Giannis

by Mirin Fader

  The next day, Giannis came up to Marks at the practice facility. “Hey, man, did you eat my Oreos?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, when I left, I had thirty Oreos, and I come back, and there’s three missing.”

  Marks didn’t know what to say. He was shocked that someone would count their Oreos. A millionaire NBA player who counted his Oreos, at that. But of course Giannis counted his Oreos. It didn’t matter that he had made the NBA. Inside him was still the child always conscious of food running out.

  * * *

  The first thing Robert Hackett noticed about Giannis was his skinny 196-pound frame. It seemed apparent to the Bucks’ strength-and-conditioning coach that the rookie wasn’t eating three full meals a day. To get to know each other better, the two went to the Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa to hang out. Hackett bought Giannis a chicken sandwich at the food court. Giannis devoured it in a couple of bites.

  “This is the best thing in the world!” Giannis said.

  Hackett laughed. “Dude, that’s not even really that good.”

  Giannis couldn’t believe that one sandwich was only five dollars. He bought two more. “Man, we can eat dinner off of this!”

  Hackett soon realized that he needed to make sure Giannis ate throughout the day. Load him up with strawberry protein shakes, his new favorite, and nutrition bars, making sure the rookie knew it was OK—more than OK—to eat throughout the day. Giannis struggled to put on weight at first because his body was still adjusting. He wasn’t used to eating that much or practicing at that intensity. He had never weight-lifted before, which was uncommon for a first-round NBA draft pick. Most prospects start weight lifting as early as freshman year of high school. “Everything was new to him,” Hackett says. “He was a sponge.”

  Hackett had to teach him the mechanics of weight lifting: where to put his hands, his fingers, on the ninety-pound bar to bench-press. Giannis couldn’t even bench-press the lowest amount at first, 130 pounds. The first attempt, he struggled to lift the bar. Hackett was right behind him, telling him to keep his balance on both sides, but the bar just trembled.

  Hackett taught him how to squat properly, without putting his knees over his feet. How to push his hips back. How to position his shoulders for the shoulder press. Giannis didn’t even know what a muscle-up was. Teammates Brandon Knight, Khris Middleton, and Chris Wright showed him, each completing five in a row. Giannis couldn’t get his chin over the bar, his feet still touching the floor. His teammates were laughing so hard as Giannis struggled, twitching. “He almost flipped over the bar,” Wright says. “He was just really uncoordinated, but you could just tell he was working at it so hard.”

  Hackett tried to teach the rookie patience: he wasn’t going to get stronger in one day. But Giannis wanted results now. He wanted to get bigger now. During fitness tests, like the foot-quickness test, Giannis would ask Hackett what the top mark was. He needed to beat it.

  He enjoyed spending all day working out. “He was possessed,” Hammond says. Giannis would lift his shirt up, parade around the facility, showing off. “Hey! I got abs!” (He had one ab.) He would also check himself out in the mirror after training sessions, looking at his pulsing biceps to see if they had increased in size. He’d flex his squiggly arms; then he’d turn back to his teammates to see if anyone was watching.

  “Watch! Watch!” Giannis would say to anyone in the room. “I’m going to get bigger!”

  * * *

  Giannis loved electronic dance music and artists like Avicii and Alesso, but his teammates introduced him to hip-hop, rap—Drake, Rick Ross. Pachulia, a fellow European, who hailed from Tbilisi, Georgia, wanted Giannis to broaden his taste. “Giannis, you were raised in Europe,” Pachulia said. “You should listen to house music.” Pachulia played him Calvin Harris. Giannis started dancing, shaking his shoulders, but the team shut it down. Back to hip-hop. In quiet moments, Pachulia would turn on house music and whisper to Giannis, “Giannis, it’s our time now.”

  Geiger would tell Giannis which songs were appropriate to sing in public and which were not. “He thought he could just sing whatever he wanted as loud as he wanted, dropping f-bombs,” Geiger says. Giannis enjoyed learning dance moves, practicing his Dougie in Cali Swag District’s “Teach Me How to Dougie.” The Bucks filmed Giannis dancing to Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” as the rookie ran his hands up and down his body, trying to look seductive. Giannis loved filming it. In between takes, he’d ask to redo certain moves. “You’ve done it five times,” said Geiger, watching. “How’s it going to get any better?” Giannis was a perfectionist—even in a music video.

  Giannis was starting to develop a sweet tooth. He could eat anything, and it would go right through him. He and Geiger would eat candy at the movies, which they frequented because they thought it would help Giannis with his English. (Giannis loved gangster movies; he liked to act tough in the parking lot after seeing them, walking around shouting, in his most menacing tone, “Yeah! Yeah!”) They’d get popcorn, and Giannis would open his mouth, waiting for Geiger to toss a kernel. “Hit me, Ross! Hit me!” Giannis would sip a red or blue Icee and have such a sugar high, cracking so many jokes, Geiger would have to settle him down. Geiger had to explain to him that one had to be quiet during movies.

  The two often ate at places that were open late after games, like Giannis’s two favorites: Applebee’s and the Cheesecake Factory (he considered Cheesecake his “fancy meal,” where he would get chocolate milkshakes). He fell in love with chocolate milkshakes and burgers. A true American meal.

  Riding to his beloved Walmart in a limo (yes, a limo) made him happy. So did the toy machine at Red Robin. He enjoyed maneuvering the crane for a stuffed animal in between his shake and burger. Giannis would always insist on splitting the bill, even if they ate at McDonald’s.

  Geiger took Giannis to the Cheesecake Factory for Giannis’s birthday. The waiter gave him a free slice of birthday cake. “Ross!” Giannis said, his smile growing wide, candles flickering in front of his eyes, “I think I got this because of my three magic letters: N-B-A!”

  Geiger started cracking up. “No, man, that’s like a customary thing. They give you a dessert on your birthday! They come sing at the table.”

  The first time Giannis went to Chipotle, he was astounded at the number of choices, the concept of putting so many items into one bundle. “I want everything,” Giannis told Geiger. Chicken, steak. Black beans, pinto beans. Guacamole. Cheese. He chose so many items that the server had to use two tortillas. It looked like a football, but in a matter of minutes, it was gone.

  Soon Giannis discovered chocolate custard. Costco’s pizza and hot dogs. He loved Costco; it’s where he had his infamous first smoothie, a dual mixed-berry $1.99 smoothie that was so good he tweeted, “I just taste for the first time a smoothie… MAN GOD BLESS AMERICA ”

  When Giannis had his first taste of peanut butter, trying out Bucks assistant general manager David Morway’s wife’s homemade peanut butter bars, he cooed, “Ooooohhhh” in delight. When Oppenheimer would order shrimp cocktails at dinner, Giannis would ask, “What is this? What are shrimps?” When shopping at grocery stores, Giannis would linger along the aisles, picking up item after item, just reading the labels, figuring out what everything meant.

  The first time he tried pancakes, he became obsessed. He had pancakes for ten days straight. The first time he tried an Auntie Anne’s pretzel at the Southridge Mall in Greendale, he thought it was the most delicious thing. He couldn’t get over that they made it right there, so quickly.

  People were starting to recognize him, walking around the mall with his pretzel. He was so delighted, so shy, he didn’t know what to say. He kept waving to people, so proud, thinking it was so cool to walk through Southridge.

  People in Milwaukee fell in love with Giannis. And he was easy to love: a big kid in a small city, fascinated with every new adventure.

  Giannis couldn’t get over the concept of a buffet—unlimited food for
a fixed price. The first time he saw one, Drew told him, “Get whatever you want.” Giannis put some food on his plate, some of which he didn’t even recognize.

  A few minutes after they sat down to eat, Giannis saw his coach get up and head back to the buffet. “Coach!” Giannis whispered to him, alarmed. “What are you doing? You can’t do that.”

  Drew looked at him strangely. “It’s a buffet. You can do that. You can go as many times as you want.”

  Giannis was taken aback. He felt the same when the team traveled to road games and he saw that there was food on the plane or in the hotel fridge. Or that a whole meal from Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, a Wisconsin staple, cost five dollars. Once, carrying a couple of frozen pizzas at Target, he went outside the store to find a basket before paying; security quickly stopped him. A fan kindly intervened, explaining Giannis’s mistake.

  The first time he got his check from the Bucks, he asked Butler, “How do I get them to not take taxes out?”

  Butler laughed. “Welcome to the NBA.”

  When Butler and Mayo went to a local furniture store and picked out nearly an entire apartment’s worth of furniture and had it delivered to Giannis, he was truly touched. The veterans who kicked his ass for a week straight to begin the season really cared about him. Were looking out for him.

  Giannis had to learn how to manage money. How to tip at restaurants. How to use AirDrop on his phone. And he had questions: Why did he have to pay taxes in America if he wasn’t American? Why was this street name so long? Milwaukee was his playground, and each day brought something exciting. Even something as small as learning that he could pause and rewind game film on a TV.

  “He was just shocked that this was his life now,” Wolters says.

  Before a game against the Jazz in Utah, Giannis’s coaches tried to explain to him that he might get tired because of the altitude. “Don’t panic,” they told him. “Your body will figure it out.”

  But Giannis had to see it for himself. After pregame shooting, he walked up to Oppenheimer. “Coach,” Giannis said. “I want to see altitude!” Giannis then sprinted to the top of the stands. Stood there for five minutes, waiting for something to happen, to seize him.

  One practice, Cody Ross, the video coordinator, remembers Giannis coming up to him and Oppenheimer, saying, “Guys, I need a haircut. I want a haircut like Cody.” Ross’s brown hair was always either smoothed back perfectly or freshly buzz-cut. Giannis wanted Ross’s best look: a low fade. “He was so concerned with having a cool American haircut,” Ross says. So he went to Gee’s Clippers, a Milwaukee haven for hoop heads, which gave him his first cut.

  Giannis became close with Bucks assistant coach Nick Van Exel. They’d trash-talk each other. “You’re too small!” Giannis would say. At first he didn’t know who Van Exel, a storied point guard, was. Then he googled, came back to practice the next day, looked at Van Exel, and said, “Ah-ha! Ah-ha! Oh, I know. I know.”

  Van Exel started laughing. “What do you know?”

  “I know, Nick. Nick the Quick! Nick the Quick! Nick the Quick!” Giannis couldn’t stop repeating Van Exel’s nickname, proud of himself.

  Giannis was eager to complete rookie duties. Butler would ask him to fetch some Mountain Dew or McDonald’s. “That was something just to keep him humble,” Butler says. “But honestly we didn’t have to humble him because he never took anything for granted.” He happily did the chores, like it was a big deal that Sanders entrusted him to get Dunkin’ Donuts for him at 6:30 a.m. before practice. Or when Ridnour asked him to get muffins or drop off laundry to teammates’ rooms on the road.

  Butler, who was turning into a mentor, kept him on his toes. After Giannis played well against the Nets, in front of a large crowd of Greek Americans, he received a standing ovation. Butler looked at the rookie, checking to see how he handled the praise. Yup, rook’s feeling himself a little too much, Butler thought.

  Afterward, teammates took Giannis out to a nightclub. Giannis thought they were celebrating his great performance, but Butler’s birthday was coming up, and the veteran had one wish: to humble the rookie. Butler asked Giannis to drop and give him thirty-some push-ups in front of everyone in the club—one for every year of Butler’s birthday.

  Giannis didn’t flinch. He dropped to the floor, his chest rising and falling with every push-up. Everyone was laughing at him, including women nearby, but Giannis wasn’t bothered. “If you asked him to run through a brick wall,” Butler says, “he would really do it.”

  Giannis was respectful of elders. He would call everyone Mister: Mr. Luke. Mr. John. Mr. Larry. He kept his locker clean and organized, taking pride in how it looked. “Everything he did, he did it with a level of enthusiasm that I haven’t seen,” says Bob Bender, Bucks assistant coach that season.

  Most rookies would balk at being sent to freezing Milwaukee; Giannis loved it. He was grateful for this dream world where Skip Robinson, then Bucks vice president of community relations and player development, would pick him up in his Escalade. “Skip, this is niiiiice,” Giannis said the first time riding in Robinson’s car.

  Giannis seemed to always be smiling. Hammond came up to him one afternoon and told him his smile reminded him of a certain legend. “Giannis, you know Magic Johnson? You know one of his greatest attributes?”

  Giannis had seen highlights of Johnson, had wanted to model his game after him, but he didn’t really know much about him. So Giannis nodded when Hammond asked him about Johnson’s best attribute but didn’t truly know the answer.

  “It’s not his dribble. It’s not his no-look pass,” Hammond continued. “It’s not his hook shot. It may not even be the championships. It’s his smile. Giannis, you got that. You got that warm smile. Keep that smile.”

  There was an innocence to Giannis. A naivete. A goofiness, a sweetness. Much of what he said, did, was hilarious. When he learned to do a bicep curl, Reinke, the former team attendant, would be in the locker room with him, and he’d say, “Giannis, getting those muscles all big! You getting big for the women?”

  “Oh yes!” Giannis said. “Very big biceps! The women love the biceps!”

  Then he realized curls rhymed with girls, and a new saying was born. “Curls for the girls! Curls for the girls! The girls love the curls!” he’d say while looking at himself in the mirror doing bicep curls.

  Another time, teammates called Giannis over for a cameo in a team video that would play on the jumbotron. They gave him a foam finger as a prop to use. “Giannis,” Oppenheimer screamed, “stick it up your nose!” Giannis tried to stick the foam finger up his nose, and when he tickled his nose with it, he giggled so hard he fell over against the wall. So did Oppenheimer.

  Giannis was warm with whoever he encountered. On planes, when his teammates would sleep or have headphones on, Giannis would always be talking to the flight attendants, asking them about their day. “Flight attendants loved him,” Wolters says. “He just makes people feel good. People gravitate towards him.”

  When the Bucks played the Grizzlies, there was a Bucks poster of him that said “Greek and Still Growing.” Giannis stared at the photo of himself on the poster. “Let me see—I think I am very handsome!” he mused. When he picked up a technical foul against Toronto and realized the tech came with a hefty fine, he ran to the referee and begged him to take it back.

  Fans started calling him adorable. He would deepen his voice during an interview, letting them know he had to use his deep voice, his serious voice, because they were filming. He became an internet sensation. A social media darling. “His naiveté and willingness to be forthcoming about how exciting new experiences are for him have turned him into a mix between an athletic marvel and a cat meme,” a local writer told ESPN in 2014.

  Kurt Leitinger, longtime fan and Milwaukee native, loved Giannis so much he named his car, a GMC Sierra 1500, Giannis. “I even had it lifted so it sits right around six foot eleven to seven feet tall and got ‘Giannis’ on my license plate.” He remembers a fan accou
nt on Twitter, @GreekFreakAlert, that would notify fans when Giannis checked into the game. “He made jaw-dropping plays where you couldn’t help but think, That’s not normal. That’s special,” Leitinger says. “Bucks fans believed in him right away.”

  As Giannis’s fame grew, he encountered more and more fans, more and more requests. But when asked to do a one-on-one interview with local reporters, he’d often ask the Bucks PR team, “Why do they want to talk to me?”

  He was sweet to those he knew. When Melissa Mangan, a strength-and-conditioning intern whom fellow interns suspected Giannis had a crush on, made a protein shake for Giannis, he was so touched he politely asked her if it would be OK if he followed her on Twitter.

  A couple of interns, including Mangan, would mix the powder Gatorade together for the team before games and would have players test to see if it was too sweet. It turned into a competition to see who could mix the Gatorade best.

  Giannis always wanted to be the tester, taking pride in the task. He was serious about the technique: one had to stir it perfectly because it’s a big gallon of powder and water and ice, and the ratio of flavor, mainly grape, had to be just right. He would take a sip, put his pinky up, pretending to be fancy, cracking everyone up, telling everyone the qualities he liked and didn’t like from each creation. “Ohhhhhh, this one is a little too sweet!” he’d say.

  He’d somehow always pick Mangan’s. “He’d say it before even trying it,” she says. It got to the point where they made him do a blind taste test, with a blindfold over his eyes, so he wouldn’t automatically pick hers. He was so tickled with himself when he settled on the right mixture that he’d run, cup in hand, to Middleton. “Khris! You have to try this! It is sooooo good. Try this one!”

  You couldn’t not like him. Unless you found him annoying, as kid brothers can be. One afternoon, some players were eating lunch at the practice facility, and despite not having played many minutes at that point in the season, Giannis came in and said, “I’m the Greek Freak! I’m Giannis! Someday I’m going to be the best in the league!” Miroslav Raduljica, a center from Serbia, reading a book, looked pissed. “This kid is so fucking annoying,” Raduljica said under his breath.