Giannis Is What Happens When N.B.A. Dreams Come True

The following are excerpts from “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP” by Mirin Fader. They have been edited and condensed from a chapter titled “Lonely.” The book will be released Tuesday. Fader is a staff writer at The Ringer. She has also written for Bleacher Report’s B/R Mag, the Orange County Register and Slam magazine.

Each morning, Giannis Antetokounmpo would take one last look at the master bedroom in his apartment. He’d make sure the pillows were perfectly fluffed, just in case his parents would somehow arrive in the United States from Greece later in the day. He’d head to the Cousins Center, the Milwaukee Bucks’ practice facility, hope humming inside him.

Maybe today my family will be approved, he’d think, walking from the parking lot into the building. He’d lace up his sneakers next to his cubby, which was always immaculate, organized, as if his parents might turn up and inspect it.

Then he’d find John Hammond, the Bucks’ general manager. “Any word on my family?” Antetokounmpo would ask. “How long until they will be here?”

Immigration officials had denied the family’s visa request twice by this point, but the Bucks kept pushing. Hammond told Antetokounmpo that he didn’t have an answer yet. He would have to keep waiting, keep being patient.

But every day without his family pierced him. Made him rethink everything he’d endured to reach his rookie season in the N.B.A. He wondered if it was all worth it: the grueling hours in the weight room, adding at least 30 pounds of muscle in mere months, getting smacked in the paint day after day, crumpling to the floor.

The dream Antetokounmpo had constructed in his head, mesmerized by the braids of Allen Iverson, the jumpers of Kevin Durant, didn’t look like this, didn’t feel like this. He had always imagined being here but never once considered his family would be there.

Without him.

He was more than homesick, more than frustrated. For the first time in his life, he was deeply lonely. Lost.

•••

Antetokounmpo would Skype with his family early in the morning or late at night because of the eight-hour time difference. One night, around November 2013, frustrated with his family’s inability to obtain visas, Antetokounmpo told them, “I’m going to do this for as long as I have to, but if y’all can’t come, I’m coming back.”

His brothers Thanasis, Kostas and Alex were floored. “Obviously, we didn’t want him to come back,” Alex Antetokounmpo said, “but it meant the world to know that he’s loyal to us.”

Giannis relayed a similar message to his agents, telling them that the only reason he wanted to play in the N.B.A. was to provide a better life for his family. Without them, what reason was there to remain in America?

Giannis also felt a little guilty. Guilty at all he was enjoying, all he was learning, when people back home still didn’t have much. Wherever he was, his mind often traveled: here, there. Here, there. America, Greece, America, Greece.

Giannis could compartmentalize well, from years of masking his pain. Pretending that his stomach was not growling. Pretending that he wasn’t unsure where he and his family might be sleeping the next month. But Milwaukee was a different challenge.

To make matters worse, the Bucks were awful. Will-we-even-reach-double-digit-total-wins-this-season awful. They were a young team, with many players in their early 20s. Team morale was at an all-time low. “I was so excited to get traded to Charlotte halfway through,” guard Luke Ridnour said. “It was just depressing. Everything was bad.”

All hell broke loose when center Larry Sanders broke his thumb, getting into a fistfight in a nightclub, throwing a champagne bottle, adding to the perception of the Bucks as completely dysfunctional. It was humiliating for Sanders, who had just signed a four-year, $44 million contract extension.

Injuries mounted. D.J. Stephens, a reserve guard, remembered someone saying on the bench: “There’s $60 million just sitting there at the end of the bench. Can’t even play because they’re hurt.” He had to laugh — things were so bad.

It didn’t help that it was the year of the Arctic polar vortex, the coldest on record in two decades in Milwaukee. The temperature dropped below zero 24 times, and the windchill was characterized as “life-threatening,” with values as low as 60 degrees below zero. Experts warned of potential frostbite to anyone who stepped outside with uncovered skin.

The cold was a big adjustment for Antetokounmpo. He didn’t own warm clothes at first. He had only the Bucks sweatsuits, which he wore every day. Forward Ersan Ilyasova gave him a pair of jeans, as did guard O.J. Mayo and forward Caron Butler. But he would wear just a light down jacket or sweatshirt and sweats on those frigid Milwaukee days. Sometimes Antetokounmpo would hold on to the arm of Ross Geiger, an assistant video coordinator, when walking because he was shivering, wearing Nike slides with socks rather than snow boots.

One night, as they were leaving the Cheesecake Factory near 11 p.m., a heavy snow was falling, the beginning of a blizzard. Inches and inches of snow had already piled up outside as Antetokounmpo and Geiger headed to the car. The windshield wipers furiously whipped back and forth, but the snow pelted down so hard Geiger couldn’t see. At all.

Geiger pulled over. “Don’t pull over,” Antetokounmpo said. “We keep going.” Antetokounmpo, still buckled into his seat, took his right arm, towel in hand, and lunged forward and stretched his massive wingspan all the way over to Geiger’s side, serving as a human windshield wiper, cleaning each side every 30 seconds. Geiger could see enough to make it home.

“We can’t ever do that again,” Geiger said.

Geiger realized he had crossed a threshold: He had gained Antetokounmpo’s trust, something Antetokounmpo still allows few to do. As a child, Antetokounmpo learned that trusting people was dangerous. Trusting people could let others see that there was vulnerability in him. But maybe it was OK that Geiger saw that. Maybe it was OK to truly let someone see him.

Antetokounmpo kept letting bits of himself spill out as time wore on. Once, he and Geiger were walking to see a movie at a local mall and Christmas music was playing. Antetokounmpo broke out in song, singing each word perfectly.

“It’s all English,” Geiger said. “How do you know the words to this song?” “Oh,” Antetokounmpo said. “Growing up, me and my brothers would go door-to-door and Christmas carol for extra money.”

Memories like that would prick Antetokounmpo at random moments. When he would be walking down the street. Warming up for practice. Putting on his worn-down sneakers. For a moment, he was back in his Sepolia neighborhood in Athens. Back on the side of the road, a child trying to smile, hoping the sunglasses he dangled in the wind would go for three euros instead of two.

•••

What if we all went to sleep and woke up and we were back where we started?

The thought would pop into Antetokounmpo’s head at any moment. His brothers’ too. They would often joke to each other about the possibility, laughing hard over Skype. But underneath the laughter was fear.

It didn’t help that people back in Greece began to look at the family differently. Alex Antetokounmpo remembered people looking at him strangely, thinking, “Oh, he’s acting different because his brother got drafted.” They’d text him to play basketball, and if he missed the text or wouldn’t respond in time, they’d text him, “Oh, you can’t hang out because your brother’s in the N.B.A.?” It infuriated him. “I was the same person as I was before,” he said.

His friends didn’t understand how precarious Giannis’s situation felt. Yes, he was in the N.B.A. right now, but what about tomorrow?

What if we all went to sleep and woke up and we were back where we started?

That was particularly terrifying for Giannis, because the second he signed his contract with Milwaukee, he became the patriarch of his family. His dad always would be, in essence, but Giannis became the provider. Everything that happened to them from then on was on his shoulders. His back. His wallet.

He wanted that responsibility. So he was hesitant to spend money and thought deeply about each purchase. “He didn’t want to spend a dime,” said Brandon Knight, the Bucks guard. Once, Antetokounmpo turned on his TV, and it wouldn’t power on. He called Geiger. “My TV’s not working.” Geiger figured it out: Antetokounmpo hadn’t paid his cable bill. “My bill?” Antetokounmpo said, surprised. “How much is it?” It was only $20 a month. “Oh, I’m not paying that,” Antetokounmpo said. He didn’t.

He couldn’t believe that the Bucks provided tables of food before and after practice. Platters of pasta. Energy bars. Chicken. Gatorade. Chips. For free. After everyone had taken theirs, he would fill up four or five plastic containers of the food to take home. His teammates would look at him strangely, unsure why he was hoarding food.

“Giannis,” Robert Hackett, the strength and conditioning coach, would tell him, pulling him aside. “Don’t worry. There’s more.”

But how could Antetokounmpo be sure? More was wishful thinking. He had always aimed for enough. One bad selling day, one mishap, could lead to not enough. He couldn’t turn off that fear of not enough.

There were a lot of things he didn’t think he needed. He would give away new gear to the Bucks ball kids if he had multiple sets of something, like socks or shirts. He rarely spent anything on himself.

Which is why he felt guilty, seeing a new PlayStation at a Best Buy one afternoon. It was nearly $400, but he wanted it. Really badly. And he could afford it. He kept staring at it, trying to decide what to do.

You know we can’t get that.

He was back in Athens. Back on the street. A child again. Sunglasses in hand, suppressing want. Focusing on need. Reminding his younger brothers: You know we can’t get that.

But on an impulse, he bought the PlayStation that day in Milwaukee.

The guilt suffocated him. He chastised himself for the rash decision. How could he be so frivolous? What was happening to him? He hadn’t earned anything yet. “He felt like he was spending too much money,” Alex said.

He returned the PlayStation the next morning.

•••

Meanwhile, Antetokounmpo’s sneakers were falling apart. They started to show the wear and tear of bulldozing his way to the basket. Falling down some possessions. He had been wearing one pair of sneakers the entire time, the first five months of the season.

Yes: a single pair. A plain-Jane Nike sneaker: white with a red swoosh and red heel. Not a pair of Kobes. Not a pair of K.D.s. Most N.B.A. players wear a different pair every game. Hell, every practice. They had fashion statements to make, brands to endorse. Antetokounmpo was just grateful to have a pair at all. One he didn’t have to share with Thanasis.

The sweat that would soak up in the heel? His. The jagged tears down the seams? His. The worn, faded gray laces? His. So he was going to use the pair until it couldn’t be used anymore.

Jay Namoc, the Bucks’ equipment manager from 2012 to 2017, gave him that first pair of Nikes and kept trying to give him new pairs, especially when Antetokounmpo started to slide on the court when the shoe began to age. Antetokounmpo might as well have been playing on a dust-ridden court, given how little grip remained on his soles.

But he wanted this pair to last forever. He became emotional when the shoes were so decrepit, so thin, that he finally accepted he could no longer use them. “He would look at those shoes with a lot of sadness,” Namoc said.

Antetokounmpo would wear only two pairs his entire rookie season. He was given plenty — 82, to be exact, a pair per game. Though he didn’t want to wear them, Antetokounmpo wanted to take all 82 home with him. “They’re not going to fit in your apartment,” Josh Oppenheimer, a Bucks assistant coach, told him.

“I want my house to look like ‘MTV Cribs,’ ” Antetokounmpo said. Truth is, he was saving the shoes for his brothers. Hoping they’d one day obtain visas, one day be able to come to Milwaukee. Run up the court, know the exhilarating feeling of breaking in a brand-new shoe.