We tried. We fought wave after wave of invasions to keep the intruders at bay. The Milwaukee Bucks fortified with blockbuster trades and multiple coaching changes. But it was just a delusion to think that we could keep Giannis Antetokounmpo forever.
This generational talent who changed the game, a 6-foot-11 Greak Freak playing point guard, a blur of biceps rumbling down the lane – we claimed him as one of our own. Even our other MVPs, Aaron Rodgers and Christian Yelich, took a seat in Fiserv Forum in 2019 to witness firsthand the brute force of willpower that is No. 34, a Mack truck on offense, a menace on defense, while “MVP! MVP” chants rained down from the upper sections.
Giannis, the competitor and critical thinker, led us out of the 50-year championship drought, and the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, back into the sunlight in 2021 – and he did it on one leg, and down two games to none to start the NBA Finals.
He was immortalized for that, but the real ones know we were lucky for every year he was here, to watch him grow, from manchild to Finals MVP.
Giannis always has had two life goals that fuel him, and that’s to serve his family and to win, but he embraced us, too, over time. And he validated our affection for him every time he was offered a contract by Milwaukee when he put pen to paper and signed it.
He was not perfect to everyone, but he was perfect for us. And now, he’s off to Miami in a trade.
So this feeling right now is heartache, even though we have felt our bond to him loosen since the “boo game” in January, and the “benching” in March.
And this feeling right now is bitterness, because the phony prophets who have been predicting that Giannis-wants-out eventually got it right, or at least partly so, even if it took seven years of manifestation to get here. Milwaukee always will just be Smallwaukee, and we may never be the kind of place that can keep that one special person for the entirety of his career (ask the Milwaukee Brewers how it feels).
And, this feeling is resentment. We won’t get Giannis’ later and final years of his career, to see if they will highlight his triumphant comebacks from injuries, or showcase his maturation into his mid-30s with good coaching and better load management. We won’t be able to accept the aging with him and the changes that will add new challenges. And we will miss out on the only positive side of getting older, which is a deeper level of wisdom and leadership.
There will be no full-circle moments for Giannis and us. They have been traded away.
We gave it a good fight for as long as we could, but sometimes love isn’t enough to save something awesome. And I hate every word of this damn column.
So, Giannis, thank you for being so good to us. For choosing Milwaukee, in 2020 and 2023, when anyone who doesn’t know “Recombobulation area” couldn’t fathom why you would. Thank you for winning the championship the hard way, from the ground up, with your brothers Khris and Jrue, Brook and Bud.
Thank you for your work ethic and all-in, always commitment, for your willingness to face every question, good or bad, and for your efforts to explain the outcomes, win or lose. Your dominance in the game will forever be remembered by those who saw it or seek it. You leave us with some memorable quotes to learn from, or live by, and that should hold up your legacy here as much as the records set in franchise history.
April 7, 2022: ‘It holds you back’
Antetokounmpo was in contention for the scoring title, averaging more than 30 points a game, but the it wasn’t raised much, in part, because of how he conducts himself.
This was the question: We don’t talk about you being in contention for the scoring champion, and I think that’s because of you. We know you care about the team, care about health; your priorities are otherwise. And I know that you wouldn’t change your style of play, but do you track that at all? Is that one of the …
Giannis responded, shaking his head, no.
“No. No, it holds you back. Like, it holds you back. I really believe in this. You don’t get to your full potential when you worry about the wrong things.
“I’m obsessed with basketball. I really want to be the best that I can be and I’ve showed it times and times that I’m about that. I’m not about scoring champ; I could [not] care less. I’m not about MVP; I can [not] care less. I just want to be the best player I can be. And whatever that takes me, I’m OK with that. If I keep worrying about, ‘if I can win the scoring champ and who have done it in the past and …’ No, no, no, no, no, no.
“It takes me away from the goals that I really want to achieve. I know a lot of people follow it; I know probably my teammates follow it, or my brother follow it, but I try to close my social media. Throw all those distractions away.
“And just focus on how can I, tomorrow, today, how can I get better? How can I make free throws? How can I improve my jump shot? How can I be a better teammate? How can I be stronger, more explosive? How can I make good decisions? How can I enjoy the game? How can I focus on myself – without being selfish? Just focus on myself by making a good decision for myself and my teammates.
“How can I be in the moment and don’t worry about the future? Those are the things that allow me to reach my full potential. Those are the things I worry about every single day, not scoring champ, MVPs, Boston that we just played. Now, we got Detroit tomorrow.”
Aug. 9, 2021: Win the Championship. Go to the Fair.
Giannis, wife Mariah and the kids pack up the family vehicle and head to the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis, mere weeks after he and the Bucks won the NBA Finals. It’s still the middle of the pandemic, so some fairgoers wear masks, even outdoors, for their own concern, or out of courtesy for others.
“I know if I’m myself – because my mom and my dad raised me the right way – everything’s going to be OK, because I don’t drink, I don’t gamble, I don’t do nothing. I just love playing basketball, you know? I love just being around my family,” Antetokounmpo said in 2025. “I just made the decision two years ago that I am going to be myself. And I won’t change for no industry, NBA, this … way … no nothing. They can go get somebody else. Not me.
“The moment you try to change who you are and the way you carry yourself, is the moment that you let all the outside people and outside pressure affect your life.”
July 31, 2020: A statement about respect
This was a year of great challenges but for the NBA, the Black Lives Matter movement was first and foremost. Players could choose their message and display it on the back of their jerseys. Antetokounmpo chose “Equality.”
He asked that we all just take a minute to learn. Not judge. Not to even agree. Just respect and see if there’s something we can do to better understand one another.
“We [have] all got to respect everybody’s decision – and our decision wearing on the back of our jerseys ‘Equality’ or ‘Black Lives Matter’ or whatever we wear on the back of our jerseys, that’s our decision,” Antetokounmpo said on a video conference with media.
“We’ve got to just keep supporting one another. I know there’s a lot of people that don’t support Black Lives Matter and support something else – I don’t know what their opinion is – but at the end of the day, you got to keep listening to them, support them and just believe in what you believe.
“I know that by kneeling down in the national anthem, or supporting your teammates, or holding hands and all that – I know that there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to comment and they’re not going to like it. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to respect everybody’s beliefs in this life. That’s my opinion.”
July 24, 2019: ‘We never did not have love. We were so rich in that.’
Giannis is the third-youngest player to win the NBA MVP. He sobbed on stage while going through his acceptance speech, thinking of his father, Charles, who died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2017. The speech is a must-watch for anyone who wants to understand Giannis Antetokounmpo, and for any sports parent.
“My parents, everything that they sacrificed on the daily basis,” Antetokounmpo said in the news conference afterward. “It’s definitely the hard work of my parents. And the way they loved us. There were times that we were poor and we did not have money, but we never did not have love. We were so rich in that. And we were always together.”
December 2020: Talk to a counselor after almost walking away from NBA
When Giannis and his family created the Charles Antetokounmpo Family Foundation – CAFF – they threw a wide net over a great deal of the population, trying to catch so many people with so many needs in so many demographics. In the simplest of terms, CAFF is the family’s promise to help others with a hand up. CAFF will help widows and refugees, young men and women, disaster victims and the oppressed, from Milwaukee to Greece to Nigeria.
But mental health also became a focal point, for Giannis personally, and to be included in CAFF programs. Giannis himself dealt with the pressure and expectations of his life by talking to a therapist.
“It’s hard. It’s … not easy. In 2020, I was … ready to walk away from the game,” Giannis said in 2023.
What happened in 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic, the resumption of play in the Orlando “bubble,” the public mandates, the empty arenas. The social-justice protests. It was defined by mental health professionals as a global health crisis.
But Giannis signed the five-year, $228 million supermax contract extension in December 2020 to stay in unpretentious Milwaukee. He committed to it quickly. Outwardly, as usual, Giannis looked like he was in total control.
But at what cost was all of that to his mental well-being?
And what had he been carrying with him for years before? The unexpected death of his father. The exhausting, obsessive work to become MVP. The home country of Greece, needing him for the national team. The endorsement obligations, while fun and lucrative, are still more demands on his time. The only one who ever really hinted at this massive toll was his older brother Thanasis, who respectfully kept Giannis’ privacy while trying to get us to understand, in 2020, how insanely demanding it all was.
“And this was right when I signed the largest contract in NBA history,” Antetokounmpo said. “In 2020, I was ready to walk away from the game. I had that conversation – yes – with the front office.
“And, you know, very normally, everybody is looking at me like I was crazy. ‘You just signed the largest contract in NBA history and you want to walk away from the game and all that money …?’
“But, I don’t care about that. I care about joy. I’m a joyful person. My father didn’t have nothing; he had us. He was the richest person on Earth because he had his kids. He had the beautiful family; he had nothing. This – to me – doesn’t mean nothing.
“And if, my mind, and if I am not in a good place? How can I leave my family? You know, I can’t leave my family.
“So, you know, that’s when I realize – maybe – I need to talk to somebody.”
A report in Psychology Today said 21% of U.S. adults reported experiencing a mental illness. One in 10 youth report mental illness severely impacting their life.
“I gave it a chance. I started talking with someone,” Giannis said. “Somebody helped put me in a place, again, to appreciate all of the things that I have, that comes with being who I am. To be OK with myself. To – no matter what the outcome is of the game – understand that I can’t control that. I can only control my effort. How hard I work. How I make people feel around me. How I try to, hopefully, inspire people from what I do.
“Then I started watching a lot of documentaries of Michael Phelps, Naomi Osaka. I watched “Breaking Point.” And then I see, a lot of people are dealing with this.
“I kept talking with this [counselor[. He helped me a lot – not just being a better basketball player, being able to deal with it; but being a better partner, better father, better brother, better son. Better person. Being not locked into myself, being able to give people what I feel. Because at one point, I was trying to get away from everybody. And that’s not me; I’m very social. I like to interact with other people.
“And I started talking to him and he helped me. Then I had this event in Saint-Tropez with Kevin Love. And we talked about it.”
Giannis found the entire experience of counseling so enlightening that when the Antetokounmpo family talked about what they each envisioned for their foundation, he decided he would talk about mental health, too.
2021: ‘That’s your ego talking.’
The Bucks evened the series with Phoenix, 2-2 in the NBA Finals when Antetokounmpo talked about how he tries to stay present and in the moment, and not think about the good game he had the day before or anticipate the good game he wants to have next.
He worked on a humble mindset that had to focus in the present tense, and to handle whatever was in front of him.
“Usually, from my experience, when I think about, ‘I’m so great. I had 30. I had 25, 10 and 10,’ or whatever the case might be, because you go and think about that − usually the next day, you’re going to suck,” Antetokounmpo said.
“Simple as that, the next few days, you’re going to be terrible. And I figured out, when you focus on the past, that’s your ego. …
“And when I focus on the future, its my pride. ‘Like, yeah, I’m going dominate.’ That your pride talking. Like, it doesn’t happen.
“I tried focusing on the moment, in the present, and that’s humility. That’s being humble. That’s not setting no expectation. That’s going out there enjoying the game, competing a high level. And I think I’ve had people throughout my life that help me with that, but that’s a skill that I’ve tried to perfect. Master it.”
2023: ‘It’s not failure, it’s steps to success’
The Bucks lost in the first round of the NBA playoffs in stunning fashion in 2023, not even competing for the most part, less than two years removed from their championship.
Antetokounmpo, the ultimate competitor, was asked a straightforward question: Do you consider this year, then, a failure?
“Do you get a promotion every year?” he asked. “No, right? So, every year, you work is a failure. Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work towards something, towards as a goal, right? Which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, to be able [to] provide the house for them or take care of your parents. It’s not a failure, it’s steps to success.
“There’s always steps to it. You know, Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years was a failure? …
“There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days, some days you are able to be successful. Some days, it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. And that’s what sport is about. You don’t always win. …
“So, 50 years, from 1971, the 2021 that we didn’t win a championship, it was 50 years of failures? No, it was not. It was steps to it. And we were able to win one. Hopefully, we can win another one.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Giannis is gone, but we get to keep the moments and lessons | Lori Nickel
Reporting by Lori Nickel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Lori Nickel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
