MILWAUKEE — The idea that Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to wear a different jersey is just … wild. It’s hard to comprehend. It’s just not something that you could imagine if you’ve followed his career in Milwaukee or, in my case, covered him here for most of that time.
During the last six months, if you’ve spoken to people in his inner circle, the sentiment has largely been, basically, how the f— did we get here? How did we arrive at a place where the Bucks want to trade their most accomplished player? But here we indeed are: The Bucks are trading the greatest player in franchise history to the Miami Heat after 13 years and 979 games.
I’ve covered Antetokounmpo and the Bucks in person since 2015, the last eight for The Athletic. Relatively early in my time around Antetokounmpo, it became apparent that he was fiercely passionate about two things — family and basketball — and he would do just about anything for those two things. As those first few years progressed, I quickly came to describe him — in a complimentary way — as a Kobe Bryant-level lunatic when it came to the game.
Funny enough, my first significant one-on-one interview with Antetokounmpo came on Feb. 15, 2018, the night he was leaving the Bradley Center to head to his second All-Star Game in Los Angeles. We talked about Kobe.
As I walked out of the locker room with Antetokounmpo for this one-on-one interview in 2018, he revealed that the thing he wanted to do most at All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles, outside of competing at a high level, was talk to Kobe and persuade the Lakers legend to work out with him the following summer.
By that time, Kobe had already issued Antetokounmpo his MVP challenge and praised Antetokounmpo to former Bucks head coach Jason Kidd following his final game in Milwaukee in 2016. Antetokounmpo wanted the chance to work out with Kobe, but more importantly, talk with him about his mindset and how to be great.
As many know by now, Antetokounmpo was successful in the pursuit he laid out to me that night. He talked to Kobe in Los Angeles during All-Star Weekend, and he worked out with Kobe in the summer of 2018.
Ultimately, Milwaukee watched him grow up, transforming from an unknown, skinny kid from Greece into a perennial All-Star and two-time league MVP who could put up 50 points in an NBA Finals closeout game while also making unbelievable defensive plays on the other end. And while Antetokounmpo will no longer play for the Bucks, it will be impossible to separate him from the franchise. He may not have ended up being a one-team superstar like Bryant or Dirk Nowitzki, but he will be inextricably linked with Milwaukee for the rest of time.
I’ve been one of only a few reporters who have been along for this ride nearly every day, and I’ve seen things I will never forget. I could do this job for 40 more years, and I’m never going to have another moment like the Bucks championship parade. Walking the route alongside the buses as the city flooded the streets and fans pushed up against every barricade. Sneaking into a VIP area to interview the best player in the world, two days after he had just won his first NBA championship, and having him grab my hand to put it on his chest to feel how fast his heart was beating — yeah, I can’t imagine a way I’m ever going to top that.
As the franchise icon moves on, here are a few things I’ve learned while being around Giannis over the past decade-plus in Milwaukee.
You have to earn his trust
As I said, Giannis only cares about two things: basketball and family. That’s it. So if you respect his family, and how private he tries to keep things, and also respect the game of basketball, it feels like you’re going to be in a good spot.
Very early in my career, I realized that Antetokounmpo greatly values the opportunity to speak for himself. There is little value in pontificating on what he might be thinking or feeling because he would much prefer to tell you himself. He says what he believes and how he feels about almost any topic.
He is fiercely loyal, so he will protect his teammates and his coach because of the sanctity of the locker room, but if you ask him how he feels or how he felt in a particular moment, he will do his best to convey his emotions and feelings.
He’s not your typical basketball star personality
As he talks and jokes around, Giannis has a very natural charisma that draws you closer. That’s not to say recent MVPs like Nikola Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander don’t have charisma, but they have a different charisma — more indifferent, more closed off — that makes them feel like they’re not accessible.
On the other hand, Giannis tells dad jokes and regularly jokingly references his own libido. He’s open about his feelings, and he doesn’t really hide from emotion or mental health. When you hear him describe how he feels, it’s easy to think that, if you somehow managed to become one of the 25 best players in NBA history, you might feel that same way. He is very human in that way, and he lets people in in a way that others maybe don’t.
When I ask him a question, I feel confident he is telling me exactly how he feels. It’s not the rehearsed version that a public relations expert might teach to a player or what he should say; instead, it’s what he thinks in that specific moment. It’s pretty rare for him to give short answers or to not want to really speak or not want to say what he feels.
Because he believes so deeply in that, he also only attempts to speak for himself. You can’t ask him, “What do you think Khris Middleton was thinking?” or “What do you think Jrue Holiday was thinking?” or “What happened on this play?” in any way other than from his own perspective. He’ll only speak for himself because that is the only person he can speak for.
He made the Bucks cool — and that’s saying something
I grew up in Wisconsin. And in Wisconsin, the Green Bay Packers are No. 1.
That’s not unique. The NFL is No. 1 everywhere, but specifically here, you are a Packers fan, and then everything else after that. I have gotten to know plenty of diehards over the years who will tell you stories about fighting for a bar to put on a Bucks game or religiously watching the Bucks on Channel 24, but overwhelmingly, Packers fandom comes first. And then maybe Brewers fandom. Some might have even talked about Marquette or Wisconsin before getting to the Bucks. But that changed when Antetokounmpo ascended to MVP status.
While Giannis was here and the Bucks were good, it was cool to go to Bucks games again. It was something people wanted to do and a team that people wanted to talk about and that is not what it was like for many years. In the Herb Kohl years, people would go to playoff games, and the Bucks could fill the arena for that, but it was largely the diehards filling the stadium.
When the Bucks won the championship in 2021, there were probably 100,000 people in the Deer District for Game 6 watching on outdoor screens, doing everything they could just to be close to the arena and feel the excitement. People cared.
To this day, you can walk down the street and still see the championship T-shirts, you can still see the gray championship hats. All of that is still there, and the Bucks are — I don’t want to say cool, but you see Bucks gear on the streets in a way that you never did before.
His entire family embraced Milwaukee
While some people from the outside who don’t know him might have viewed it as a hollow statement, I thought Antetokounmpo made a point at the trade deadline that most people didn’t fully appreciate: He has only lived in two cities in his entire life.
Athens, Greece, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
He made Milwaukee his family’s home. When he first moved to this country after getting drafted, one of the biggest priorities was figuring out how to get his parents the paperwork needed to get them to Milwaukee. His younger brothers moved here and played basketball at Dominican High School in Whitefish Bay. While his older brother Thanasis was playing for the New York Knicks when Giannis first came to Milwaukee, he would use his off days to get to Milwaukee to see his younger brother.
When Giannis built his own family, they made their home in Milwaukee. As he eloquently stated at the trade deadline, his kids’ passports all say Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His dad is buried in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee is his home.
He might have joked about people overlooking the Bucks because they’re in a small market or about how the local reporters are the only ones that really care about the Bucks, but there were never any complaints about playing in a small market or desires to get himself into a bigger market. He embraced being from Milwaukee.
His legacy in Milwaukee is secure
In the wake of winning their first championship since 1971, the organization commissioned local artist Mauricio Ramirez to paint a mural of Antetokounmpo on the side of one of the office buildings on Wisconsin Avenue, a building that the Bucks passed on the championship parade route in 2002. That painting is a perfect encapsulation of his enduring legacy in Milwaukee.
The famous mural. (Eric Nehm / The Athletic)
Like that 53-by-56-foot painting, he will forever be larger than life in this city. He is a folk hero, a tall tale. The child born to Nigerian immigrants in Greece, hustling on the streets to survive, who was never supposed to make it. And if he was going to make it, no one could have ever predicted it would be in one of the NBA’s smallest markets.
“We did it, huh?” Antetokounmpo famously said to Middleton during his postgame television interview from the dais of the 2021 NBA Finals. “We f—ng did it.”
The Bucks were never able to do it for a second time in Antetokounmpo’s final five seasons in Milwaukee, but they did it once. He led them to a championship and ended a 50-year title drought.
The paint on that mural might not be as bright in the coming years. And the colors on the banner in Fiserv Forum might fade. But they did it. They f—ing did it. And he is the biggest reason.