Giannis

by Mirin Fader

  The Bucks lost, 104–99. Giannis had played so well up to that game, starting sixty-seven of the team’s last seventy-seven games. By practice the next day, Giannis was still fuming. He came in with his head practically shaved. His teammates were concerned. “Bro, are you all right?” they asked. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Yeah,” Giannis said, shrugging. “I’m just going through it.”

  Tyler Ennis, a guard who had joined the team in February, knew what was really agitating Giannis: “You could see how much it bothered him, that he had to miss the game.”

  The next day, the Bucks played the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Before the game, Giannis told Sweeney his plan: he vowed to play angry. Rebound angry. Score angry. Pass angry.

  “Why angry?” Sweeney asked him.

  “I didn’t play.”

  “Well, if you do it for that game, you gotta keep doing it in all the games.”

  The game started, and Giannis blocked a shot, yanked the ball out of the air, zoomed downcourt. New York’s Cole Aldrich was just ahead, and as Giannis sprinted toward him, dribbling behind his back, Aldrich instinctively ran out of the way, allowing Giannis to hammer home a dunk. Giannis did the Westbrook scowl. Well, the Westbrook-Giannis scowl he had been practicing all year.

  The arena erupted. Kidd tried to hide a faint smile. “That was part of what J-Kidd was trying to do,” Ennis says, “just make him channel that anger into the game, and it came out on that play.”

  Giannis finished with twenty-three points and nine rebounds to help the Bucks win, 99–91. Afterward, Giannis told reporters he had played “angry.” Then he showed them what he meant, showed them his scowl. He scrunched up his cheeks, tightened his nose, dubbed it his “ugly face.”

  Then he softened, unwrinkled his forehead, and smiled. He laughed, and reporters did too. “The ugly face was prettier today,” Giannis joked. “I had swag too.” Then he stiffened back up and explained his approach from there on out: “I try to be angry when I play,” he said. “I try to be mad. Mean, man!”

  * * *

  The Bucks had clinched a playoff spot as the number 6 seed in the East, something that had seemed impossible the year before.

  The number 3 seeded Bulls, first up against the Bucks, were stacked, with Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler, Pau Gasol, and Joakim Noah leading the roster. They played tough, physical. They were far more seasoned than the Bucks, which was the youngest team in the playoffs.

  Butler hounded Giannis in game 1, making it difficult for Giannis to find any kind of rhythm. Giannis kept fouling, kept looking out of place, shooting 4-for-13 from the field. He was still icy in game 2, going 2-for-11. The Bucks lost both games.

  The Bulls’ strategy was to be physical with Giannis. Slow him down in the open floor, take away his driving lanes. Foul him if he got inside. Make him resort to jump shots, which were his biggest weakness. With so many defenders suffocating him, Giannis had never attracted that much attention before.

  “It really, really pissed Giannis off,” O’Bryant says, “the way they guarded him. The things they did to him.”

  His teammates told him to not second-guess himself. Let the game come to him. Attack the rim. He did just that with a breakout performance in game 3, as Kidd shifted him to power forward, scoring seventeen of his twenty-five points in the first half—adding twelve rebounds. Carter-Williams had nineteen, but the Bucks lost again, this time in double overtime as Rose dropped thirty-four.

  No team had come back from a 3–0 deficit to win a playoff series. “We can come back. We can win this series,” Giannis told Carter-Williams, “even though the odds are small.”

  Carter-Williams nodded. “The odds were small for us to even make it to the NBA in the first place,” Giannis said to him. “We’re not quitting.”

  The Bucks won game 4. And in a game 5 win, Giannis swatted four shots, including a critical block on Rose, who charged down the lane with thirty seconds left. “I remember being in awe,” says Doug McDermott, Bulls forward who now plays for the Pacers. “Like, Giannis is fearless. There’s not a lot of people in the world that would take on that challenge.”

  Giannis started gaining more confidence as the Bucks fought to keep their season alive.

  “It was Giannis’s coming-out party,” says Aaron Brooks, former Bulls guard. “I could just see him progressively getting better in each game in the series.”

  Game 6 was brutal. Bulls guard Mike Dunleavy Jr. punched Carter-Williams in the jaw in the first quarter. Officials didn’t see it, but TNT’s cameras did. Carter-Williams chipped a few teeth and later had to seek dental assistance.

  That was Dunleavy: competitive, cold-blooded. Once, a water boy didn’t have a towel for him. He flipped out, yelling at the ball boy. Another time, Dunleavy got ejected from a game, took his jersey off, tossed it into the crowd. His Bulls teammates used to watch that video of him on YouTube to fire them up.

  Giannis was infuriated. Carter-Williams was his best friend, and nobody was going to do that to his best friend. Giannis was about to explode as the Bulls’ lead ballooned to thirty. With Carter-Williams out, Giannis looked directly ahead, as if he was about to scrunch his face. Then he ran. So hard, seventy feet downcourt, making a beeline for Dunleavy. He body-slammed Dunleavy so hard Dunleavy landed in the front row of seats. Giannis was ejected from the game, drawing a flagrant 2 foul and earning him a one-game suspension that would start next season.

  It was a side nobody had seen from Giannis before. No longer happy-go-lucky, smiley—he finally looked mean.

  “Giannis almost killed him,” Oppenheimer says. “But that’s how he was: he had a loyalty to his teammates. He wasn’t a punk. But it did surprise me, the aggressive nature of it. It surprised everybody.”

  “I wasn’t shocked,” Sweeney says, “but I remember thinking to myself, Wow.”

  “I got a lot of respect for Giannis, going after him, to be honest with you,” says Foster, the assistant coach. “You don’t see that much in today’s game.”

  Milwaukee fans had a lot of respect for Giannis in that moment too. “That made Giannis a hero forever,” says Jim Kogutkiewicz, the longtime fan who was at that game.

  Fans began to boo Dunleavy. It was a startling sound for the forward, who had grown up in Milwaukee. His dad, Mike Dunleavy Sr., had both played for and coached the Bucks. “We gave him so much crap for that,” McDermott says. “He thought that Milwaukee was kind of his city. But after that night, we made sure that we let him know that that’s Giannis’s city now.”

  Nobody tried to leave early, even after it was clear the Bucks were going to lose by more than fifty points. As the final seconds of the 120–66 loss dwindled away, fans began a loud, defiant chant: “Mil-wau-kee! Mil-wau-kee! Mil-wau-kee!”

  So many fans—fans who had been quiet, almost dormant, for years, struggling through decades of despair, through the still-painful Ray Allen trade, through the once-great-hope Andrew Bogut shattering his elbow, through the signing of journeyman Drew Gooden to a ridiculous $32 million deal, through trading a promising future franchise player in Tobias Harris—were now proudly screaming at the top of their lungs, “Mil-wau-kee! Mil-wau-kee! Mil-wau-kee!”

  They weren’t going to leave quietly, no matter that they were down fifty-four. No matter what would happen with the upcoming arena deal. They needed this team to stay in Milwaukee.

  “Mil-wau-kee! Mil-wau-kee! Mil-wau-kee!” fans chanted after the final buzzer, as if to say, “We’re still here. We still matter.”

  CHAPTER 10

  STAR

  During a drill at the start of 2015–2016 training camp, a defender had to help and recover before playing one-on-one. Giannis dominated. At one point, his entire head was above the rim, having dunked on a teammate so badly that players are still embarrassed to name the victim to this day.

  Forward Chris Copeland stood in line, noticing that Giannis didn’t seem to feel sorry for any of his victims. Didn’t pause to let them catch a breath.
Giannis is a killer—a real killer, Copeland thought.

  Copeland didn’t quite know what to make of Giannis, until he felt a stiff elbow in his back when it was Giannis’s turn to play defense. Giannis guarded him tightly, refusing to concede any space. “It was one of the few times I felt uncomfortable,” Copeland says. “Like, bruh, back up.”

  In nearly a decade playing pro, Copeland wasn’t used to a player playing that intensely in practice. Even with little things, like stretching and warming up—Giannis had to be first. “It’s not an insult, but Giannis is like a creature. Like, what is this?” Copeland says. “Mobile and huge? He’s a different type of human. He’s like a seven-foot Russell Westbrook.”

  Bo Ryan, the legendary University of Wisconsin–Madison coach, was watching, as camp was held at Madison that season. Ryan watched the way Giannis’s eyes trailed Kidd’s demonstrations: every movement, every cut. Giannis never took a possession off. That made sense to Ryan, who had previously coached a USA basketball team at a tournament in Serbia; Europeans didn’t take many breaks.

  “Some people just have it. Giannis had it from day one,” Ryan says. “You could just see it hadn’t all come together yet, but it was going to.” Ryan remembers talking with other coaches and scouts who were there, including Rod Thorn, the Hall of Fame executive and former coach who was hired as a special consultant to the Bucks that year. Ryan recalls everyone being excited about Giannis’s potential. “Watch out for this guy! Look what he can do!” Ryan remembers hearing. “Just think when he gets older. Just think when he starts shaving!”

  With Parker still injured, and Middleton having recently signed a $70 million extension as the team’s top scorer, Giannis wanted to prove that he himself was the best player. So he showed no mercy during the one-on-one drill. He kept dunking, posting up, at will. Some veterans whispered to the coaches to stop the drill: “We’re gonna be here all day!”

  Giannis probably couldn’t hear any of them. He was so focused all he saw was the defender and the rim. He wasn’t going to let anyone get in his way. “He wasn’t that good yet, to be honest. He still wasn’t our best player,” Copeland says. “But you could just see him learning his powers.”

  Part of that was because Giannis didn’t look like a kid anymore. He didn’t have to practice scowling anymore; his lips would instinctively curl, his nose would automatically scrunch. His body was going through a transformation. He was more chiseled, more confident. Stronger, tougher. Bigger than he had ever been, clocking in at 242 pounds.

  He was learning how to better take care of his body with better nutrition. The Bucks hired a new team chef, Shawn Zell, who introduced Giannis to hearty foods that were still healthy, such as bison sloppy joes and a “bison power bowl,” his favorite (sweet potatoes, mustard greens, corn, bison, peppers). Giannis ordered the same breakfast nearly every day, messaging Zell before he came in with one of two emojis: the egg emoji or the chef emoji. He loved egg-white omelets loaded with veggies—tomatoes, spinach, and onions, plus bacon and a bit of feta. He ate lots of fruit, about six to eight cups per day, mostly pineapple. It was more than he had ever eaten in his life.

  Zell taught him about the importance of hydrating the night before, to avoid cramping late in fourth quarters. He helped him find energy-packed snacks, like waffle snacks by a company called Honey Stinger, plus carbohydrates like pasta, to eat before tip-off. Giannis had always just played his heart out, never really paying attention to his body, his health. He couldn’t, given the way he’d grown up.

  “He lived most of his life not making that a priority, in terms of ‘I need to fuel and eat and get ready for games,’” says Zell, who served as team chef from 2015 to 2020. “If you would have told fifteen-year-old Giannis that turmeric shots would help with his recovery, he would have looked at you, like, ‘What the heck is a turmeric shot?’” That became one of his favorites.

  Was there any correlation between Giannis’s new dietary habits and his growing two inches since his NBA career began? “Good nutrition helps in all things,” Zell says, “but it’s not—if I drastically change my nutrition, it wouldn’t help me grow two inches. It’s all part of a big cog, and [there’s] a bunch of working gears in it. [Nutrition is] just a small gear in a huge machine. It’s diet, it’s how he’s working out, it’s genetics. There’s so many different things that play into it.”

  Though his body was growing, his vocal leadership had some distance to go. Kidd continued to push Giannis to speak up. He’d put Giannis in drills where he had to talk, or else he’d have to stay in the drill. Or every other player except for Giannis would have to run.

  “You could tell Giannis was trying to be vocal, even though it wasn’t in his nature yet to do that,” says Malcolm Brogdon, Bucks guard from 2016 to 2019, who now plays for the Pacers.

  But Giannis didn’t struggle with communicating when he was joking with his teammates. Just being himself. Once, during a particularly taxing practice, Kidd said that if Giannis hit a three, practice would end. Giannis was so excited he ran to the three-point line, caught the ball.

  “Wait!” he told everyone, putting the ball down. “I gotta put on my sleeve first!”

  “Bro, are you serious?” his teammates said.

  Dead serious. Giannis still believed in his shooting-sleeve superstition. He put on the sleeve, bent his knees low, smiled like he had already sunk the shot, and then…

  He airballed.

  Everyone burst out laughing, including Giannis. He started making fun of himself. “That’s what I liked about him; he’s just a super regular guy,” Ennis says. “He wasn’t too prideful to laugh at himself. And that’s what drew people to him.”

  When he and his teammates were eating in the team kitchen, they’d blast music. Oftentimes, it was Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” and Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” Giannis would be in the back of the kitchen, swaying, singing, using a utensil for a microphone. “Laaaaaaaaaaaid back!” Giannis would rap. “With my mind on my money and my money on my mind!”

  As the season began, he looked relaxed, sure of himself on the court. Something was clicking. Maybe it was adding more muscle. Maybe it was being a little bit older. But after dropping twenty-seven points in a loss against the Wizards, in his first game of the 2015–2016 season, he was clearly showing a new confidence. He looked unstoppable. He told Saratsis, his agent, afterward, “I can do this every night.”

  * * *

  One afternoon, as the season wore on, Kidd said to the group during a film session, “Who’s the best player on this team?” It was a thorny question—one intended to provoke Giannis to speak up. Kidd knew Giannis wanted to be the leader; here was his chance to claim it.

  Nobody raised his hand, because it was awkward. Then Kidd started spouting off Middleton’s stats: “He’s leading our team in points, assists.” Players knew Kidd would keep talking until someone answered him.

  Giannis hated those awkward silences in film sessions but didn’t try to fill them. He’d just tuck his head down, hoping it would be over soon. “OK, it’s J-Kidd’s antics. Let’s just raise our hands,” remembers one former player. A bunch of hands rose in support for Middleton.

  Giannis sat still, silent, hands clasped on his lap. He didn’t say Middleton wasn’t the best, but he didn’t say he was the best either.

  “Giannis,” Kidd said, “why didn’t you raise your hand?”

  Giannis didn’t answer.

  Just say it, bro, Ennis thought. Say it so we can move on.

  Giannis looked at his coach and finally said it. Several players and coaches remember his words: “I’m the best player.”

  No one had ever heard Giannis speak up like that. Kidd didn’t say anything—moved on like nothing had happened, his face expressionless. Now Giannis would have to lead, if he expected his teammates to follow. And Giannis was inching closer to where he wanted to be: commanding respect, earning his spot.

  * * *

  But his older brother Thanasis wa
s slipping.

  The Knicks cut Thanasis in October 2015. “Thanasis was extremely energetic, very passionate,” says Coby Karl, then an assistant coach with the affiliate Westchester Knicks, who coached Thanasis. “Almost too energetic. He would get out of control.”

  It hurt, given that Thanasis had come so close to his dream. Now that opportunity was gone.

  “It was tough,” Thanasis says. “I had to go back home.” Of course Thanasis was proud that his baby brother was succeeding, but he had given Giannis the blueprint.

  Back in 2013, when Giannis was about to be drafted, he did an interview with the Greek TV station Antenna. The producer, Yannis Psarakis, picked up Giannis and Thanasis in his gray Honda HRV, Thanasis sitting in the front, Giannis in the back, to take them to the studio. Every question, Giannis would turn to Thanasis and ask, “Can I say that? Can I say that?” He had always looked to Thanasis for approval. For guidance.

  When Giannis couldn’t handle the pressure of ball handlers, back in Greece, and kept turning over the ball, Thanasis blocked the crap out of anyone who stole the ball from Giannis. But when NBA scouts came to see Giannis at the practices, Thanasis was guarding him, beating him up, making it hard for him to score. Not because Thanasis didn’t want his brother to succeed but because he was a competitor too.

  And now, the younger brother’s dreams were sprouting before the older brother’s. Thanasis was elated for Giannis but yearned to find his own path too. “The key is patience,” Thanasis says. It’s a lesson he learned from their dad.

  Thanasis remembers a video he saw on YouTube, where three men had to cut down a tree. The first man was swinging his axe hard at the tree. But after a few hours, he stopped. The second man whacked the tree for four hours, six hours, then stopped. The third man kept chopping at the tree, nonstop, refusing to quit. The other two men were amazed that he kept at it for hours on end, but when they came closer to him, they realized the man had on a blindfold. He hadn’t wanted to see his results, because if he had seen his results, he’d get discouraged. Instead, working blindfolded fostered the mentality that every time he took a swing, he believed the tree would fall.