Giannis

by Mirin Fader

  By that point, Kostas, sixteen, was a junior at Dominican, and Alex, thirteen, was an eighth grader. Giannis was trying to help Kostas reach his goal of playing Division I college basketball and prepare Alex to play at the high school level. And when they would make a mistake, Giannis would correct them, as if they were his teammates.

  After practice, Giannis and Alex would play NBA 2K, and when Giannis would see himself in the actual video game, he’d beam with pride and look at his brother. But Alex was too in awe of the fact that Giannis was in the game to even acknowledge his brother’s glances.

  Giannis started attending Alex’s rec-league games, sitting in the crowd, tracking every play like a hawk. He’d even come down to the court, give him feedback midgame. He could sense his little brother was nervous. “Try not to be stressed,” he said to Alex one game, placing his hand on Alex’s small orange jersey. “Look at me. Just play the game.” When Alex returned to the game, he looked much more relaxed. Giannis looked much more relaxed. “Bravo, Alex! Bravo!” Giannis screamed from the wooden bleachers.

  Giannis felt like Milwaukee was home and staffers were like family. He developed a relationship with everyone in the organization. Sergo taught him how to throw a football, making fun of how Giannis looked like a “Martian” for the first few weeks trying to grip the ball. When Giannis chose the number 34, Namoc, the equipment manager, would say he had big shoes to fill and call him “Olajuwon.”

  Giannis even made interns feel special; when athletic training interns would tape his ankes, he’d shout them out by name before thanking them.

  Giannis was still goofy, still kid-like. Sometimes he would pretend he was the coach, call Sweeney over, grab the clipboard, and draw a play. “This play will work for me!” Giannis would say, breaking into a big smile. The play was pretty much Giannis, with the ball, running from one end to the other, scoring, nobody else touching the ball.

  Giannis’s English was much better than the year before, but he was still learning new phrases. He became obsessed with saying the word bro. “Bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, brooooooooooo,” he’d say. He continued to make bold proclamations. Giannis was sure he was going to grow to seven feet. “I can be like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar!” he said one day.

  His teammates laughed at his superstitions. He didn’t wear headphones and didn’t listen to music before games or before practice because it brought emotion to the game, and he wanted to play without emotion. He tried to sleep for two hours and forty-five minutes before games and then eat a little bit of pasta as the game got closer. He had to have two ice bags and a foot bath after every game. He began shooting with a shooting sleeve because, one practice, he made shot after shot with the sleeve on, so he believed the sleeve was responsible for his good shooting.

  He was like that off the court too. “He’ll take an Advil and, like, five minutes later, he’d be like, ‘Bro. I feel it. I feel fresh; I feel new,’” says Carter-Williams. “I’m like, ‘OK, bro, it was only an Advil.’”

  When Carter-Williams joined the team, something in Giannis loosened. He seemed more comfortable. The two became best friends. “I saw Giannis change,” O’Bryant says. “MCW made him come out of his shell.”

  Carter-Williams would joke with Giannis about how Giannis only wore sweatpants. Didn’t even try to dress up. “Bro,” Carter-Williams would say, “how come Thanasis got so much swag and you have no swag? I don’t get it.”

  Carter-Williams understood Giannis’s tunnel vision, his excitement. “Come on, bro—let’s go to the weight room!” Giannis would tell Carter-Williams. “Bro, we gotta get big. Look at LeBron. Look at him! We gotta get like him.”

  Carter-Williams introduced Giannis to J. Cole. He played him the song “Love Yourz,” which became Giannis’s favorite song. “He thought it was like heaven going through his ears,” Carter-Williams says, resonating with the idea that, in some ways, it’s easier to “love yours,” love what you have, when you don’t have money. But with fame, money, you have more responsibilities. More pressures: “It’s beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success,” J. Cole rapped. “No such thing as a life that’s better than yours.”

  Giannis started opening up to Carter-Williams about his family, about his life in Greece. His fears. Money. Giannis told him he wanted to stay as frugal as possible.

  “Bro,” Giannis told Carter-Williams, “we’re rich, bro. Rich.” It was as if saying it out loud made it somehow more real.

  Before a game, a friend had given Giannis his first pair of Jordans, the Jordan Xs. Giannis took them out of the box and paused. These were fancier than any shoe he had ever held. He touched the soles, staring at them, realizing they were his. Really his. The soles on this pair listed many of Jordan’s milestones: “85 Rookie of the Year,” “89 All Defense,” and “92 MVP/Championship,” to name a few.

  Giannis read them out loud, unconcerned with who heard him. Jay Namoc came over to Giannis’s cubby. Namoc picked up Giannis’s regular sneakers, the ones he’d be wearing that night, and flipped them over, scanned the soles. “Ain’t shit on these,” Namoc said.

  Giannis nodded, a little deflated.

  “Hey, man,” Namoc said, sensing Giannis’s disappointment, “you work hard enough, maybe they’ll put these kinds of accomplishments on the bottom of your shoes one day.”

  * * *

  Dudley would always sit next to Giannis on bus rides on the road. Dudley was aware that Giannis was still living with his parents and younger brothers, all in one apartment. That surprised him.

  “Hey, man, I know you’re only twenty years old,” Dudley said to him on one ride, “but next year you’re gonna be twenty-one. You gotta move out. You gotta get your own apartment.”

  Giannis was floored. “No, I can’t; I’m gonna stay there.” Giannis couldn’t imagine not living with his family but didn’t want Dudley to think he didn’t value his advice. He told Dudley he’d think about it. Dudley suggested living in the same building but having his own apartment within the complex.

  “You need your privacy to grow as a man, to get away,” Dudley said. “It’ll help your basketball game. You can still see your mom and dad every day.”

  Even the slightest bit of separation seemed unfathomable to Giannis, who still was adjusting to this life. So were his parents, his brothers. All of it still felt a bit strange. Giannis confided in Dudley about how hesitant he felt to spend money. The two daydreamed about the money Giannis might make one day.

  “The bread!” Giannis would say, impressed with himself, having recently learned the colloquial term for money. “One day I’m going to get the bread.” That word became an inside joke to the two of them. But the more they talked, the more Dudley realized that Giannis wanted more than money or security. He wanted a family of his own one day.

  “I remember him talking about, he didn’t want to marry an American girl: ‘They try to steal your money,’” Dudley recalls. He laughs, thinking back to those bus rides, when he was just trying to nudge Giannis gently—not give him too much adulting to contemplate at once.

  * * *

  Parker was having a decent rookie season until it ended in a heartbreaking fashion. During the third quarter against the Suns, in late December, Parker tore his ACL in his left knee. Grimacing, he couldn’t walk, had to be helped off the floor by teammates. It was a huge blow for the Bucks, who were finally starting to look competitive. And now, the future of the franchise would be sidelined at least a year.

  That created room at the power-forward spot for Giannis, who was thriving with a wow play every night: a loose ball on one end, and in a blink, already at the other end dunking. His Eurostep was ballet-like: graceful, precise, powerful.

  But the Bucks were struggling, dropping a game to Charlotte on December 23, right before Christmas. Players returned to the locker room dejected, silent. Everyone was ready for the next two days off with their families.

  “Zaza,” Kidd said, turning to Pachulia but addressing the group, “do you think this w
as a winnable game?”

  “Yes, it was a winnable game,” Pachulia said.

  “And do you think we deserve the next two days off?”

  Pachulia couldn’t believe Kidd had put him in that situation, threatening to ruin Christmas. Pachulia tried to strike a diplomatic tone: “You know what, Coach—I understand the frustration. We’re all frustrated because this was a game we were supposed to win. We didn’t give enough effort. But at the same time, this is a holiday. Christmas is important to our families. It’s not about us; it’s about our families. Guys have made plans.”

  Kidd then turned to Dudley. “What do you think? Should we take these next two days off?”

  Dudley, too, gave a diplomatic answer.

  But Kidd wasn’t satisfied. “See you guys tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” players said. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re going to have practice tomorrow.”

  “We booked flights to different places!”

  “I don’t care. You guys get paid to do a job, so you’re doing your job tomorrow. Things change.”

  Practice the next morning was ugly. Kidd went at Sanders. Called him a “piece of shit,” a “terrible player.” The team ran and ran and ran and ran, like a college team would. “I don’t think I’ve done that since I left J-Kidd,” Knight says. “It was not normal.”

  Players had to finish a fast-break drill in twenty-two seconds, but twenty-seven was the team’s best record. They did it over and over until they made it. Some were bent over, panting, cramping. Practice lasted three hours, and then Kidd made players lift weights and do pool exercises. Half the team didn’t know how to swim, but Kidd made everyone run in the pool.

  “Everybody was so tired that nobody was thinking about Christmas,” Pachulia says. “We didn’t have energy left to open gifts.”

  Kidd continued to berate Sanders, though, calling him “pathetic.” Sanders couldn’t handle it. Where he was in his life, his career, this practice, all his mistakes, all his frustrations, he felt his entire body stiffen as he cramped from head to toe. “I had a full-body convulsion,” Sanders says. “My body broke down. Physically I couldn’t take it, and mentally I really couldn’t take it.”

  Sanders asked to be excused to go to the bathroom. “Oh, don’t worry,” Kidd said as Sanders walked away. “We’ll wait, then run some more.” Sanders left the facility and took himself to the hospital, spending the night there. Few knew what happened in the aftermath, and he didn’t have the energy then to talk about it.

  “I don’t think he’s a bad person,” Sanders says about Kidd, “but mentally, he kinda, like, brain fucked me a little. It was a lot of, I love you, kiss you on the cheek, now it’s all about money, who cares about your mental health, your body breaking down.

  “I’m happy. I’m in a much better place now,” he says. “I’m sorry it had to go out the way it did.”

  * * *

  Without Sanders, and without Parker, Giannis played even more minutes, looking dominant at times. He had a remarkable play against the 76ers: he chased an opponent down, blocked him, hit the ground, got back up, blocked another shot, hit the ground, got back up, tried to take the charge.

  Playing the three, four, and five, Giannis took the majority of his shots in the paint, shooting 57 percent at one point. Kidd’s plan was working; Giannis wasn’t testing out the outside jumper he had been working on in private.

  Bill Simmons saw him play in person for the first time that year. “It was so clear that he was special,” Simmons says. “His arms were so fucking long; his steps were so fucking long. I was all in.” He wrote in Grantland that year, “Seeing the Greek Freak in person is like seeing Young Scottie Pippen crossed with Young Kevin Durant crossed with an octopus. He’s only 20, takes 10 yards per step, plays four positions, has Freddy Krueger arms, might pass the 7-foot mark soon and basically doesn’t have a genetic parallel.”

  Giannis showed promise against the Lakers, scoring a career-high twenty-five points. In overtime he made two shots, then missed the third, and attempted one final shot, which also missed. Still, that type of shoot-again-no-matter-what confidence showed maturity.

  The next day, Giannis enjoyed his first In-N-Out burger. The team toured UCLA’s campus and then Hollywood. Giannis smiled so wide, as if a celebrity were just around the corner. “Coach,” Giannis said to Sweeney, “this is the real America!”

  On the way back to Milwaukee, sitting next to each other on the plane, Sweeney and Giannis did what they always did: broke down film. While everyone else dozed off, the two of them continued to work, a faint light shining above them, a laptop, and of course Giannis’s notebook.

  Sweeney froze a play, then explained to Giannis what he should have done in the sequence. Sweeney was a master of nuance, of details. He’d explain to Giannis little things—the trajectory of the ball, the precision of a pass, how to most efficiently slide over to the midline on defense.

  Talking, freezing the frame, talking, freezing the frame—that was the rhythm of their relationship. They’d go for hours, until Sweeney called it a night. But Giannis stayed up, writing in his notebook, too many swirling thoughts to sleep.

  * * *

  Giannis was again selected to play in the Rising Stars Challenge at All-Star Weekend, this time in New York. Once again, he was fully focused, as if it were a real game. When opponent Mason Plumlee took off for a breakaway dunk, Giannis didn’t just let him have the easy bucket; he sprinted down the entire length of the floor and blocked Plumlee, smacking the ball out of bounds. A time-out was called.

  “Hey, man, it’s an all-star game,” Alvin Gentry, Giannis’s coach for the game, told him.

  “Coach,” Giannis said, “all I know how to do is play hard.”

  That was obvious even before the game, when Giannis sprinted through layup lines. “He’s just a guy that you can hit him once, hit him twice, hit him three times—just understand that he’s coming back for the fourth,” says Gentry, now the associate head coach of the Kings.

  After the game, the Bucks made a surprising move: trading Knight, the team’s leading scorer, to the Suns. The Bucks had thirty wins at that point, fifteen more than the entire previous season, thanks to smothering defense. The trade was shocking, especially to Giannis, who was learning the business of basketball, learning that friends could leave at any moment. Geiger had left to work for the Suns. Wolters had been waived. Morway had gone to work for the Jazz. It was a lot to deal with.

  Giannis still looked lost at times. His biggest problems were consistency and taking care of the ball. His potential was tantalizing, his mistakes frustrating. NBA reporter Zach Lowe described the dynamic best: “On any given possession the Greek Freak can look like he knows nothing and everything at once. He is an empty vessel, and in a blink, he is one vision of modern basketball fulfilled.

  “He’s learning on the job,” Lowe continued, “and the results range from the sublime to the embarrassing.”

  About five games before the playoffs, Giannis became frustrated in practice. He kept screwing up in a one-on-one closeout drill. It was one of Kidd’s hardest drills: a defender started at the foul line and closed out on an offensive player, who stood at the three-point line. The defender had to cut off the dribble, not allowing threes (or any bucket, really). Players would go and go until they got a stop.

  Giannis killed on offense, scoring twenty-eight straight times. On defense? Everyone scored on Giannis. He couldn’t get a stop. He was exhausted and stopped closing out hard. At one point, he stood on the free throw line, catching his breath, not moving, not trying. He was pissed. Realizing Kidd wouldn’t bail him out, he began moving his feet. His closeouts were still weak, half-hearted. It took him fifteen minutes to get a stop.

  Kidd just watched. Didn’t yell, didn’t call him out. Just watched. Waited until film the next day to expose him. Kidd turned on footage of the drill, showing Giannis failing to close out hard. Giannis was forced to watch how lackadai
sical he was, in front of everyone. Kidd didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The embarrassment hung over Giannis. He understood, apologized to Kidd. Told him it wouldn’t happen again.

  The next day, the Bucks played Cleveland. Kidd told the team before the game, “Giannis isn’t going to play tonight. If we’re going to be the best team we want to be, that can’t happen.”

  That meaning the drill. Giannis’s lack of intensity. Giannis had hit a wall, as many young players do. He was tired. And Kidd was old school: he wasn’t afraid to sit his best players down.

  One January game, at Philadelphia, the Bucks messed up a defensive coverage. Kidd thought Giannis had made the mistake. Giannis respectfully insisted that it wasn’t his mistake. They went back and forth, but Giannis stood his ground, diplomatically saying, “Coach, I promise—it wasn’t me.”

  Then, at halftime, Kidd pulled up the play on film. “Show me,” Kidd said, confident he was right. But Kidd was actually wrong: the film showed it wasn’t Giannis’s mistake. Kidd still benched Giannis for the second half. The Bucks were blowing the 76ers out, so Kidd didn’t necessarily need to put Giannis back in. He was making a point, as if to say, “Yeah, you’re getting better, but I’m still the boss.”

  Kidd hoped benching Giannis against Cleveland would be another teachable moment. An opportunity for him to refocus. The message was “We need you. We need you to be better.”

  But Giannis was upset. He decided to look up Kidd’s NBA stats, thinking, What did this guy do in his career, anyway? When he saw Kidd’s résumé—NBA championship, USA gold medal—he realized he’d better keep his head down.

  “Giannis was really, really angry,” Oppenheimer says. “It was an opportunity to play against LeBron.”