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When we talk about Giannis Antetokounmpo, we tend to talk about him mainly in NBA terms.
A perennial All-Star. A high-flying Defensive Player of the Year. An all-worldly MVP. An NBA Finals MVP. A force of nature in the paint and in transition. An underrated playmaker for his Milwaukee Bucks teammates. One of, if not the most athletic players the NBA has ever seen. A bastion of joy who doesn’t nearly take himself as seriously as you’d think for someone of his immense profile.
When all is said and done, we, as fans watching in awe from afar, will first remember Antetokounmpo as one of the greatest players in NBA history. Point blank. But while we marvel at all of his dunks, gaudy stat lines, and unforgettable NBA performances, I have a good hunch that’s not what Antetokounmpo will take away from his future Hall of Fame career.
For Antetokounmpo, what he wins for Greece, the country from which he earned citizenship before joining the NBA over a decade ago, will always take precedence over anything he accomplishes in the world’s best men’s basketball league. Always.
How do I know this?
I’ve seen Antetokounmpo’s powerful, emotional, and beautiful speech after taking Greece to a bronze medal at EuroBasket 2025. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve already watched it. When I realized he dropped 30 points, 17 rebounds, six assists, and two blocks on Finland to clinch bronze and Greece’s first basketball medal of any kind, men or women, in 16 years, it’s hard not to see his speech as the stuff of legend. While choking up and speaking from the heart, Antetokounmpo gave us a brief glimpse into the soul of one of the 15 best NBA players ever.
It was sheer, unfiltered vulnerability that we seldom have the pleasure of witnessing from a person as famous as him. Dearest readers, he called this Greece bronze medal his “greatest accomplishment” for a good reason.
(Warning: NSFW language below.)
It’s been about half a decade, but I don’t quite remember Antetokounmpo crying like this when he dropped 50 points to clinch the 2021 NBA title. I don’t recall him talking about the disconnect between being famous and special in basketball when he won his MVPs. If there was any emotional outpouring, it did not nearly match this incredible sequence of a young man delivering for the Balkan nation that helped turn him into a global phenomenon, that’s for sure.
It is here where I want to thank Antetokounmpo.
One, for showing us this wonderful, heartfelt side of himself.
I tire of the sanitized, over-media-trained versions that we see of NBA superstars like Antetokounmpo when they’re not wearing their country’s uniform. This sentiment doesn’t apply to everyone, but it sometimes feels like we’re watching robots, not human beings, who are only tracking their statistics and monitoring their bottom line rather than showing us that they’re still raw people. It’s insulting at worst and annoying at best.
To be clear, I understand why players are hesitant to show emotion and how much they care when they’re effectively playing for an extremely wealthy “company” that represents a city on this side of the pond. Anything they say can and is sometimes unnecessarily taken out of context, and not always in the best light. But that doesn’t make the careful approach in front of a microphone any less grating when fans want more healthy avenues to connect to the giants of the NBA game they watch dozens of times a year. That is decidedly not how Antetokounmpo talked about bringing meaningful hardware home to Greece.
Above all, I’m grateful to Antetokounmpo for reminding us why we get so invested in sports in the first place.
We don’t watch sports for the ridiculous highlights. Anything regarding fantasy and betting is entirely ancillary, a side feature, not the main course. If any of this were the case, none of us would get nearly as wrapped up in something that ultimately doesn’t matter in a real-life context. We watch sports for the community, for the human beings who transcend themselves and show us what is possible when we work hard, put our noses to the ground, and keep our hearts open.
If we’re so lucky, perhaps they inspire us to be better versions of ourselves, even on the smallest level.
That’s exactly what Antetokounmpo did here.
Shootaround
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