping his family. Once, Saloustros remembers, while Giannis was watching NBA highlights, Giannis pointed to a Chicago Bulls uniform and told his friend, “You see that jersey?”
“Yeah,” Saloustros said.
“One day, I’m going to be wearing one of those jerseys in the NBA.”
On another occasion, Giannis pointed to the Greek national-team uniform, telling Saloustros, “You see that jersey? I will wear it. This jersey will read ‘Antetokounmpo’ on the back of it.”
Saloustros laughs remembering this. This confidence brewing in his friend. It wasn’t loud; it wasn’t cocky. It was a quiet assuredness. And it often came out during practice, when Giannis would compliment the shoes of his teammates, especially when the new Kobes came out. “Nice shoes,” Giannis would tell his teammates. Then Giannis would whisper to Saloustros, “I’m going to have many of these one day. Don’t worry. Trust me.”
Around this time, NBA player Josh Smith came to Greece, and Giannis saw him and asked for an autograph. He saw how huge Smith was up close. He knew he couldn’t compete with him. Not yet, at least.
Then Kobe came to Greece. There was so much buzz around his arrival. Giannis was with Velliniatis at the time, looking through Kobe’s highlights. His up-fakes. His baseline jumpers. His turnaround fadeaways.
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“How much money does Kobe make?” Giannis asked Velliniatis.
“Maybe around twenty-five million a year,” Velliniatis said.
Giannis thought of how much he and his family were struggling. I gotta make it to the NBA. I gotta try to make as much money as Kobe made. But deep down, he didn’t know if he would make it.
* * *
When Giannis started dreaming, his brothers started dreaming. It was like Giannis coming up with the vision gave them permission to let their minds wander. Let wishes, wants, come in. Alex and Kostas began to demand more out of each other. They saw how disappointed Giannis would be in himself when he lost games. How Giannis would ask Melas, the assistant coach, for his statistics after the game and ask how he could perform better. The next day, they’d watch the game and discuss how he could improve his defense, his shot blocking.
“Giannis was always defending the best player of the opponent,” Melas says. “He didn’t like sitting on the bench. He was always asking for more playing time. He would get vocal, almost coaching sometimes.”
That competitiveness rubbed off on his brothers. They became hungry as well. They all started waking up early and watching the NBA games. Giannis told them it was their dream—not just his dream. It would be Thanasis’s dream. Kostas’s dream. Alex’s dream.
If he could make it, they all would make it. Charles told Giannis and Thanasis that often: “Take care of your brothers. Whatever you do, take care of your brothers.” The boys took in every word Charles said. Would feel pride on the occasions he wasn’t working and could come to their games. He’d cheer them on so enthusiastically, especially little Alex, when he’d yell, “Go, Alex, go!”
Charles was surprised Alex started taking basketball as seriously as his older brothers. He was so young, and his body looked nothing like his brothers’. But when Alex told his father he was really trying to be good at basketball, he gave him a nod of approval. “Give it all you’ve got!” Charles told him.
The boys would look at other kids funny when they told them that they just played for fun. “We’d be like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s cool. We play basketball for fun too, but we play basketball for much, much bigger reasons,’” Alex says.