In Giannis’ 10th season, it’s time to reflect on his journey
Back in the day when newsrooms like ours bustled with life and buzzed with energy, the phone would ring constantly, since the internet was just getting going. In the sports department, we mostly fielded questions about the TV sports schedule or took a bowler’s 300 score. But nearly every day, it seemed, we got this call:
“Hey, what-can-you-tell-me-aboutthe-Bucks?” and “Are-the-Bucks-gonnamake-a-trade?”
Say those sentences in three-quarters of a second, with an accent, and that was “Steve from New York” – and that’s about all that I knew about him, except that I’ve never known anyone who cared so much about Sen. Kohl’s team. The man was a legend in our department for these phone calls – made from a payphone, no less.
I mean, back in the late 1990s – when Giannis Antetokounmpo was just a toddler – it was so unusual to care that much about the Milwaukee Bucks.
Being a basketball fan in Milwaukee has sometimes meant being in the sports minority, and our little community has stuck together like frigid secondshift workers waiting for the city bus to take us home. The Packers were The Show and the Brewers still had the sentimental vote. Basketball felt like a niche sport with a cult following. Even the original “Bucks in Six” thing only truly means something to a small percentage of us. IYKYK.
Milwaukee always had enough talent to string us along and get our hopes up. But it seemed like the Bucks made a push for the eighth and final seed in the playoffs every year and endured another star lost to injury for the season.
Real Bucks fans then still rooted for their home team but absolutely circled the dates on the calendar to show up for Jordan, Kobe and Latrell.
All that time, I blamed the Bucks front office for not drafting Grant Hill with the top pick in 1994; but it turns out Hill wanted nothing to do with Milwaukee: “I just wasn’t excited about Milwaukee at the time.”
That’s funny, because a decade later – January 2013 – Scott Skiles tried to denounce a report from a well-known journalist that revealed he hated – hated! – coaching the Milwaukee Bucks.
Man, that stuff was personal. But I was so guilty, too. I wrote a story about how the successful Brewers and Packers players supported each other at that time, when a genuinely kind Bucks public relations staffer reached out with an email: Hey, don’t forget about us.
I think my response was something snarky like, why? Everyone else has.
I regret it now, but I would not defend Milwaukee’s hoop dreaming, because I myself didn’t even dare it. The drafty Bradley Center with its icy spots on the court, the overheated and cramped locker room for the home team.
Fans and team analysts earned the right to grumble about the perennial .500 (or worse) team.
Then he arrived.
Giannis Antetokounmpo. Eighteen years old, thousands of miles from his home in Greece, thrust into a city where the sun sets before 5 p.m. in the middle of the season.
I marvel at this a lot now, thinking about that kid that I met in 2013. Because my now 18-year-old son was just home over Christmas break and forgot about one dentist appointment entirely and completely slept through a doctor’s appointment as well.
Teen Giannis was correcting mistakes in coach Larry Drew’s playbook.
No one knew then, no one, what he would become. Not as a player, not as a leader, not as an idol. He was thoughtful; he tried to answer everything in his best English. He could throw daggers with his eyes if he didn’t like something. And he looked like he lived at that gym in St. Francis. He worked his butt off – that was so obvious – but no one knew what he would become.
And how he would transform this franchise.
Giannis.
Two-time MVP.
NBA champ. Record-smasher in the organization for now and the NBA soon to come. Thrilling scorer, stingy defender. Thoughtful analyst of the game, cagey confessor when it comes to his own injuries and a must-watch interview every time he speaks.
There are so many remarkable things about Giannis Antetokounmpo that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel decided to highlight some of them this week to celebrate his 10th season in the league and with the Bucks.
From his arrival at the right place at the right time, to finding the rare diamond in the rough in the draft, the difficulty in defending him through the eyes of officials and how he has affected our town and its reputation – cheers to the big man in the 10th year of his journey.