MIAMI — Giannis Antetokounmpo was on his flight to Miami from Atlanta fresh off watching Argentina advance to the World Cup final, when his mind started to wonder.
The next in a long line of superstars to join the Heat under the direction of Pat Riley started thinking about another superstar that arrived in South Florida three years ago. The one he saw will his team past England — Argentina legend Lionel Messi.
The man considered the greatest athlete ever to come out of Greece would like to emulate his counterpart from Argentina.
“Seeing that game yesterday, we witnessed greatness, right?” Giannis said Thursday, July 16 during a celebration for his arrival in South Florida at the Kaseya Center, the two-time NBA MVP’s new home.
“Messi might go down as one of the best athletes of all time. He has (eight) MVPs , he might have two World Cup finals wins, he has (three) Champions League championships. So he’s out there, with other athletes, Michael Jordan, Selena Williams, Djokovic, Michael Phelps. At the end of the day, when you see that, you definitely get inspired to take care of your body, to keep on doing that thing for your team.”
Giannis called Messi the “blueprint,” and illustrated it by describing one play from Wednesday’s soccer match, when he was pushed down and his teammates sprinted to help him up.
“You have to earn that,” Giannis said. “The respect that he has from his teammates, that’s earned. And … that’s the blueprint. LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, they set the blueprint you just have to follow.”
Giannis already has followed one path taken by Messi. The one that landed him in Miami. At 6-foot-11 with a 7-foot-3 wingspan, he is a man with skills so unique he’s been labeled the Greek Freak.
“It’s like nirvana to me,” Riley said. “He wants to win and he wants to win big. We want to win … and we’re not waiting. We’re not going to wait. Our plan is to go for it right from the beginning.
“It’s a great day. It’s just a great day.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo admits to ‘snooping’ around Pat Riley’s office
Less than 24 hours before the start of the NBA draft, on June 22, The Heat and Milwaukee Bucks finalized the deal that included six players and a slew of picks, the key figures being Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to Miami; Tyler Herro and Kel’el Ware to Milwaukee.
Riley described that phone call from general manager Andy Elisburg as “landing the plane.” And for Riley, it was one of those moves that during a more than four-decade career as an executive/coach few have the ingenuity and creativity to pull off.
Giannis himself was so intrigued by Riley that he told his new boss that during his early years in the league, on a day the Bucks were was using the Heat’s practice court, he wandered into Riley’s office.
“I was like, snooping around,” Giannis said, “to kind of see what the great Pat Riley was about.”
Now he knows he’s about landing the plane.
When that plane carrying Giannis landed in Miami, that’s when everything hit him. New city. New team. New facilities.
After 13 years in Milwaukee.
“You don’t know where your locker is,” he said. “You don’t know where you’re going to get treatment. You don’t even know how to get access to the court. All these things are new.”
And you know what else is new. Miami.
“It’s warm, it’s warmer than Milwaukee,” Giannis said in the most obvious statement of the day before moving on to what he does not like about this region.
“I don’t like what you guys call, geckos, geckos? I don’t like those,” he said before being told they are iguanas.
“Iguanas? I don’t like those,” he said. “Yeah, those got to stay away from me.”
But it’s not only iguanas that had Giannis a bit anxious this week. He admitted to feeling “vulnerable” and relayed some deep feelings not many superstars ever would make public.
“Getting the phone call from Mr. Pat gave me a lot of closure,” he said about the first call from Riley. “I was like, okay, now it’s a new beginning. And I was being a little bit vulnerable with him.
“I know you guys think I’m this big, tough, big plane, this stuff. But at the end of the day I’m human, you know, I have my emotions and I was like … I’m scared, you know, I’m like, I’m kind of scared. This is different. I never expected.”
Still, Giannis knew it was necessary. He had nothing but good things to say about Milwaukee, but also realizes it was time.
“I enjoy basketball,” Giannis said. “I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy getting better. I’ve accomplished a lot of things in my career, but one of my goals is to win another championship. I feel like this is the best route for me to do that and I’m ready for the challenge.
“As I said, I love pressure. I think pressure brings the best out of me. That’s what I’ve seen so far in my career. I don’t like being in a comfort zone. And I think this is the right place to be. I’m excited to be here.”
And he is not the only one. Coach Erik Spoelstra surely is fantasizing about a defense anchored by Giannis and Bam Adebayo. But when he listened to Giannis — one of the most humble superstars in all of sports — speak about what he expects from the longest tenured coach in the NBA, Spoelstra likely can not help but feel even more rejuvenated.
“I just want to be coached hard,” he said. “I feel like once the moment I’m coach hard, everybody else is going to follow. I don’t want to be sugarcoated. I have a lot of people like that in my life that try to approach me and try to make me feel good. I don’t need that. I need the truth. I need the right feedback.”
Sixteen years ago, in this same arena, on the same end of the floor, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh rose from the floor amidst smoke and a frenzied crowd that descended about downtown for an introductory press conference that was unlike anything like it ever before.
That era of the Big Three brought Miami four consecutive Finals appearances and two titles.
Now we await the results of the next potentially great era in Heat basketball.
“He is a force of will, a force of nature, has an absolute will to win,” Spoelstra said. “On any given day, or year, he can be the best on the planet.
“We have big expectations, big dreams and you need somebody like this man right here to be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish.”
Tom D’Angelo is a senior sports columnist and reporter for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Why Giannis Antetokounmpo finds inspiration in Messi as he joins Heat
Reporting by Tom D’Angelo, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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By Tom D'Angelo, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
