"We grew this one at home," Giannis Antetokounmpo (how do you pronounce that?) seems to be saying. Actually, those are not his words. His actual words were: “Obviously I wanted to get the job done. That’s my stubborn side. It’s easy to go somewhere and go win a championship with somebody else. It’s easy. I could go to a superteam, and just do my part to win a championship. But this is the hard way to do it, and we did it.”
Nor was Giannis a superstar when he came into the league. So Milwaukee didn't even build their team around a known star. He was the 15th pick in the 2013 draft -- and, a gamble, at that. Although the year before the draft he had participated in the Greek League All-Star game, that was as a favor. He hadn't made the all-star team. Coaches invited him to play anyway, as a treat to the fans. So, here you have a guy coming into the NBA who wasn't even an all-star in a foreign league.
Hey, Giannis didn't even start playing basketball until 2007. So, he was like 12 years old. In the next six years, he blossomed into an NBA draft pick. And, this was in Greece, where he didn't even have official papers. He was citizenship-less. He was a man without a state, without a nation. His parents had immigrated from Nigeria three years before he was born. Although born in Greece, he was not granted citizenship. That didn't come till he was 18 -- within a year's time of his being invited to come play in the NBA.
Much has been said of how hard it is to pronounce his last name. I haven't even used it other than on first reference. We all know him as either Giannis or "the Greek Freak." We better get used to pronouncing that last name, though. His 27th birthday is Dec. 6. That makes that National Antetokounmpo Day. Now, however are we to even celebrate the day if we don't even know how to pronounce it?
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