Giannis

by Mirin Fader

  His game, though, needed improvement. He wasn’t a shooter. He wasn’t particularly quick. And he was always compared to Giannis. “With Giannis being my older brother, people ask me about the pressure all the time, but I don’t think pressure is bad,” Kostas says. “Pressure is good. Pressure makes you work harder. Pressure makes you scared. And when you’re scared, you push yourself beyond a certain point.”

  Kostas wanted to one day make the NBA too. Seeing Giannis dominate, as well as Thanasis playing at a high level overseas, first for Andorra (near Spain) in 2016 and then Panathinaikos in 2017, motivated him. Thanasis told Kostas, “Go hard but have fun.” Giannis was stricter—“Be focused every day.”

  “I wanted to play with them [in the NBA], but I had to wait for my moment,” Kostas says.

  Giannis drove six hours to move Kostas into his dorm at Dayton, stopping only at Walmart. Giannis carried bedsheets, helping his little brother move in late into the night.

  Alex, unlike Kostas, was far from the Division I level, but he was getting a little bigheaded despite his lackluster freshman season. At times, he’d showboat in games, screw around. Not go to class. Wear gaudy chains. Giannis quickly put him in his place one afternoon.

  “Who do you think you are! Do you understand what this family went through to get you here?”

  That would be the first of several heat checks. The next came during a summer workout, when his brothers pulled him to the side. They were not pleased. “We feel like you’re too relaxed,” Alex remembers them saying. “You really need to pick it up.”

  That night, Alex cried. There was no worse feeling than letting them down. Especially because Alex knew they were right. He was just going through the motions in workouts. “I believed that I was better than I was,” Alex says. “That was the turning point for me. I realized I had to turn this around.”

  The rest of the summer, he worked on his ball handling, his jump shot. He became quicker, stronger. He humbled himself. Stopped thinking he knew the answer to every question. Then came fall. Alex almost left the game altogether.

  Giannis had to keep all his brothers from falling apart.

  CHAPTER 11

  LOSS

  Alex didn’t understand why, on September 29, 2017, Mariah showed up in the middle of the day to pull him out of US history and bring him home. Why, when he blasted Drake in the car, she did not bop to the beat with him. All she said was, “Be strong for Giannis.”

  She looked upset. So did about twenty family members and friends standing inside the downtown apartment when she and Alex walked in. There were large men in black suits too. Alex didn’t recognize them, but one came up to him: “Sorry for your loss.”

  The hell are you talking about? Alex thought. Then Alex finally found Giannis. He was crying. That was another unusual sight—Giannis hardly ever let his brothers see him cry. See any kind of pain.

  “You remember what I told you two days ago?” Giannis asked Alex.

  Two days before, the family had had a get-together. Alex told Giannis he couldn’t make it (he had plans with friends). “That’s fine,” Giannis said, “but I’m just letting you know: we gotta keep being a family because you never know when Mom and Dad’s not gonna be here.”

  The grief compounded as Giannis reminded Alex of that eerie exchange before delivering the news: Charles had died of a heart attack.

  He was just fifty-four.

  Giannis, then twenty-two, had been at the Bucks practice facility earlier that day. The Bucks were starting their final day of training camp ahead of the 2017–2018 season. Giannis, Maker, Middleton, and Brogdon were in the locker room, playing “BUTTERFLY EFFECT” by Travis Scott, getting ready for practice, when several coaches came up to Giannis to tell him about his dad.

  Giannis just walked out, unable to speak, unable to process. Kidd told the team what had happened, canceled practice, while Giannis headed back to his apartment. Kostas was in Ohio, playing for Dayton. Thanasis was in Greece, where he was playing. They quickly hopped on flights to Milwaukee. But for that afternoon, it was just Giannis and Alex, crying, holding each other in the apartment, trying to keep the other from falling.

  Giannis had to be strong. For Alex. For his mom. For everyone. His dad had taught him that: toughness. A “‘don’t-give-a-fuck’ mentality,” as Giannis calls it, where he plays hard no matter what the condition—win, lose, anything. A mentality that he needed to maintain off the floor too. His dad had taught him to take care of his brothers. In a way, Giannis was prepared for a moment like this, though no one is prepared for a moment like this.

  “Giannis was a father-figure-slash-mentor,” Alex says. “He kind of skipped the stages of actually being a father and having a kid.”

  Memories flooded. How proud Charles had been of Giannis when he’d made it to the NBA. When Charles first came to America and watched Giannis in Madison Square Garden, the way he jumped around and high-fived strangers when Giannis scored. How his dad told him to maximize every minute: “Make sure what you give your time to is worth it. You shouldn’t wait one more day than what’s necessary. If you could accomplish something today, why wait until tomorrow? Go get it today!”

  More memories. The way Charles would show up to the gym in Zografou on the rare occasion he was not working and catch a glimpse of Giannis dancing past defenders with the footwork Charles had taught him. Or how Charles would be soft-spoken but kind to all of Giannis’s friends back then, always sounding cheerful though he had every reason not to be. “How are you doing?” Charles would ask Giannis’s friends. “How are your parents?”

  For so long, Giannis’s only goal was to survive and make his parents proud. He did that and more. So much more. They had all made a life together, here. In America. A life where Charles had the leisure, the time, to walk around the lake near their apartment, just take in the cool air, let it wrap around his body without worrying about a bill or a meal. He could just enjoy something as simple as thinking, walking. Doing little things to make Giannis smile, like washing his car when he was on road trips.

  Time. It spun and spun. Back to the days that Charles had gone without food so Giannis could eat. How his dad would always say, “Don’t worry about it. I’m not eating.” He’d sit there, bare plate, acting like nothing was wrong.

  Giannis always remembered that. And it stabbed at him in this moment. He felt numb. Didn’t say much. He was shocked. He couldn’t understand it. It happened so suddenly. So out of the blue. There were no signs. Nothing. Charles just left.

  The love between Giannis and his father was so pure. That hurt too: their love becoming a was. Past tense. Charles becoming past tense. Catching himself flip between was and is in conversation was a new trauma on its own.

  Before Charles’s death, Giannis believed nothing could hurt his family after what they had been through. Nothing could touch them. If they could survive Sepolia, they could survive anything.

  It was cruel for this to happen.

  * * *

  The night his dad died, Giannis went to the practice facility to shoot. That was the only way to try to make sense of what would never make sense. His world was crumbling, but the gym was intact. Exactly as he’d left it. Leaky roof and all. “That was his sanctuary,” says Maker, who was there with him that night.

  Maker remembers Sweeney, Veronica, Mariah, and Alex being there. Giannis, Alex, Maker, and Sweeney worked out. It was not a hard workout but a workout to keep Giannis warm. Moving. So he didn’t have to think, cry. Sweeney and Maker just kept talking to him—talking and shooting, talking and shooting. Trying to put a smile on his face, though that was impossible.

  Giannis was trying to find a way to distract himself. Trying to focus on what gave him joy. And that was basketball. Sweeney reminded him of that, that night. “This is what makes you happy, being out here on the floor,” Sweeney told him. “Nobody can tell you anything.”

  Giannis nodded, kept shooting. His teammates, coaches, and staffers were worried about him. The
y weren’t sure how he was going to handle it as the days wore on. They had to force him to take some time off, telling him to be with his family. Grieve.

  The 2017–2018 season was about to start. Charles had come to all his games. Having him there, center section, was something that calmed Giannis. Gave him purpose. And every game he played from here on out would be a reminder of that loss. That empty seat.

  “I think it changed him; I think it hardened him a little bit,” says Michael Carter-Williams, the former Bucks guard. “When you’re that close to people in your family, it’s like you can’t even imagine losing them.”

  Giannis turned inward, grew quiet. He thought about it every day but wouldn’t say much. He kept looking at a picture of him and his family, the brothers sleeping in the same bed, the parents sleeping in the nearby den behind a curtain; Giannis was maybe ten years old.

  “He wasn’t talking,” says Michalis Kamperidis, the former teammate and friend from Filathlitikos. “He didn’t have the willingness to talk, you know? I was trying to not talk to him that much and let him get over, you know? He was really, really hurt. It was really hard for him. But, you know, it’s still hard for him to this day.”

  Giannis was concerned about his younger brothers. How they would handle it. Given that Alex lived with him, he had to tend to him first. Alex was still too shocked to speak. Alex remembered Charles driving him to school that morning, just four hours earlier. His dad seemed fine. Perfect. Fine. The two had talked about basketball practice. What time his dad would come afterward. “I’ll come pick you up,” his dad had said.

  As Alex leans back on his couch in the basement, recalling this day, the worst of his life, his voice is shaky. Barely audible. “My dad was my best friend,” Alex says. Veronica remembers how Alex would ask his dad to take him places: “Daddy, take me to this place! Take me to that place! Daddy, we need to go here! Daddy… Daddy… Daddy…” One time, Alex wanted a certain hat, and they went place to place to find it. Charles would go anywhere if it made his kids happy.

  “They were so tight,” Veronica says. “They talked all the time like they were friends. They were very close. Very, very close.

  “He had never seen anything like it, anything that hard,” Veronica says. She tried to talk to Alex about it but couldn’t. “You cannot know how it affects him because he don’t talk. He is not talking. He is always quiet. But I know it affected him, because it was his best friend. And he was the best dad.”

  If you could accomplish something today, why wait until tomorrow? Go get it today!

  Alex still thinks of those words every morning. Before getting out of bed, he closes his eyes, hanging on to the image of his father a little longer. He sees himself asking his dad to take him to the court or store. He hears his dad cheering for him at games: “Go, Alex, go!” He sees himself arguing with his dad about who will win the 2015 NBA championship.

  He thinks about how his dad saw games where he scored twenty, games where he scored zero. His dad loved him just the same. He thinks about how his dad was always calm: “Don’t worry about it.” How, in his dad’s eyes, he was never just the youngest brother. He was his own man. And his dad was the man he wanted to be: determined, protective, kind, hardworking, selfless. He was the one who made Thanasis Thanasis. The one who made Giannis Giannis. The one who made Kostas Kostas.

  And without his dad, Alex didn’t know how to be Alex. Grief spilled onto everything he touched. His dad was everywhere and nowhere. “We all have shoes, right? Shoes we walk in? Imagine you have shoes your whole life,” Alex says, “and then they’re taken away from you. Now you have to live without them.”

  Alex took time off school. He put down the basketball. He contemplated quitting for good. How could he continue playing? His parents were the reason he played, and now half that reason was gone. He kept thinking of the first time his dad had watched him play, back in Greece. Alex was firing from three, stealing the ball. “I’m really proud of you,” his dad told him afterward. It was the first time his game was recognized, rather than his brothers’. It was the sweetest moment of Alex’s young life.

  It hurts thinking about that moment. Thinking about how after that moment, his dad had taken him more seriously on the basketball court. At first, his dad was just enamored with Giannis’s and Thanasis’s games. “He was like, ‘Awww, it’s cute that he’s trying to do the same thing as his brothers,’” Alex says. “But then when he saw that game, he told my mom, ‘Alex is kinda good!’ Once I started taking it more seriously, he did too.”

  His brothers hurt in their own ways as well. Kostas remembered Charles’s comforting words when he was having an off day. “The biggest thing he taught me was, if you have a bad day at practice, a bad game,” Kostas says, “he’d tell me, ‘Tomorrow is another day. Just wake up, try to get better. Take it day by day. Don’t try to focus on the past. Just keep working.’”

  Kostas remembered the fridge. The way it teetered, almost fell over, when he, Giannis, and their dad pushed it down the block on the little skateboard. The sound of their laughter when they had made it to the apartment. How resourceful they were, how scrappy they were. How together they were.

  Thanasis felt like he was drowning. Anything difficult in his life he felt he could handle by outworking someone. But this wasn’t something to fix, to solve. No “‘don’t-give-a-fuck’ mentality” could rid him of the sinking feeling that he was falling lower, lower.

  Thanasis got a tattoo on his arm to help himself cope. It depicts his dad and in Greek lettering reads, “The father holds the hand of his children for a while, but he holds their heart forever.”

  * * *

  Giannis sensed Alex was drifting, and he wanted to make sure his little brother knew he was loved, taken care of. And he didn’t want him to quit basketball. Neither did Kostas or Thanasis. When those two finally landed in Milwaukee, they had a talk with Alex.

  They told Alex their dad would want him to keep playing, to succeed. They believed in him. “That’s the reason I probably push for it now,” Alex says. “Me and my brothers, we just want to live out my father’s legacy.”

  Alex points to a large portrait toward the back of the family’s basement. Mariah gave it to Giannis for his birthday that year. It’s painted yellow, orange, and blue, with the words “I am my father’s legacy” sprawled across the canvas. There is Giannis in the center, pointing to the sky, surrounded by Thanasis, tossing a ball up in the air; Kostas, scooping up a layup; Alex, leaning in for a crossover; and Francis, the oldest brother, who lived in Nigeria for most of his life and who has remained close with his brothers throughout, crossing his arms. Charles’s and Veronica’s names are written in the top right corner.

  It was comforting for them to see all their brothers painted, including Francis. Francis had been the only one to pursue soccer instead of basketball. He played semiprofessionally at midfield in Nigeria. Around this time, Francis was receiving interest to play in Greece for the Greek club AE Sparti, located in Sparta, Laconia, Greece. He worked out with the team a bit in 2018, but his career was short-lived. He ended up pursuing music. Musically, he goes by Ofili, which is his middle name, and he now lives in Athens.

  Giannis still glances at the portrait whenever he works out at home, as it is on the wall right next to his personal workout room. It reminds them all who they are. Where they come from. Why they must press on.

  Alex came back sophomore year still mourning the loss of his father, but like Giannis, he used the court as an outlet, upping his scoring to nearly sixteen points a game that season. “He was all about business,” says Jackson, the Dominican assistant coach. “It was a kind of getaway escape for him.”

  Up to this point, the family had been living in a complex with two separate apartments: Alex was on the fifth floor with Giannis, Charles and Veronica on the fourth. After Charles died, Veronica moved up to the fifth to be with her sons.

  And Giannis, somehow, had to keep playing basketball. And not just play but e
levate the Bucks to advance deeper in the playoffs. “He came back full speed, rejuvenated with energy,” Maker says, “but playing for his father.”

  Giannis always played hard, always played with a sense of purpose. But that sharpened after his dad’s death. “When you walk out there, you have to have that look in your eye,” Giannis told Maker one day before a game. “That look that says, ‘I’m a dead man. I’m a dead man. I shouldn’t be alive.’

  “Just focus. Every possession. You can’t get distracted,” Giannis told him. “‘I’m a dead man. I shouldn’t be here. But I am.’”

  “He used basketball to express his pain, his anger,” Maker says. “He just left it all out on the floor every single night.”

  Giannis averaged 33.7 points, 10.3 rebounds, and 5.3 assists per game in his first seven games.

  Losing his father changed the way he viewed things outside of basketball. He was not afraid of anything anymore.

  * * *

  Hours before a game against the Blazers, about three weeks after Charles’s death, in late October, Giannis’s face looked frozen. It was as if every muscle clenched tighter and tighter. A bee could have buzzed by, and he wouldn’t have flinched. He wasn’t talking to anyone.

  Jason Terry, the Bucks point guard, looked over at Giannis and could sense the focus, sense the intensity. “Stone-faced killer,” Terry says, describing how Giannis looked that day.

  Giannis was both full of emotion and bereft. He was there, but he wasn’t there. He scored a career-high forty-four for the win, including seventeen points in the fourth quarter. He stole the ball from CJ McCollum, finishing with a massive dunk for the lead with eleven seconds left. Then he blocked a critical shot from Jusuf Nurkić.