Giannis

by Mirin Fader

  Kidd would challenge players by calling them out during film sessions—not by yelling but by asking the player in front of everyone, “Tell me: What were you doing here? What were you thinking here?” It was humiliating.

  “The frustration was,” Copeland says, “he’s fucking Jason Kidd. One of the best point guards of all time. He’s like, ‘Why don’t you just do this?’ It’s like, ‘Bruh, you’re Jason Kidd; you can do that.’ He was hard on a lot of guys because his level and his IQ was so much higher than everybody.”

  Kidd would ask Giannis to explain what he did wrong during film sessions. There was no right answer, but a nod wasn’t acceptable. He had to say his mistake out loud. That was difficult for Giannis, who wasn’t a vocal player. Though gregarious off the court, he was still quiet on the court, still trying to fit in. He hated speaking up on the floor. He’d rather show leadership through action, through work ethic.

  Kidd pulled Giannis out of his comfort zone by pointing out flaws verbally, seeing how Giannis would respond. It was part of Kidd’s plan to transform his new project into a point guard. For point guards, talking is like breathing—instinctive, necessary. Because in Kidd’s eyes, Giannis could be that point guard. He could become a superstar.

  Kidd was sure that there was something special about Giannis. It was the way Giannis saw plays ahead of plays. The way he could push the ball up the floor like a natural ball handler. And given that he had miraculously sprouted two inches, to six feet eleven, since arriving in the NBA, Giannis, Kidd felt, could morph into one of the most versatile players in the league.

  Still, that was a ways away. “We knew at the time that Giannis had the ability to handle the ball,” says Joe Prunty, Bucks assistant coach from 2014 to 2018, “but being able to handle the ball and being able to run the team are different things.”

  Kidd flirted with having Giannis at point guard beginning in 2014 Summer League, though Giannis’s official position was listed as center in two of four of the games. Kidd knew Giannis could play all positions; he could become a hybrid point forward, like Scottie Pippen was. Privately, Kidd told his coaches that Giannis might never morph into a point guard, but he could turn into the next-generation big man, because, truly, what five-man could guard him?

  Kidd told the press that he envisioned Giannis, at nineteen years old, being like Magic Johnson, Grant Hill, and Pippen after Giannis played thirty-two minutes as the primary ball handler against the Jazz in Summer League. “I remember writing the story,” says Charles F. Gardner, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Bucks beat writer at the time, “and thinking to myself, This is crazy.”

  It was crazy. Giannis still, more than anything, resembled a toothpick. His body wasn’t developed enough, his skills weren’t honed enough, to merit a comparison to any of those legends, let alone all three. But he had a unique skill set, an intriguing build—one that people didn’t yet know how to define. He was, as Grantland put it, “a human wormhole—all infinite limbs and impossible strides, twisting our conception of space inside out.”

  Giannis played well at the point in that Jazz game, dropping fifteen points, five assists, four rebounds, and three steals despite committing four turnovers. He looked comfortable. “He viewed himself as a point guard,” Oppenheimer says. “He was one of those guys that was like, ‘It’s great if I score, but if I get an assist, I’m happy.’”

  Still, Giannis didn’t quite know how to control the tempo of a game. He’d often dribble into double teams, turning the ball over. Sometimes he was just going too fast. That became clear during a preseason game at Cleveland. Kidd started Giannis at point guard. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called the move “the Giannis Antetokounmpo experiment.”

  Cleveland’s Matthew Dellavedova, known for full-court, suffocating defense, smothered Giannis. Giannis looked hesitant, timid. He went 0-for-5 for four points and zero assists in twenty-three minutes. He continued to struggle in the preseason finale against Minnesota, going 0-for-7, turning the ball over a damning eight times.

  The coaches realized Giannis would need to be brought along a bit more slowly. He needed more experience. He needed to learn to play under control. The coaches had given him too much, too soon. The experiment had to be reevaluated.

  “It was a reminder,” says Sweeney, the assistant coach, “of, ‘Hey, we’ve got some of these skills, but we’re not quite ready for that responsibility.’”

  * * *

  The coaches created “Night School”—optional, but not really optional, nightly workouts. Most players showed up; Giannis always showed up. He and Sweeney would shoot, go over plays, and complete defensive drills for hours. Usually 8:00 to 11:00 p.m., sometimes even to midnight, every night. The two were inseparable. Both had a workaholic drive that few understood.

  Sweeney hardly laughed. He looked so serious, so focused, that players would joke, “Yo, Sweeney, why are you so grumpy? What’s wrong, Sweeney? Are you having trouble, Sweeney?” Pachulia made it one of his season goals to make Sweeney smile.

  Sweeney’s steely demeanor fit perfectly with Giannis. But Sweeney didn’t take it easy on Giannis; he pushed him. Told him when he was messing up. The two would go at each other sometimes, yelling, fighting like brothers might, but it would end with “We good? OK, let’s get back to work.” Both valued work above everything else. “One of the things that Giannis did that set himself apart from the others,” Sweeney says, “was that he had in his mind that ‘I want to be the hardest-working player in the world.’”

  Giannis would head straight to the gym after returning home from road trips too. He’d often bring his brothers, incorporating them into his drills. Giannis worked out just as intensely as he played games—maybe even more intensely. “He put in time others weren’t willing to do,” Sweeney says. “He wanted to be pushed past where he thought he could be pushed.”

  One night, forward Johnny O’Bryant, who had recently celebrated the birth of his first daughter, stayed a little bit later with Giannis after the two worked out. They talked as they gathered their bags.

  “J-O-B,” Giannis said, referring to O’Bryant’s nickname, “I could never have kids right now.”

  “What do you mean?” O’Bryant said.

  “If you have kids, you can’t really put as much as you want into basketball. At some point, you have to go home and be with your kids.”

  O’Bryant smiled. He knew Giannis was right. He also knew Giannis was still a kid himself. Giannis wasn’t really even dating. It was family, basketball, Bucks. Family, basketball, Bucks.

  He also wanted his brothers to be better than him. “He wanted to be the best at all times. But he also wanted us to be the best too,” Alex says. “That kept us pushing—because he wanted it so bad for us.”

  Kidd had introduced Giannis to legends like Dikembe Mutombo and Hakeem Olajuwon. Olajuwon told Giannis to stay focused and to stay away from what he called temptation: no women, no drugs. Nothing but basketball.

  It wasn’t clear what Giannis’s role would be on the court, though. Start or come off the bench? Point guard or small forward or some combination? He was still working to get stronger, bigger. Sweeney and Kidd put him on a healthier nutrition plan—no more milkshakes, burgers, Cheetos, fries, Cokes—all of Giannis’s favorites. Giannis switched his diet to protein and greens. He’d leave the practice facility with five Rubbermaid containers filled with chicken, eggs, nuts, fruits, and vegetables, consuming more than he ever thought possible.

  As the season began, he was mostly playing small forward and would excite with a play or two, a big rebound, a loose ball dive, but his coaches wanted more. “His effort and hustle plays were always there,” says Josh Broghamer, Bucks assistant coach from 2017 to 2018 and video coordinator from 2014 to 2017, “but sometimes he would forget an assignment or be in the wrong spot on offense or make the wrong read.”

  Giannis started to figure out how to use his quickness to get around guys who were much bigger than him. Kidd experimented with his position o
ften, throwing him onto the court at power forward and even center at times.

  Against the Grizzlies, Giannis targeted Zach Randolph, the Grizzlies’ 250-pound terror. Randolph’s body was like a concrete wall; just watching him yank a rebound out of the air made you flinch.

  Not Giannis. Giannis had bulked up a bit but still looked flimsy, elbowing Randolph in the back, hitting him, shoving him. Randolph dominated him, which was Randolph’s plan all along. “I was trying to put him under the rim,” Randolph recalls. But Giannis kept fighting. “He had no quit in him.”

  Giannis boxed out Randolph one play, managing to push the veteran out of the way. “Oh?” Randolph said out loud, surprised.

  “Come on,” Giannis said, clutching the ball, swinging his elbows out.

  “OK, OK, young fella.”

  That’s when Randolph realized: “He got heart. The young fella wanted it.” Giannis, who scored a then career-high eighteen points, twelve of which came in the fourth quarter, reminded Randolph of a young Pippen: long, athletic, all over the court, good knack for the ball. He just hadn’t put it all together yet.

  Giannis was gaining more confidence. He could see over the defense, throw critical passes. Sometimes he’d sink a little hook shot. He looked much improved from his rookie season, though he was still playing too fast, too out of control, with too many turnovers.

  He looked brilliant at times, as when he took off from the three-point line and after one dribble softly laid in a finger roll against the Pistons. Or when he held his own against Serge Ibaka of the Thunder, no longer the punching bag he’d been his rookie season.

  Giannis was honored with his own bobblehead by the end of November, against the Timberwolves. The first ten thousand fans received the smiling Giannis bobblehead. “It doesn’t look like me,” Giannis told reporters after the game. “I’m more handsome. But it’s a nice feeling.”

  Ever since he saw the Bucks hand out Larry Sanders bobbleheads his rookie year, Giannis had dreamed of having his own bobblehead. When is it going to be my turn? he thought then. Now that he had his own, he stashed a few away to bring back to friends in Greece. “I didn’t think I was going to have one,” he said that night, smiling. “But I was always dreaming.”

  * * *

  The coaches wanted to tweak Giannis’s shooting form. He was never known as an outside shooter. It wasn’t necessarily discussed as a glaring weakness, as it would be in the coming years, but it just wasn’t something he needed to do much of throughout his youth. He was always so long and so athletic that he could just stretch his legs a couple of steps and be at the rim, so there was never a need to develop a jump shot.

  He didn’t shoot poorly from the field as a rookie, by any means. He even looked comfortable letting a three or two fly, his footwork and follow-through somewhat fluid. But the coaches continued to work on his form. Oppenheimer spent time helping him release the ball higher. Giannis’s release was low, almost below his eyes and off his shoulder. They worked on his footwork, his base, slowing down the movement of catching the ball, gathering, and shooting.

  Kidd, however, didn’t want Giannis to shoot from long distance much at all at first, especially threes—or, according to several of his assistant coaches, he didn’t want Giannis to get consumed by, or obsessed with, shooting. Kidd had been a fast guard, a wizard who could make split-second decisions on the move. Kidd wanted Giannis to do just that: get out in front of the defense, push the ball, score inside. In Kidd’s eyes, why should Giannis surrender to the three-point line when he had the size and mobility to quickly get to the rim?

  Giannis, however, wanted to be an all-around player, wanted to incorporate that fifteen-foot jumper into his game. It was never one or the other for him—inside or outside—he just wanted to do everything. Be everywhere. He was learning to adapt, following his coach’s advice. He was getting to the free throw line frequently, from driving to the hoop aggressively.

  But at one point that season, Kidd told Giannis not to shoot any more threes. He was trying to give Giannis confidence in the best parts of his game, instilling a mentality in his young player: “They can’t guard you from driving.” Kidd assured Giannis that he would get his time to shoot, but he wasn’t ready yet. Not this season.

  Initially Giannis was upset—he wanted to shoot threes; how could he not shoot threes? But Kidd would sub him out for launching an outside shot, later telling Jared Dudley, a veteran forward on the team, “I gotta put the mentality in Giannis when he’s younger, before he becomes a superstar.”

  Frustration was building. Giannis didn’t like getting picked on during film sessions, didn’t like having to speak up. One practice, Giannis got a little animated. He wasn’t being disrespectful; he just wasn’t doing what Kidd wanted him to do. Kidd told him to leave: “You’re done for the day.”

  That was what some of Kidd’s former players meant by “mind games.” Kidd continued to incorporate them, not playing Giannis (or Parker) in the fourth quarter early on because the team played better without them. “That really burned Giannis up,” says Nicholas Turner, the executive assistant. “He always got better from that.”

  Kidd’s tactics were working. Giannis was working harder than ever, coming back to the Cousins Center right after games upset at himself, working to correct his mistakes late into the night, at times cursing out loud for no one to hear.

  “You’re not going to break this kid,” Hammond says. “Jason would challenge him, and Giannis would come right back at him for more. Look—Jason’s a tough guy. He’s a real tough guy. But so is Giannis.”

  Once, during a closeout drill in practice, the defender couldn’t leave the floor until he stopped his man from scoring. Kidd made Giannis go eleven times in a row because Giannis couldn’t stop his man from scoring. Giannis had a big smile on his face: he was loving it. He wanted to keep going.

  “Giannis was a guy that you had to put your arm around him perhaps at times,” Sweeney says, “but more than anything, you could go at him however you wanted because he had that innate toughness and that innate desire.”

  Giannis would pepper Dudley, the veteran teammate who was becoming a mentor to him, with questions on how he could improve. During time-outs, Dudley would in turn challenge Giannis with questions: “What do you see? What’s going on here?” Dudley would tell him how to handle a certain coverage or how better to attack the lane. Giannis never argued or talked back. He was grateful for the advice. Dudley morphed into a big brother. He set rules. “No partying,” Dudley told him.

  Dudley became Giannis’s biggest advocate, telling Kidd to start Giannis over him, something few veterans would do. Giannis wasn’t even the best offensive player; Brandon Knight clearly was. But Giannis had the most potential. He’d make beautiful passes. He’d snatch the rebound and kick out the ball and run like someone was chasing him. “We all knew Giannis was going to be good,” Dudley says. “But I don’t think anyone knew he was going to be this good.”

  Dudley loved that Giannis didn’t think he knew everything, as many young players do—and that Giannis was willing to make hustle plays, always sprinting back after a turnover even if there was a chance he’d get embarrassed.

  “Unlike Americans, he had no ego,” Dudley says. “He was always that guy that didn’t care about getting dunked on. I respected him for that. I respected his hunger.”

  That didn’t mean that Giannis didn’t still believe in himself. Know his worth. The following year, before tip-off at Charlotte, Giannis sat on the sideline with Oppenheimer. They watched Charlotte’s Nicolas Batum, a six-foot-eight forward having an all-star kind of season, warm up.

  “You see Batum?” Oppenheimer said to Giannis.

  Giannis nodded.

  “Look at him,” Oppenheimer said. “Really look at him. He’s a really good player. If you work really hard, you might be able to be a Nic Batum type of player.”

  Giannis stared at his coach for a second, not frowning but looking surprised. A bit offended. “Coac
h,” Giannis said, “if I become Nic Batum, I’m going back to Greece.”

  * * *

  As a former point guard, Kidd was trying to get his players to think like point guards. Kidd created short quizzes for players before every shootaround, posing five questions meant to improve basketball IQ: questions about certain coverages, plans for the opponent, or even just the history of the game. The last question was always a random basketball trivia question. “It was like we were in class,” Dudley says.

  Giannis had to get every question right. And most times, he didn’t. But being the prankster that he was, he would creep around the gym and look over teammates’ shoulders and cheat, especially off guard Michael Carter-Williams or Khris Middleton. “He kept looking at people’s answers,” Carter-Williams says, laughing. Guys would start to guard their papers from Giannis; the quizzes created a sense of both competition and pride.

  There were times Giannis forgot to put his name atop the quiz, but his coaches would be able to tell it was his quiz because his English handwriting was still a work in progress. But he kept striving to get a perfect score.

  The coaches told each player to keep a notebook to jot down information and plays, an idea that came from Sweeney’s former boss at Evansville, Marty Simmons, who now coaches at Clemson. “Most guys didn’t stick with it,” Sweeney says. Giannis became obsessed with it. He still carries the little black college-ruled, spiral-bound Mead notebook wherever he goes today—even if he’s nowhere near a basketball court.

  “I’m not gonna lie—I don’t know what he writes in that notebook,” Kostas says. The two will be talking, and then Giannis will pull out the notebook, write something down. Kostas will look at him funny, ask him what he’s writing. “I’m just writing,” Giannis will say, his hand moving quickly. He’s deeply private, and he doesn’t show the notebook to anyone.

  When Giannis first started using the notebook, he’d write before a game, after the game, even during the game. He’d write down the smallest of details: about angles, cuts. What he didn’t do well. What he wanted to do well. Then he’d reflect on bigger goals: his hopes, his dreams. Giannis wrote everything down not just for himself but for his brothers. He didn’t want to forget any detail that could potentially help them. “He learns something and writes it down so he can try to teach me and Alex immediately,” Kostas says. “That’s the bigger purpose.”