L-R: Kostas Antetokounmpo, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Thanasis Antetokounmpo and Alex Antetokounmpo with… [+]

 COURTESY NIKE, COPYRIGHT COULIAU

It was an emotionally charged homecoming. Giannis Antetokounmpo, a 24-year-old player for the Milwaukee Bucks, made his hometown of Athens his home a few days after winning the 2019 NBA MVP award. The Nike Zoom Freak 1 is Antetokounmpo’s first signature sneaker, named after the Greek Freak, a moniker he earned for his powerful 6′ 11″ frame, quickness, and ball-handling abilities. 

While it may not seem like a remarkable achievement for an NBA MVP to release a trademark sneaker, Antetokounmpo’s tale is one. His parents, Charles and Veronica, left Lagos, Nigeria to bring their family to Athens in the hopes of a better life. Giannis was born in 1994 as the third of five brothers: Kostas, who was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2018 NBA Draft; Thanasis, a professional basketball player who is rumored to sign with the Bucks; and 17-year-old Alexis. Francis stayed in Nigeria when their parents departed for Greece. The brothers helped their parents sell trinkets on the streets to sustain the close-knit family while the Antetokounmpos lived in one room in Athens. Just 12 years ago, Giannis picked up the game of basketball, imitating his older brother Thanasis. Even though they had a loving and supportive family and had to share a single pair of basketball shoes as teenagers due to their extreme poverty, Thanasis and Giannis’ energy and drive on the court remained unwavering. Thanasis said it was genuinely enjoyable.   

“Let’s say Giannis is playing that he has to sub out, I have to switch shoes, I got to come in and play,” said Thanasis. “And then you beat the other team. And the other team is looking at you crazy because you just beat them.”

The Antetokounmpo family.

 COURTESY NIKE

The Bucks guard and forward has come a long way from his modest upbringing in the rough Sepolia suburb of Athens to being selected by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 19th round of the draft. Nike chose the Zappeion Exhibition Hall, a multipurpose venue with an ionic colonnade around a circular courtyard and a history of athleticism—it was constructed for the inaugural Olympic Games and has played host to multiple Olympic events throughout the years—for the reveal. Giannis unveiled the Zoom Freak 1, a sneaker that tells the story of his Greek heritage and family, on June 28. In addition to roses, his father’s favorite flower, and his initials, GA, transformed into a Greek-inspired logo, there’s a 34, his Milwaukee Bucks number. 

“Wherever I go, I try to represent my family to the best of my ability,” explained the soft-spoken Giannis, who remains humble despite his NBA stardom. “You can see right here in the front, I got my parents’ names and in the back I got my four brothers’ names. There’s the Greek flag representing my country, you can see the three and the four, ‘I am my father’s legacy.’ My dad passed away two years ago…I wanted to show appreciation to my dad. You can see the roses in the bottom, and the sign side, support with comfort.” 

Ross Klein, the Nike designer with whom Giannis worked to conceptualize the shoe, further explained the concept for the sneaker. “His mother is located here from the wing of support,” said Klein. “His father is located from the traction and what we’re doing computationally as well as the artistic story of roses that has a lot of meaning to us. And then the brotherhood, which is the stuff that keeps them grounded, and always the person who he is.”

“Black, Asian, this anything, we’re all brothers, and we wanted people when people wear the shoe when somebody gets the shoe, you’re wearing this and you feel like it’s our brother,” said Thanasis as he described the inspiration for the electric orange All Bros Zoom Freak 1.

The breakdown doodle of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Nike Zoom Freak 1.

 COURTESY NIKE

Giannis’s narrative encompasses not just his family but also his community. Growing the chubby little Greek-Nigerian into one of the NBA’s biggest stars really did take a village. There’s Takis Zivas, Giannis’ head coach at Filathlitikos, the basketball club where he played his first games, and Spiros Velliniatis, the coach who found Giannis when he was playing tag on the streets with his two younger brothers. Zivas believed in Giannis’s ability despite the fact that he could hardly dribble and had made multiple attempts to give up basketball. If Giannis joined the club, the general manager there would assist his parents in finding employment. Despite criticism for feeding black children, Mr. Giannis’ namesake and owner, Giannis Tsiggas, would feed the starving teenager and his brothers for free before and after practice. Tsigas turned down Giannis’ plea to work to support his family so that Giannis could get better at his sport. Giannis’s NBA All-Star 2018 jersey is currently displayed on Mr. Giannis’ wall. 

Giannis is now the one contributing to his community. He is providing funds for an indoor basketball court in a fire-ravaged neighborhood not far from Athens. In Filathlitikos, he also covered the cost of installing an air conditioner. Together with his brothers, he established the Atetokounmbros foundation, which supports the local community. They sponsored a young three-on-three outdoor competition with Nike the weekend of his homecoming, and Giannis and his brothers kindly coached the winning teams on the same outdoor courts where he had played as a child. “It’s really important because this is where I started and you have to always give back to your community,” he stated. 

Giannis had no official country and dreaded deportation until he became 18 years old, at which point he was ultimately granted citizenship because Greece does not have birthright laws. Nevertheless, this did not lessen the basketball player’s pride in his native Greece. Without hesitation, he said, “No,” when asked if he had ever questioned his Greek heritage. at his fight against racism, he would spend the night at the basketball gym to protect himself from right-wing racist extremists who preyed on African immigrants. The athlete declared, “Even though I didn’t get my citizenship until I was 18, I always feel like I’m Greek and I’m Nigerian.” He hopes to travel to his parents’ native country to witness where they spent their humble beginnings. “I realize that my situation was difficult, but my mom’s was probably ten or twenty times worse than mine.”

Giannis’s accomplishment serves as evidence against the racism and nationalism that the globe faces today. It’s a story that shows how much a person can achieve when they receive love from their family and the community. Giannis knows what it takes to succeed—he went from sharing shoes with Thanasis to earning $9 million a year from his Nike contract. He attributes his success to willpower, persistence, and maintaining focus on his goals.  

“There’s going to be a lot of times that something is going to hit you and you’re going to fall down, like someone has passed away, you’re not good at that, but at the end of the day, you gotta just fight right back, get up, and never give up,” said Giannis.