by Mirin Fader
Everyone laughed.
“Whatever, man,” Wright said.
Giannis guarded Wright on the wing. Wright drove hard left, dunked it. Giannis looked angry again. He wasn’t whooping anyone’s ass. Middleton taunted Giannis: “You ain’t gonna win no spots today. Again!”
Giannis then caught the ball and made every shot, winning all six spots. He tossed the ball into the air, then started running around the Cousins Center, screaming, “Yes, baby! Six! Jordan, baby, six!” alluding to Jordan’s six championships. He then jumped on top of the scorer’s table, beating his chest, screaming louder, “Six! Six!” looking at the empty bleachers as if fans were screaming for him, pointing his finger at invisible faces. “Yeahhhhh! Y’all see me!”
“Run it back!” Wright said, protesting the result.
“No, no,” Giannis said. “We’re not playing anymore.” He declared himself the winner. No more getting punked. “Coach,” Giannis said to Hackett, who was sitting nearby, “I’m telling you: next year, I’m going to be better. I get better every year.”
Giannis needed to get better, given that he’d be suiting up for the Greek senior national team for the first time in a matter of weeks. He was the youngest player on the roster, which was filled with Greek standouts like Nick Calathes, Nikos Zisis, and Kostas Papanikolaou.
Once again Giannis was the baby. The scrub. But the Greek national team didn’t have time to bring him along slowly, the way the Bucks had. Greece was expected to medal. Giannis had to show up ready.
“If I want them to respect me,” Giannis told Missas, his former U-20 national-team coach, right before leaving for Greece, “then I must win their respect.”
* * *
When the nineteen-year-old landed in Athens for training camp, he met with his new coach, Fotios Katsikaris. Katsikaris, a veteran European coach who later served as an assistant with the Utah Jazz, wasn’t sure what to make of Giannis on the first day because Giannis was so serious. He never smiled, never seemed to relax the muscles in his face. One veteran player on the team was offended by the apparent snub. He took Giannis’s seriousness for rudeness. The vet came up to Katsikaris and said, “Tell this kid to change his attitude because I’m going to punch his face.”
That’s how hard Giannis competed. “Giannis wasn’t acting like a kid his age,” Katsikaris says. Some veterans on the team, ten years Giannis’s senior, thought the young player was cocky just because he was coming from the NBA. It didn’t make sense to them how a second-division mystery had ascended to the highest league in the world, while many of them would never get that kind of opportunity.
“He was a high draft pick, but we didn’t know how his game would fit,” says Nick Calathes, teammate and Greek star. “We didn’t know if he could help us.”
The first time Giannis met with Katsikaris, Giannis asked if Thanasis, his oldest brother, could join the team. Katsikaris was taken aback—that a player who had just earned a coveted spot would ask not about his own role but about a family member. Katsikaris tried to be diplomatic, told Giannis it wasn’t possible at that point.
Giannis then asked Katsikaris, “Where do you see me? What can I do to improve?” He looked Katsikaris in the eye. The coach hadn’t seen that kind of focus in a young player before. “He absolutely wasn’t ready to play, but he was a real diamond,” Katsikaris says. “Greece is a small country, and of course we have a great culture in basketball, but we never had a player like him. With his characteristics, with his raw talent. We needed to work with him.”
Katsikaris wanted two things from Giannis that summer: strong defense and physicality. Giannis struggled offensively but shined at times. His first practice, he received the ball and didn’t see an outlet pass on one side, so he drove downcourt, faking out two defenders and dunking. He started gaining the respect of the veterans. “He was one of the hardest workers that I’ve played with,” Calathes says. “He was just a little raw.”
The first preseason game of the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup, though, Giannis didn’t play a minute. Instead of being discouraged, he shot for hours after. Then he went up to assistant coach Asterios Kalivas and said, “If I make three out of four three-point shots, can you please tell Coach to let me play a little bit more for the next friendly?” Giannis made two of four, but the sentiment stood: he wanted his coaches to know he would do whatever he could to get in the game.
After practices ended at 7:30 p.m., when everyone else went to shower, Giannis would tinker with his shooting form with Kalivas. Giannis wouldn’t leave until 9:00, refusing to shower until he returned to the hotel. “If you would have told me then, in 2014, that Giannis in 2019 would be the NBA MVP, or you buy me a coffee—I will take the coffee,” Kalivas says. “I put all my houses, my fortune, on this. But I have never seen anybody work so hard. If he could practice all day, he would do it.”
Giannis started to become friends with his teammates, even open up to them. “I remember he was saying that ‘I want to be one of the all-stars in the NBA one day,’” says Zisis, team captain and Giannis’s roommate during the preseason. Zisis, thirty at the time, had heard about Giannis over the last few years. “There’s this Black kid here in Greece, running up and down like crazy,” he’d hear. “He can take two dribbles from half-court and dunk the ball.”
The more Zisis, one of the most talented players in Greece, played with Giannis as the summer tournament in Madrid unfolded, the more he noticed that Giannis was willing to do the dirty work of defense and rebounding. “His energy was incredible,” Zisis says. Occasionally Giannis would do something exceptional, like a tomahawk dunk. “We never saw that, even in Europe,” Katsikarsis says. “And you see immediately, like, ‘Oh shit, this kid—he’s special.’”
Tzikas, the Kivotos Café owner, and his wife, Katerina Drimpa, came to Madrid to surprise Giannis and watch him play. They knew Giannis’s own family couldn’t make it. They stayed in the same hotel as Giannis, too, to make him feel as if he were home.
Giannis beamed seeing them—especially Tzikas. The man who’d given him a sandwich and fruit juice when he didn’t have to. And now, Tzikas would get to see him wear the blue-and-white Hellas jersey, represent the team Tzikas so loved.
The two of them hugged, then just looked at each other. Tzikas was so proud, explaining to Giannis why he’d made the trip to Spain: “I wanted you to know you had someone there for you.”
* * *
Giannis didn’t play much throughout the tournament. He struggled with decision-making. He struggled getting to the basket, as it was difficult for a player of Giannis’s size and athletic ability to find space in the packed European paint. Referees didn’t recognize him, so he didn’t get the benefit of the doubt for calls either.
Still, Greece went 5–0 in group stages before losing, 90–72, to Serbia. Giannis played much more than he ever had against Serbia, and played well, but Greece lost. Everyone wanted to leave immediately.
“Don’t worry, guys; you tried your best, and we still love you!” some Greek fans who had traveled to the game said to the team as they walked to the team bus. Giannis trailed behind Zisis, who started crying. Giannis grabbed Zisis and hugged him. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Giannis told Zisis. “We got this next year. Don’t even worry.”
It meant a lot to Zisis that a young player would care about him enough to say that. When the team landed in Athens, Giannis had tears in his own eyes, hugging his teammates. They had all grown close, giving their all for two months.
A week later, Zisis found an interview Giannis had given about the tournament. Giannis mentioned to the radio host that he learned what love truly means by wearing the jersey of his country and that he learned that lesson from Zisis.
Zisis cried listening to the interview. “A nineteen-year-old kid, whose parents are not from this country, and he really loves this country,” Zisis says. “He really understands.”
Giannis has always understood.
CHAPTER 9
MEA
N
Giannis would stand in front of the mirror and practice his scowl. He’d squint his eyes, suck in his teeth. His nose would wrinkle; his forehead would tighten. His lips would curl, and then he’d let out a grunt.
He was trying to look more aggressive, less adorable; more intimidating, less innocent. He needed a new identity heading into his second NBA season—one vastly different from the goofy, endearing rookie discovering smoothies for the first time.
He needed to get mean.
“He had to practice it because he’s not that guy,” Robinson says. “He’s a lovable guy. A nice gentleman.”
Giannis didn’t want to be seen as a nice gentleman on the court; he wanted to be seen as someone who would tear your heart out. He tried to pattern his scowl after Russell Westbrook’s scowl. Giannis loved Westbrook: his demeanor, his speed, but especially his scowl. Giannis came into practice once, scowling and grunting. “This is my new thing,” Giannis told his teammates.
They ignored him. Laughed a bit. But Giannis insisted on impressing them: he flexed his muscles after bench-pressing and flashed his scowl again, hoping his teammates would appreciate the intensity of his grunt. “Bro,” Knight told him, “you still don’t have any muscles. Relaaaaax.”
Giannis’s teammates found it hilarious when he’d attempt the scowl after a dunk, something he started doing toward the end of his rookie season. The first time he did it, against the Pistons, he ran back to the other end of the court with so much aggression even Butler was surprised. “I didn’t know where the hell that came from,” Butler says, laughing.
Afterward, his teammates asked him, “What is that? Where’d you get that from?” They assumed he’d learned the scowl from YouTube—where he learned everything in those days.
Giannis laughed. “Oh,” Giannis said casually in a “this old thing?” kind of tone, “I took it from Westbrook.”
Giannis’s scowl seemed out of place. Manufactured. “We’d be like, ‘Oh, he must have practiced that at home today,’” Knight says. The scowl was coming along, but it still wasn’t loud enough, mean enough. Convincing enough. “You gotta work on your roar,” Knight would sarcastically advise Giannis. “You gotta work on your yell. We gotta get you right, man.”
* * *
On the first day of training camp to open the 2014–2015 season, Giannis wouldn’t crack a smile. Not for a second. He couldn’t, since Parker was the new star; Giannis was still the curiosity. The two would eventually come to like each other, even become friends, but not at first. Giannis felt like the Bucks were supposed to be his team. He had earned that after the way he played his first season. And he was going to prove that he was the leader.
Some fantasized that the pair could become the Batman and Robin of a potential new era in Milwaukee, but Giannis didn’t want to be Robin. He needed to be Batman. “He wasn’t on the throne,” Oppenheimer says, “but the chair was empty. And he wasn’t going to help somebody get there when he thought he had the same amount of ability to get there.”
Giannis and Parker went at each other in every drill. Kidd was happy about that; he demanded that competitiveness from everyone. He wasn’t going to accept another humiliating fifteen-win season.
Only about a year removed from his own playing career, Kidd was very much a player hiding in a coach’s suit. “Even on the sidelines you can just see the competitiveness bleeding out of his skin,” says Kerry Kittles, Kidd’s former Nets teammate. “You can see him trying to suppress it.”
Kidd huddled his new team at half-court about midway through the first practice. “Who thinks we’re a playoff team?”
Players looked at each other, paused a second, recognizing there was only one right answer.
Everyone raised his hand.
“Good,” Kidd said. “We’re going to practice like it.”
Drills began, emphasizing physicality, driving to the hoop, taking contact. Kidd kept telling Giannis to drive to the basket: “Don’t settle for jump shots.” One play, Giannis drove coast-to-coast and took the ball strong to the hoop but got pummeled inside. The ball hit the backboard and bounced out of bounds.
“You know, a feather can blow him over,” Kidd said, turning to his assistants. They laughed. Kidd didn’t. He was dead serious. “A couple times up and down the court, you breathe on him, he’s falling over. We gotta get him stronger.”
Then players scrimmaged. One play, Giannis grabbed a rebound, dribbled in and out to beat his defender, and then dribbled the ball behind his back to fake out another defender, sprinting downcourt all the way to the cup for a dunk. It took him just four dribbles to get from one end to the other. Wright and Oppenheimer looked at each other. “Yo,” they said at the same time. “Yo.”
Another play, Giannis received the ball at the top of the key. He stumbled, barely recovering his balance. He managed to dribble left, hard to the hoop, taking off for a windmill. Four players stood in his way, but Giannis rose over them and slammed the ball down.
Everyone in the gym stopped for a second. The dunk was surprising. Vicious. For the first time, Giannis looked really, really mean.
* * *
Kidd wanted Giannis to operate like an assassin on the court. A true killer. Meaning he needed to not only carry himself with a certain swagger, a certain meanness, but he needed his game to back up that kind of demeanor. Kidd saw star potential in Giannis and wanted him to maximize his gifts: his length, his athleticism in the open court.
Kidd and assistant coach Sean Sweeney would work out with Giannis multiple times a day. They’d teach him moves, challenge him out of his comfort zone. Kidd would make Giannis do a drill over and over until it was perfect, as he would with all his players.
Kidd was known for playing mind games. He wouldn’t yell; he wouldn’t act overly aggressive. Far from that. He was more delicate, soft-spoken, getting under someone’s skin, knowing the thing that made each player explode. He never gave players answers, wanting them to figure it out on their own.
His coaching style with the Nets, and then with the Bucks, was described as “psychological warfare” by one former player. When asked about Kidd, players and coaches often say, “On the record or off?” Kidd was loved, hated. His coaching style was described as follows:
“Jedi mind tricks,” Oppenheimer says.
“Mind fucks,” says one former teammate, a bit more bluntly.
“Machiavellian,” says a former Bucks staffer. “He kind of relished that combativeness in people.”
But also: “He’s a winner. Naturally a winner. He’s a competitive motherfucker,” says Chris Copeland, Bucks forward from 2015 to 2016. He played with Kidd on the Knicks in 2012–2013.
“He’d just brutalize people,” says another ex-player. “There’s plenty of teammates that I had that didn’t like him, not even as a coach, like as a person. He’d pit people against each other.”
“I think he may have had rocky relationships with a lot of players,” says Johnny O’Bryant III, Bucks forward from 2014 to 2016. “But one thing he did was he laid the tradition of a winning team. Sometimes the way he went about it, being straightforward, he was just an asshole, but I think it paid off in the long run.”
“I’d never call Jason Kidd an asshole,” says Nicholas Turner, Kidd’s executive assistant from 2014 to 2018, “but he was a player too, so he also has an ego.… There’s definitely some things that people misunderstand about J-Kidd. Ultimately he wants to win. He has good intentions.”
There was also a cerebral aspect to Kidd. “He was like a professor,” says Jason Terry, Bucks guard from 2016 to 2018, who also played for Kidd in Brooklyn in 2013–2014. “Instead of telling you what to do, he engages you, empowers you, by asking, ‘What do you see?’”
“Jason had a brilliant mind,” says Nixon Dorvilien, Bucks assistant trainer from 2014 to 2016, “but he kind of made you uncomfortable around him.”
“When players go through it and it’s uncomfortable, they like to say, ‘He’s playing mind games w
ith me,’ but it’s not that,” says Greg Foster, Bucks assistant coach from 2014 to 2018, now with the Pacers. “He’s trying to get you to do something you wouldn’t normally do. That’s coaching.”
Knight searches for the right words. “I don’t want to sound negative,” he says. Knight explains some of Kidd’s methods, such as how Kidd would embarrass the culprit of an error by making everyone but that person run sprints for his mistake. “He just had his way of getting his point across,” Knight says.
Little things were made to be a big deal: at one point center Thon Maker didn’t have an iPhone, messing up the team’s blue-bubble iPhone group chat. Kidd was upset about it and made the team run because Kidd felt that Maker not getting an iPhone was an example of the team not being united.
But there was another side to Kidd, one that held players accountable, gave them confidence, raised the level of play. If players were doing the drill wrong, Kidd would grab the ball and hop in the drill and show players how to do it perfectly. Kidd would sometimes dominate and say, “Guys, this isn’t that fucking hard!”
Kidd hated when players were not on time. Or when he had to go over something again. He was a perfectionist—and thought players should get it right the first time. He had this look, this death stare, that was piercing.
His mind was several steps ahead. The things he saw, few could. “It was like being around Einstein,” Oppenheimer says. “Giannis realized that and wanted information, and Jason found a way to feed him information.”
Kidd poured hours into helping Giannis but was less sympathetic with other players. “I don’t think he could identify with the average player,” says another ex-player. “There’s a reason Hall of Famers are Hall of Famers, especially point guards. You see things that no one else does. I think he would just take it out on players and just verbally go at them. Just make them feel like shit, that they couldn’t be as good as Jason Kidd, who could just step on the floor and do this fancy thing.”