Youngest Antetokounmpo forges own path
MISSISSAUGA, Ontario – Looking out his window on Aug. 27, 2020, the weight of adulthood settled on Alex Antetokounmpo.
Just a few months removed from graduating from Dominican High School in Whitefish Bay, he was in Spain. He can’t remember where, only that he had traveled for an away game. He didn’t understand any of the signs outside of his residence.
He was alone.
It was his 20th birthday.
Fast forward to last week. In a small, concrete gym in Canada he leaned forward on his knees, the damp red sleeves of his workout shirt under his Raptors 905 jersey clinging to his long arms. He looked forward as he spoke, head up. He knows now it was important moment of self-discovery. It’s one that was just as important as this year playing for a G League team located about 30 minutes outside Toronto.
Alex may be following the footsteps of three basketball-playing brothers, but he is on his own path.
A year of self-discovery
As Alex Antetokounmpo’s prolific high school career was winding down, retired Dominican High School coach Jim Gosz marveled at Alex’s ability to become a fluent English speaker in six years, how he managed to complete his coursework while under the care (and on the schedule) of older brother and Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis and how he played through the literal growing pains of shooting from 5 feet, 11 inches to 6-7.
“It’s an incredible story,” Gosz said.
“Knowing what he had to go through — he was a rock star at 15 years old. He was treated as celebrity everywhere we went. Kids were asking for his autograph and all that. And for him at 15, 16 years (old) to handle that was incredible.
“The name and Giannis’ stature never affected him. It got brutal his senior year when he was pretty darn good and the intensity picked up and he handled it so good. The pressure he had go on (under). He was not Giannis’ caliber at that age and I think people expected that and wanted to see it. But he wasn’t there yet. We had to protect him.”
That said, Gosz knew Antetokounmpo was going to head off into professional basketball after high school. It was just going to be a matter of where. He took a similar step as his
oldest brothers Thanasis and Giannis, who went immediately into the Greek professional leagues as teenagers, but they began in lower divisions.
Alex Antetokounmpo instead jumped right from the Metro Classic Conference to the Liga ACB, or Liga Endesa, the top division of Spanish professional basketball.
There, winning is paramount, with the worst teams facing relegation. He signed a three-year contract with UCAM Murcia in June, 2020 and jetted off to Europe in the midst of a global pandemic.
“I just thought like at that point, I believed that me facing adversity and being put in an uncomfortable spot was the best thing I could do to shock my body and just be able to shock my system into adjusting and being comfortable while being uncomfortable,” Antetokounmpo said.
He acknowledged any decision comes with the inevitable “what if” when looking back but added, “You always gotta make a decision and be confident and stand on it as much as possible.”
A native of Athens, Greece, being in Europe wasn’t new. He’d traveled like a professional with Giannis. Thanasis had also played in Spain. Alex felt he understood what European competition would be like.
Then he arrived.
“You never go into a situation saying, ‘Nah, I can’t handle this or it’s too much,’” Alex Antetokounmpo said. “You’re always like, ‘I got it, I got it, I got it.’ And then it’s going to be a day – ‘Oh, I might not have it.’”
The teenager would play just one minute of one game with UCAM Murcia.
Alex would suit up primarily for UCAM Murcia’s reserve team in the Liga EBA, which is the fourth division of Spanish basketball. There he played in 21 games, shooting 56.5% from the field and averaged 12.4 points and 5.6 rebounds per game.
“The best I can put it is it’s checkers and chess – it’s played on the same board but it’s two completely different games,” said Raptors 905 assistant coach Chris Thomas, who spent time coaching in Slovenia. “He got great experiences where he was in Spain. It’s a terrific program full of great coaches. So he had a year under his belt already of pretty high level of professional basketball even if it was the younger team within there, with a really high level of coaching. But it’s a different approach though. It’s a different mentality over there. You can ask anyone who’s played in Europe or coach in Europe, you’re practicing three times a day sometimes.
“You’re there solely for results. If you develop along the way, it’s a plus.”
Off the court, Antetokounmpo acknowledged it was a lonely time.
The pandemic stripped away most opportunities to live normally outside of basketball, and for a quiet, family-oriented kid experiencing the world — and a professional life — truly for the first time, it was humbling, eye-opening and revelatory.
“There’s always going to be that one time you feel out of place life and definitely for me, having my brothers and my dad and my friends, I’m a very, very family-oriented guy, I’m a very social guy, I hate being by myself, and that was a position I was put into to be by myself,” he said. “I spent a lot of time by myself. I learned a lot about myself when I was out there.”
On Thursday evening, Alex was quietly sitting next to Giannis on a cart outside the Bucks locker room at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Giannis knew exactly what his youngest brother had gone through, and how it could benefit him in the long run.
“It’s hard, but I promise you — as you move forward, as you grow, you’re going to remember those moments more than the happy moments,” Giannis said, his countenance firm and as confident as his words. “You’re going to remember more of the moments that you were down, you were alone, you were challenged, when you felt like nobody gave a s---, or when you felt like you were ready to give up and stuff like that.
“You’re going to remember those moments because at the end of the day those are the moments that are going to define you as a person. Are you going to quit or are you going to keep moving forward?”
NBA doesn’t come calling
Alex’s contract with UCAM Murcia allowed him to test the NBA waters each summer, and he was eligible for the NBA Draft on July 29.
But his name was not one of the 60 players called.
“I think everybody’s got a different path,” he said matter-of-factly. “I looked at all the times that I spent and the gym and all the work I put in, if you’re not picked in those 60 guys you know that the work you put in is not for nothing and you’ll eventually get your opportunity because you put a lot of work, time and effort in. I think I did a great job of keeping my head up and being able to keep pushing even after draft night.”
Unlike older brothers Giannis (No. 15 overall, 2013), Thanasis (No. 51, 2014) and Kostas (No. 60, 2018), Alex was going to have to take a more circuitous route to the NBA.
So, Alex Antetokounmpo exercised the out with the Spanish club and first signed with the Sacramento Kings summer league team. Though he did not score a point in the three games he played , he did hold a trophy as the Kings won the Summer League championship.
He then signed with the Toronto Raptors in mid-October with the expectation they would waive him and sign him to its G League affiliate, the Raptors 905.
“Decisions control your destiny,” Giannis said. “He said it best — he went to a place he was uncomfortable, and when you’re uncomfortable that’s when you excel, that’s when you get better. And right now, to that decision to come here to get better, hopefully, hopefully, down the road when he’s 25, 30 years old, 32, 33, he made the right decision.”
Aside from returning to North America, Alex knew playing in the G League was going to be a different experience than when he lived through in Spain. Yes, Raptors 905 want to win another G League championship (they won it in 2017 behind the play of Pascal Siakam) but there is more attention to individual development.
“A big, big, big (difference),” Alex said of the G League. “We emphasize the big development part. We stress getting out of here more than they do overseas. Overseas they want to stress it being the system and then being able to win games. Here we stress getting out of here while we’re winning because winning can get you looks and get you opportunities. So we try to stress winning and development as much as possible.”
Thomas agreed. For example, Alex spent nearly an hour lifting shots from behind the three-point line following practice on Wednesday and it is area of his game that needs to improve (he shot just 24.9% from behind the arc in Europe.) The weight room has been given added importance, too. The coaching staff is trying to get him to be more vocal as well.
Thomas acknowledged Antetokounmpo has a ways to go, but said they have seen the work ethic and believe whatever potential there is can be tapped.
For Antetokounmpo, he’s adopted the family mantra of trying to make the next practice, or the next game, better than the last. Thus far it’s happening behind the scenes, as he has averaged nine minutes of action in four of the Raptors 905’s seven games. As much as Antetokounmpo knows there is room for improvement, he also knows there is time to get there — and the only clock that matters is his.
“I definitely think I’m very unique, a very unique case from my brothers,” he said. “I think I’ve had the most kind of odd, unorthodox and non-traditional route. Just being me and I’m me and I’m OK with who I am.”