Giannis

by Mirin Fader

  Giannis constantly talked about his brothers with his teammates—how good they could be, how much they motivated him. And he’d always bring them to practices. Afterward, they’d all work out, with Giannis shuffling his brothers through drills. Every cut was hard; every pass was crisp. “This is how hard you need to work,” Giannis would tell them, demonstrating a move. “Like this.”

  Then they’d play two-on-two or three-on-three with anyone left in the gym. Alex was a chucker. Some might even say a ball hog. He’d launch from thirty-five feet, no hesitation. Kostas, who had made varsity at Dominican, was more thoughtful with his decisions. He saw how seriously Giannis (and Thanasis) approached the game and knew he was next in line. He had to focus. But in these games, the only rule was to have fun. They’d laugh and laugh. Almost as if they were back in Sepolia, just without the eleven-foot gate, without the bloody cuts.

  Hammond gave each member of the family a key to the gym. Oftentimes, Veronica would be in the gym, around eleven o’clock at night, passing the ball to Giannis. She’d grab the ball out of the rim, pass it to him, over and over.

  She’d watch him lift weights, watch him run suicides. Giannis needed her there, but she needed him too. Giannis became the decision maker of the family. Even though Charles was still head of the household, Giannis now understood American bills and taxes in ways his dad did not. Giannis would sit at the dining room table, sifting through documents, keeping tabs on how much they spent or owed. He would check on his brothers’ grades at their schools. He wanted to make sure everyone felt OK.

  For the first time in a while, he felt OK. Grounded. He finally bought a new PlayStation.

  * * *

  Alex was very mindful of money. Even though he was receiving a private school education and Giannis assured him the family had more than enough money, Alex couldn’t shake flashbacks to Sepolia. He weighed every purchase, trying to ensure he was getting the best deal. Kostas was still that way too. “Our biggest pet peeve,” Alex says, “is, Why get it if you don’t really need it?”

  He was amazed how quickly his classmates would decide they wanted to buy clothes or shoes at the mall and then just buy them. “It was crazy,” he says. “The biggest jump in social class ever,” referring to his family’s changed circumstances in America. One of his new friends had a full basketball court in his backyard. “How can one country have one or two courts in the whole area and then in the US somebody can have a court at his house? You don’t see that in Greece. At all.”

  What if we all went to sleep and woke up and we were back where we started?

  The brothers would continue to say the phrase to each other, laughing, thinking of how far they had come. But that fear, lurking just beneath the surface, persisted. The phrase motivated them, especially Giannis. If he messed up, if he didn’t perform up to standard, everything his family had gained would be gone.

  “Whatever is given to you can also be taken away from you,” he’d remind his brothers. They felt that feeling of impermanence acutely. “We didn’t feel secure yet,” Alex says. In some ways, they hadn’t left Sepolia.

  * * *

  Giannis found that playing for an awful team had its perks: he got to play more and more minutes, breaking into the starting lineup here and there. When he found out that he had been selected to play in the Rising Stars Challenge at the upcoming 2014 All-Star Weekend in New Orleans, he glowed.

  “You’ve been smiling since you walked in,” said Jim Paschke, longtime Bucks television broadcaster, standing on the Bradley Center baseline with Giannis. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

  “It’s very fun,” Giannis told him. “I’m very happy.” With 21 starts, and averages of 6.9 points and 4.5 rebounds (third among rookies), he was more productive than anyone could have anticipated. “I’m ready to go against the big guys,” Giannis told Paschke that day, referring to Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard.

  Giannis ended up scoring nine points with two rebounds and two assists in seventeen minutes, including a miraculous sequence where he needed just two dribbles to get from one free throw line to the other, finishing with a double-clutch reverse dunk.

  But he remained on the bench for most of the game. “He was considered, out of the players that we had, maybe the tenth or eleventh guy,” says Nate McMillan, his coach for the game. McMillan thought Giannis had a great deal of potential. He noticed the way Giannis was full-court pressing, denying, every second he was on the court, never taking a second off. But teammate Andre Drummond happened to be playing very well that night.

  Sitting on the bench, watching, Giannis grew more upset. Finally, he decided to speak up in the second half of the game. Not in a disrespectful way but in an earnest tone. “Coach,” Giannis said, reaching over to McMillan, “what about me?”

  McMillan was surprised. “I was focused on winning the game,” McMillan says. “I had lost track of substitution.” Giannis then played a bit more, but not much. After the game, Giannis told McMillan, “I’ll be back.”

  Giannis was practically seething when he told Oppenheimer what had happened. “Coach, I will never forget Nate McMillan,” Giannis said. “He will pay for this.”

  Oppenheimer laughed. “Pay for what?”

  “He did it on purpose. He tried to embarrass me.”

  That was Giannis: remembering every slight, every comment. He still felt like he had so much to prove. Not just at this game but in the NBA. The world. He was conscious that Dario Šarić had been considered a better player than him. He was conscious that the Knicks were rumored to not have sent a scout to see him in Zografou the year before. “He took things so personal,” Oppenheimer says. “He stored them as fuel. I really believe he had people, things, in his mind that were really important for him to conquer.”

  But he was also grateful that he was even in the position he was in. Alongside fellow rookie Steven Adams, Giannis served as co-coach in a pickup game for international media members the final day of All-Star Weekend.

  Giannis walked into the pickup game bright, energetic, at 9:00 a.m.—not hungover like many other young players participating in their first All-Star Weekend. He walked up to all the international reporters, asking where they were from, spending five, ten, minutes with each. He’d ask if they’d been to this city, that beach. “He made us feel comfortable,” says Antonio Gil, a reporter based out of Madrid, Spain.

  Gil was on Giannis’s team but didn’t help much: he was ice cold from the field. “You’re a Spanish guy!” Giannis called out to him. “You’re supposed to go out there and shoot!” They both cracked up. Gil continued to miss, and they lost.

  * * *

  The next week, in late February, Giannis purchased his first car: a used black GMC Yukon truck. He insisted on buying a used car; he couldn’t stomach buying a new one. Ridnour, the Bucks point guard, tried to explain to him that he didn’t have to pay a dime and that players could get free cars from certain dealers.

  “They do that?” Giannis asked Ridnour. “They will give me one? For free?”

  No matter how many times Ridnour assured him, he couldn’t be convinced. “He was just so innocent to what you can get in the NBA,” Ridnour says. “Free cars, free cell phones. He didn’t know about any of that stuff. He was just ready to hoop.”

  Giannis brought Geiger to pick up the Yukon. Given that it was a special day, he wanted his best friend there with him. The two posed for a picture in front of the truck, Giannis wearing a white Nike hoodie and black sweatpants, clutching the key, smiling wide, and Geiger wearing a black Bucks sweat suit, reaching up to rest his fist on Giannis’s shoulder. “I followed him on his first drive home alone,” Geiger says, laughing, “which I was a bit worried about.”

  He wasn’t the only one with reservations. A few weeks earlier, Giannis’s family had hesitated to get in the car with him. They were accustomed to taking buses most places. “I was scared,” Alex says. Charles was the first to ride with Giannis. Giannis was eager to show his dad he was a good driver. G
eiger went with them, because Giannis had only his learner’s permit, and if there was an accident, Geiger wasn’t sure what kind of documents Charles would need. They drove around the Saint Francis area, and Giannis made sure to turn on his indicator this time around.

  Giannis was ecstatic when he finally got his license. “Excited as any sixteen-year-old would be,” Oppenheimer says. Giannis was so proud of himself he even bragged to a reporter, “I got my license already. Yeaaaaah! First try! Come on, man! Talk to me!” Horst, Dean, Hammond, Morway, and Geiger all beamed as if Giannis was one of their own. “It took a village to teach this guy how to drive,” Hammond says.

  About a month later, Giannis insisted on driving Geiger to an electronic dance music concert. Now that he had his license, he always wanted to be the designated driver. Deorro was playing at the Rave, a multihall concert venue in Milwaukee, on a Saturday night, and Geiger had tickets. “You don’t have to be out in the mosh pit with the other kids,” Geiger told him. “We can just go check it out. If you don’t like it, we can leave.”

  Giannis had never been to a concert before, but he loved EDM. “Oh, I know this beat,” Giannis would often say when driving with Geiger, predicting the song within seconds. “This is the music they play in Mykonos. One day, me and you are going to go to Mykonos.”

  Giannis agreed to see Deorro but told Geiger he had one reservation: “I have to ask my mom.”

  Geiger laughed. An NBA player asking his mom? Really?

  Really. Veronica still struggled to trust people, but she said yes this time. Giannis called Geiger immediately with the news: “Ross! I can go to the concert! We’re going to the concert! She said yes!”

  Giannis arrived at Geiger’s place in a crisply ironed button-down shirt with nice jeans, a fresh pair of Nikes, and plastic glasses. It was the first time Geiger saw him in something other than sweatpants. “Dude,” Geiger said to him, “we’re not meeting up with anyone here.” Geiger could tell Giannis put a lot of thought into every detail of the outfit. “You would have thought I said, ‘Hey, we’re going on a double date; I know these girls that want to meet us,’” Geiger says.

  About halfway to the Rave, Giannis turned to Geiger in the car. “Man, this is big. This is big!”

  “What? That you’re going to a concert?”

  “No,” Giannis said, smiling, “that I asked my mom if I could go with you, and she knew it’d be late at night, and she still said I could. That’s big, bro. Like, she trusts you.”

  * * *

  The Bucks’ disaster of a season was winding down. With a 102–98 loss to the Raptors in early April, the sixty-third defeat of the year, the team had its worst season. It had been so miserable most just wanted the season to end. Players had missed a total of 277 games to injuries or illnesses.

  Hours before the final game against the Hawks, Kohl announced he was selling the team to Marc Lasry and Wes Edens, two New York billionaires, for $550 million and that Lasry and Edens were committed to keeping the franchise in Milwaukee. “I wasn’t going to live forever,” Kohl, then seventy-nine, told reporters at the time.

  It was a stunning moment. Kohl had arguably been a terrible owner in basketball terms, but he did the one thing that mattered more than anything: he kept the team in Milwaukee. Through years of tumult, years of offers, he held on. He took pride in that, even if the Bucks had accomplished little. “Somebody could have offered me $5 billion, and I couldn’t do that,” Kohl said, referring to selling the team out of Milwaukee. “How could I still live here? How could I live with myself?”

  Kohl said he would contribute an eye-popping $100 million toward a new arena in downtown, and the new ownership would add $100 million. “Milwaukee fans deserve a winning team,” Edens, a cofounder and chairman of the board at Fortress Investment Group, told the Associated Press. Lasry was chairman and chief executive officer of Avenue Capital Group. Edens’s mother was born and raised in Wisconsin, and both he and Lasry loved basketball. They aimed to win a championship.

  Still, nobody knew what to expect. Some were skeptical, a bit slow to embrace the new owners, dismissing them as “New York hedge-fund billionaires” and fearing the team would eventually leave Milwaukee regardless of what Kohl or the new owners had promised.

  On the bright side, Milwaukee secured the number 2 pick in the upcoming 2014 draft. Finally, a chance to land a franchise player. Staffers wasted no time preparing, compiling three six-hundred-page binders to give to the new owners. Jabari Parker, a six-foot-eight forward out of Duke, and Andrew Wiggins, a phenom from Canada who played for Kansas, came to Milwaukee for workouts. The Bucks weren’t able to secure a workout with Joel Embiid, a promising big man from Cameroon, due to medical reasons.

  The more the Bucks watched Parker, the more they fell in love. Parker was tough and hardworking, having grown up on the south side of Chicago. Selecting Parker was a huge deal for the Bucks: he was the first elite player since the Bucks landed Glenn Robinson, the number 1 pick in 1994, and Andrew Bogut, the number 1 pick in 2005.

  Jabari could be the cornerstone they had been searching for.

  Not Giannis.

  Giannis was viewed as an important piece of the puzzle, a player who could complement Parker. Naturally, Giannis wasn’t exactly thrilled. He wanted to be the best player on the team; he wasn’t just going to hand that title off to someone else.

  The day after the Bucks drafted Parker, reports surfaced that Milwaukee’s new owners sought permission from the Brooklyn Nets to interview head coach and Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd. Kidd had a messy divorce with Brooklyn, essentially forcing his way out. He had been a rookie coach, having led the Nets to a 44–38 record and a playoff berth. Lasry, a partial investor in the Nets, built a relationship with Kidd when Kidd played for New Jersey.

  Most Bucks staffers hadn’t known the new owners were pursuing a coaching change in secret. Coach Drew had been in the Bucks draft room, helping select Parker. He talked glowingly about Parker’s future at Parker’s introductory press conference. Then, three days later, Drew was fired and Kidd was hired. Drew says the Bucks had hired Kidd without telling him first, and that didn’t sit well with him. “I didn’t think that was tastefully done,” Drew says. “I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone, and I didn’t.”

  In addition to his new coaching position, Kidd had lobbied to take over Bucks basketball operations and become team president, a power play that made many uncomfortable. The new owners denied his request, but the attempt made things awkward between Kidd and the holdover executives. Some feared he’d try to become the alpha of everything, as he had attempted in the past.

  Meanwhile, Giannis was processing the loss of his first coach. The coach who was patient with him, nurturing to him. Giannis posted a picture on Facebook of him and Drew at Madison Square Garden before his first game against the Knicks. Drew had smiled, put his arm around Giannis. Giannis remembered how Drew had sensed he was stressed, a bit lost, heading into the game and told him to relax, to just play basketball.

  Drew didn’t talk to Giannis after being fired. “I don’t know if it was the right thing to do or not,” Drew says. “I did not want to have any connection with anybody in Milwaukee at that point.”

  He moved on to coach the Cavaliers. “I’ve coached Kobe; I’ve coached Jordan,” Drew says. “And now I can say I’ve coached Giannis.”

  * * *

  Giannis and his family waited to see if Thanasis would get drafted that summer. Thanasis wasn’t as skilled as Giannis. And compared to top-tier EuroLeague talent, Thanasis was undersized. Seen as a hustle player, a great defender, but not quite polished or athletic enough to succeed in the modern NBA game that values fundamentals and outside shooting. “Thanasis was in the shadow of his brother,” says one European agent who has clients in Greece.

  Giannis advocated for his brother publicly. “I know he’s capable to play in this league,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that summer. Fortunately, Thanasis was drafted by the K
nicks in the June 2014 draft, selected fifty-first overall. He and Giannis hugged in the stands of Barclays Center. “I think I’m happier today for Thanasis than I was last year in the draft for myself,” Giannis told reporters that night. “Hopefully our brother [Kostas] will follow our footsteps and make it too.”

  Giannis had much to do, preparing for his sophomore season. He had led all rookies with sixty-one blocks, making All-Rookie second team, but was critical of himself. He graded his season performance a “D-minus,” telling local reporters he needed to work on everything: shooting, dribbling, strength. “At the beginning it was hard to believe. I was thinking, like, ‘Whoa, I’m playing with these guys now? I’m on the same court as these guys?’ But as the season went on and on, I began to believe, and I said to myself, ‘I belong here.’

  “I am happy with myself,” he said, “but I am not satisfied.”

  Milwaukee’s quiet small-town environment was perfect for him. He could focus on developing his game without distractions. “I love Milwaukee,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that summer. “I hope I’m here for a long time.” When thinking about the way fans had embraced him, he said, “It makes my heart feel great. I’m glad they like me as a person, and I hope in the future they like me as a player, too.”

  He still wasn’t the player he wanted to be. He finally completed his first muscle-up, though. He was so proud of himself he checked himself out in the mirror, flexing his biceps, to see if his body looked any bigger. “He’s like, ‘I’m really starting to grow into this,’” says Chris Wright, the Bucks forward.

  Wright and Giannis grew closer that off-season, often playing one-on-one and six spots, a shooting drill where a player launches from different spots with defense covering him. One day, Giannis missed all his shots and didn’t win any spots. He was angry at himself. Didn’t want to talk to anybody. He just walked out of the gym.

  The next day, Giannis told Wright, as well as Wolters and Middleton, who were there shooting around, “I’m gonna whoop all your asses today.”