MILWAUKEE -- With 19.8 seconds left in Game 6 of the 2021 NBA Finals, Giannis Antetokounmpo walked down the floor alone, arms spread, smile wide. He implored the home crowd in Milwaukee to boost its exuberance even more. In a few short moments, he'd lead a celebration 50 years in the making, as the Bucks' clinched the 2021 NBA title with a 105-98 victory.
Few achievements can eclipse a 50-point masterpiece in a close-out win for a championship. With Antetokounmpo's performance on Tuesday night, he can now claim his rightful place in the pantheon of NBA legends.
The Game 6 win exhibited the full breadth of his extraordinary game. For 42 minutes, he knifed through the Phoenix defense and assaulted the rim. A 6-foot-11 force with innumerable skills, he controlled the glass like a center and handled the ball like a point guard. An elite All-NBA defender, he swatted away five shots and spent much of the fourth quarter on Chris Paul. And then there were the free throws. Those free throws. In the signature game of his career, he exorcised his most persistent demon, draining 17 of his 19 attempts from the line.
For his efforts, just three weeks after suffering a hyperextension of his left knee, Antetokounmpo won Finals MVP. He joins Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon as the only players in NBA history to win that award, regular-season MVP and Defensive Player of the Year.
Most of all, the title culminates a remarkable journey that started in the modest Athens neighborhood of Sepolia as the child of Nigerian immigrants. A child whose first love was soccer, Antetokounmpo didn't start playing basketball until he was 12 years old and competed in Greece's second-tier league just one season before he landed in Milwaukee as the No. 15 pick in the 2013 draft -- an obscure prospect scouted by only a handful of NBA teams.
Eight years later, he's a champion.
Here are eight stories that capture the astonishing rise of Giannis Antetokounmpo.
An uneven season, but signs of limitless potential
A few weeks after he concluded his rookie season with the Bucks in 2014, Antetokounmpo strolled through the buffet at Mandalay Bay filling up his plate. Las Vegas Summer League is one of the first rites of passage for incoming rookies and second-year players who still need some polishing, and the 19-year-old Antetokounmpo was getting additional reps after an uneven first season.
With his impossibly long arms, Antetokounmpo reached over an entire row of side dishes and scooped up some mashed potatoes from the far side of the buffet, then folded his 6-foot-10 frame into a table. The previous night against the Utah Jazz, Antetokounmpo assumed point guard duties for the Bucks' summer league squad. Though he appeared on only one of 100 Rookie of the Year ballots -- a single third-place vote -- Antetokounmpo tantalized the Bucks with flashes of jaw-dropping physical skills and the faint outlines of what could be a complete do-it-all star.
In Vegas, incoming head coach Jason Kidd wanted to see what Antetokounmpo-at-point looked like in live action, and the results had delighted the Bucks' staff all week. Against the wall of defenders he would come to encounter regularly in his prime, Antetokounmpo zipped passes to teammates at the rim, split defenders off high screens, hit step-back jumpers from distance (6-for-16 on 3-pointers, thank you) and downright bullied his way through that wall for easy dunks.
As he grazed on a heaping plate of prime rib, corn on the cob, salad and a large bowl of fruit, Antetokounmpo chatted about his first foray into NBA competition, as well as the mundane taste of acclimating to life as a teenager in Milwaukee.
I just taste for the first time a smothie..MAN GOD BLESS AMERICA😊
— Giannis Ugo Antetokounmpo (@Giannis_An34) January 20, 2014
Learning to drive was easier than anticipated, so much so that he insisted on taking his exam after only two lessons in a small-model Ford. The magnitude and vulgarity of trash talk in the league far eclipsed anything he had heard in Europe, with Carmelo Anthony as his most aggressive assailant. And guarding Kevin Durant was unlike anything he had experienced in Greece's second-tier professional league the prior season.
Antetokounmpo endured life without his family for the first few months of the season. His parents didn't have Greek passports, and the painstaking process of getting them over to the United States had weighed on him. Thanks to the good fortune of playing for a team owned by a senior U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, they finally emigrated in mid-winter, a welcome comfort for a man with a filial devotion in a strange new city.
Though they had aspirations of sneaking into the 2014 postseason as a No. 7 or No. 8 seed, the Bucks went into a tailspin as injuries piled up and ultimately finished the season with a league-worst 15-67 record. Initially, the shift to a rebuild worked in Antetokounmpo's favor, as he started 21 straight games in December and January. But before the All-Star break, head coach Larry Drew made a switch, moving a second-year wing named Khris Middleton into Antetokounmpo's place in the starting lineup.
He still wowed with the occasional coast-to-coast, one-man break and his skills as a finisher, but Antetokounmpo wore down throughout the season, posting a worse field goal percentage each successive month. He finished 2013-14 averaging 6.8 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 24.6 minutes per game.
As a consolation, Antetokounmpo aced that driver's test and mastered the science of driving in the Milwaukee winter. With his family in place and his English improving each day, he left for Athens soon after summer league. In the coming weeks, he would put himself through a daily training regimen so strenuous that the Bucks' performance staff would beg him to scale it down. This young talent might have been nothing more than a curiosity to most of the NBA, but Milwaukee saw something that was potentially special.
-- Kevin Arnovitz
'This dude, he's going to put Milwaukee on the map'
As NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar walked through the Fiserv Forum construction zone on a frigid January morning in 2018, he saw a very bright future. Abdul-Jabbar always saw the potential Giannis Antetokounmpo had within his game. The Hall of Fame center knew that the young big man had the talent to lead the Milwaukee Bucks to their first championship since 1971, but what impressed him as much as the talent was Antetokounmpo's temperament.
The six-time NBA champion respected how hard the young Greek All-Star worked on his craft and the way he went about his business -- embracing the responsibility that comes with being the face of a small-market team -- as Abdul-Jabbar had done almost 50 years prior.
"I think it's great that they have a player and a team that can contend and give them some reason to come to the arena and cheer," Abdul-Jabbar told ESPN in January 2018. "You get kind of worn out cheering for perennial losers."
As an organization, the Bucks understood that they were sitting on basketball's equivalent of a winning lottery ticket. They had a "unicorn" in Antetokounmpo coming into his prime inside a new downtown arena that they hoped would showcase his talents for years to come. The optimism -- from all corners of the league -- was off the charts.
I'll never leave the team and the city of Milwaukee till we build the team to a championship level team..
— Giannis Ugo Antetokounmpo (@Giannis_An34) July 17, 2014
"He's going to be like an MVP, a champion," Magic Johnson told ESPN at the time, in comments that led to the Los Angeles Lakers being fined $50,000 by the NBA for tampering. "This dude, he's going to put Milwaukee on the map. And I think he's going to bring them a championship one day."
"The Giannis Effect," as it had affectionately been dubbed within the organization, gave hope to a team that hadn't had reason to believe in years. At the same time, there was an inherent pressure on everybody within the organization to do whatever it took to maintain the difficult balance of building a winner while also keeping Antetokounmpo happy.
Despite the frustrations that had built up from painful postseason losses, the Bucks always held to the belief that they would find a way -- a belief based on the fact that they had grown to understand what kind of person Antetokounmpo was and the loyalty that defined his life. He wanted to stay in Milwaukee and win championships just like some of the greats of the game had done in other cities before him.
"Definitely. That's one of my goals," Antetokounmpo said of sticking it out with one franchise. "Kobe [Bryant] did it. Tim Duncan did it. Dirk Nowitzki did it. I just want to be one of those guys ... that stays for the city, plays for the city for 20 years."
As Abdul-Jabbar watched from a distance in the years leading up to this moment, he knew that it was only a matter of time before Antetokounmpo accomplished all that he set out to achieve.
"He has the discipline and work ethic that you need to do well in this game," Abdul-Jabbar said. "Just tell him, 'Keep doing what you've been doing and be patient.'"
-- Nick Friedell
MORE: Is Giannis the new Shaq?
A public challenge from a five-time champion
When the late Bryant tweeted challenges to NBA All-Stars DeMar DeRozan and Isaiah Thomas, among other athletes and celebrities, as part of the promotion of his "Mamba Mentality" partnership with Nike in the summer of 2017, Antetokounmpo decided he wanted part of the action too, tweeting to Bryant:
Still waiting for my challenge.. @kobebryant
Kobe responded, putting a simple but aggressive challenge to Antetokounmpo: win MVP, as Bryant did in 2007-08.
At the time, Antetokounmpo wasn't close to the MVP conversation. He had made his All-Star debut only five months earlier as part of a breakthrough fourth season that saw him average 22.9 points, 8.8 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game while winning Most Improved Player.
At 22, Antetokounmpo appeared on his path to greatness but still had to work to get there. He would finish sixth in MVP voting after the 2017-18 season.
In fact, it's remarkable in hindsight just how much better Antetokounmpo was able to get by the time he won the first of his two MVPs in 2018-19. Back in 2017, Antetokounmpo's game was still evolving. While then-Bucks coach Jason Kidd had already initiated "Point Giannis," Antetokounmpo found little space in the paint on his drives playing alongside non-shooters John Henson and Greg Monroe.
In part because he faced more resistance, Antetokounmpo wasn't yet the dominant finisher he would become a year later when head coach Mike Budenholzer arrived in Milwaukee with stretch-5 Brook Lopez and a mandate to the other Bucks to stay out of the paint.
The improved floor spacing resulted in Antetokounmpo's 2-point percentage jumping from 55% to 64% overnight, one of the 10 biggest increases since the NBA-ABA merger among players with at least 500 attempts both seasons.
By 2018-19, Antetokounmpo also had enough support around him to lift Milwaukee to the NBA's best record at 60-22, a 16-game improvement from the previous season and 18 wins better than the Bucks were the season before Bryant's challenge.
As a result, Antetokounmpo received 78 of 101 first-place votes en route to winning MVP. He would follow it up with an even more dominant regular season in 2019-20, repeating as MVP with 85 of 101 first-place votes while also claiming the Defensive Player of the Year award.
After Antetokounmpo was named MVP, Bryant challenged him again. Quoting his tweet from nearly two years earlier, Bryant congratulated Antetokounmpo but concluded with "Next up: championship."
Tragically, Bryant's death in a helicopter crash in January 2020 means he isn't around to see Antetokounmpo rise to meet another one of his challenges. Still, there's no denying the role an MVP mentor played in Antetokounmpo's development.
-- Kevin Pelton
'Like, that takes no skill at all': Giannis hears from the haters
James Harden wasn't the first NBA player who scoffed at Antetokounmpo's skill set. Others, away from microphones, have dismissively discussed Antetokounmpo's relatively limited array of dribbling moves and mocked the two-time MVP's poor shooting touch.
Harden, who felt Antetokounmpo had taken a couple of unnecessary verbal swipes at him, just wanted the world to hear the criticism.
"I wish I could just be 7 feet and run and just dunk," Harden said during a 1-on-1 interview with ESPN's Rachel Nichols during the 2020 All-Star Weekend. "Like, that takes no skill at all. I've got to actually learn how to play basketball and have skill, you know? I'll take that any day."
Not coincidentally, nitpicking the depth of Antetokounmpo's "bag" quickly became a popular trend on NBA Twitter, particularly when the Bucks' offense bogged down during playoff losses. Indeed, Milwaukee has run into trouble when relying too much on Antetokounmpo to create in half-court sets, when defenses can pack the paint and dare him to play to his weaknesses. He's not Durant, a near-7-footer with guard skills who can score from all over the floor.
Antetokounmpo arrived in the NBA as a skinny project. Eight years later, he's a muscular work in progress, regardless of his remarkable list of awards and accomplishments.
"I feel like I always try to go to my strength, which is drive and getting downhill, getting in the paint, making the right pass and all that," Antetokounmpo said after his second 40-point double-double of these NBA Finals. "I feel like expanding the game, sometimes you got to be OK with playing with your weaknesses a little bit. It might not be the strongest part of your game, but if you're able to expand it -- it might be a 15-footer, a 3-pointer or whatever the case might be -- it makes you more effective down the line."
But it's a gross oversimplification to attribute all of Antetokounmpo's effectiveness so far to sheer size and athleticism. If it's just about height and hops, why isn't, say, JaVale McGee a perennial MVP candidate?
If Antetokounmpo couldn't handle the ball, he wouldn't have established himself as one of the most dangerous transition threats ever to play the game. His Eurostep ranks up there with Harden's step-back as one of the league's most dangerous moves, and it's a finesse skill that requires incredible body control and timing to execute at breakneck speed.
The 2020-21 playoffs have also offered proof of Antetokounmpo's evolving game. Instead of constantly being the primary facilitator, he has been the screener in pick-and-rolls with Middleton or Jrue Holiday. Or he's attacking mismatches by bullying smaller defenders on deep post-ups. Critics still might not reward Antetokounmpo with many style points. Perhaps Harden brought that subject up during his recent trip to Paris Fashion Week, when Antetokounmpo was busy starring in the NBA Finals.
-- Tim MacMahon
MORE: The Bucks forced ridiculous shot-making from the Suns
Champions, in more ways than one
It should have been a defining moment, but instead, it was promptly forgotten in the aftermath of another crushing playoff exit for Antetokounmpo and the Bucks. Because his basketball world is framed in stark, singular terms -- winning and losing -- the full portrait of Antetokounmpo's leadership during a perilous moment of social unrest last August in the NBA bubble wasn't properly chronicled.
The extraordinary decision of the Bucks' to stage a walkout after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is black, seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was unprecedented. The anguish of Bucks veteran George Hill and disillusionment of Sterling Brown, a victim of racial profiling by the Milwaukee police, prompted Antetokounmpo to immediately throw his support behind his teammates and vote not to take the court. Their act of solidarity was cemented without input or consent from team owners, commissioner Adam Silver or other NBA superstars.
When the Bucks resumed play, they were eliminated by the Miami Heat with Antetokounmpo relegated to the sidelines because of an ankle sprain. Dismay over such failures often leads to emotional responses (see the Philadelphia 76ers, circa 2021), but Antetokounmpo refrained from pointing fingers. When asked if he would be requesting a trade during the offseason, he flatly replied, "That's not happening.'' It was his fervent wish, he explained, to continue to build a culture in Milwaukee that would yield success for many years.
Many superstars before him have offered similar lip service, only to quietly maneuver behind the scenes to plot their exit. Antetokounmpo meant it. He signed an offseason extension and embraced his role as the face of the Deer District.
Throughout the 2021 postseason run, as Milwaukee's fortunes dramatically rose and fell, he resolutely stood by coach Budenholzer. When Holiday (who joined the Bucks for a hefty price as the designated X factor) struggled mightily, Antetokounmpo vociferously offered his unwavering support. Holiday responded with a two-way masterpiece in Game 5 of the Finals.
There were several memorable snapshots during Milwaukee's title run. Antetokounmpo's outrageous block of Deandre Ayton is the most delicious, but another that resonates is an animated Antetokounmpo imploring his teammates in a Game 2 huddle to play harder, play better and play together when the lackluster Bucks had fallen behind by double digits.
They listened to him because he had exhibited each of the things that he asked of them. He passed on a role in "Space Jam: A New Legacy" to focus on improving his game, eschewing countless endorsement opportunities to support the team, not individual success. As Antetokounmpo's game continues to blossom, so does his pedigree as a leader.
It was nearly a year ago that the Bucks banded together for something that mattered so much more than the result of a basketball game. Perhaps the reward for that act of courage and conviction needed time to germinate.
The champions for social justice are now NBA champions too.
-- Jackie MacMullan
A family united: The Antetokounmpos are champions
There's a heartwarming Instagram video from last October of Antetokounmpo greeting his younger brother Kostas at the airport back home in Greece to celebrate Kostas becoming an NBA champion as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Just over a month had passed since one of the biggest professional disappointments of Giannis' career -- a loss to the Miami Heat in the second round of the playoffs.
But the only thing on his face that night was love.
"This is amazing, there's no words, man," Giannis screamed over the sounds of an air horn he'd brought and was relentlessly blowing. "I know this guy, we were sleeping same bed -- four of us. Now we're from same family, same household. Champions!
"First Greek ever to be a champion!"
Anyone who has followed the Antetokounmpo brothers' journey, from selling trinkets on the streets of Athens to the NBA, has a sense of how close they are. Growing up they did everything together, for one another and with one another. As Giannis mentioned in the video, the four boys even slept in the same bed.
If one brother was full, that meant they all were full. If one was hungry, that meant they all were hungry.
"I'm not going to say I did not eat. I'm not going to say like that, because let's get credit to my parents because they did everything they could to provide for us," Giannis said on Adrian Wojnarowski's The Giannis Draft podcast last year. "Looking back with the way we eat now and what you have to do to take care of your body, we didn't eat enough. Not me, not Thanasis, not Kostas, not Alex."
One of Giannis' first agents, Giorgios Panou, started providing food to help him add muscle to his scrawny frame. "The thing that Giorgios did not know is that there's no way I eat and my brothers don't," Giannis said. "I was not eating the food. I was eating one-fourth of the food."
It's an attitude that remains deep within the Antetokounmpo family. And two months after meeting Kostas at the airport, it was time for Giannis and the family to celebrate once again.
Minutes before their first game of the 2020-2021 season, inside a fanless Staples Center for a game against the Clippers, the Lakers received their 2020 championship rings. When it was Kostas' turn, he looked up to the scoreboard. His mom spoke first, telling her son how proud she was of him. Then brother Thanasis had his turn. Then Giannis.
"We're proud of you," he said. "We love you. We're extremely happy for you, for bringing the first ring home. Let's get more rings, man. Let's get more rings."
-- Ramona Shelburne
The Bucks trusted Giannis was all in, and went all in too
As midnight neared on Nov. 16, members of the Bucks organization were euphoric. In a matter of hours, they'd closed a tough negotiation to win a bidding war to trade for Holiday and thought they had plans in place to acquire free agent Bogdan Bogdanovic as well.
The perception: This was the Bucks pushing all their chips in to try to convince Antetokounmpo to extend his contract and forgo free agency in 2021, a byproduct of those big deals that would truly make their offseason a grand slam.
But inside the team, sources said, the thinking was closer to the inverse.
The reality: They were indeed going all in -- Holiday alone cost three first-round picks plus two pick swaps -- but not to try to impress or sway their two-time MVP into signing. The Bucks were doing it because they believed Antetokounmpo was already fully invested, and that enabled them to act with confidence.
After a disappointing end in the 2020 bubble playoffs against the Miami Heat, Antetokounmpo met with team leadership and discussed upgrades that could be made to the roster. Soon after, rumors began to circulate and opposing teams were not so subtly positioning their salary cap to try to poach him.
But during the meeting, Antetokounmpo had laughed about stars on rival teams starting recruiting missions. He had even shown Bucks staff some of the text messages he received after the top-seeded Bucks were knocked out of the playoffs, sources said.
Nonetheless, when Antetokounmpo departed for a two-month trip to Greece a day after getting his second MVP trophy, the five-year, $228 million extension offered by the Bucks had not been accepted.
This is my home, this is my city.. I'm blessed to be able to be a part of the Milwaukee Bucks for the next 5 years. Let's make these years count. The show goes on, let's get it. 🤎🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/895tCBE9RK
— Giannis Ugo Antetokounmpo (@Giannis_An34) December 15, 2020
On the outside, it might have looked like Antetokounmpo was giving the team the fall to do something to get his commitment. But the Bucks' ownership and front office never showed a quiver.
The relationship with Antetokounmpo was strong and, although changes needed to be made -- not just to the team but to head coach Budenholzer's strategies -- the parties truly believed they were on the same page.
There was some turbulence when the Bogdanovic deal fell apart -- Antetokounmpo had named him as a player he'd like to play with before free agency began -- and they had to pivot. Then Antetokounmpo returned from vacation and several weeks passed with no formal decision.
But the team always projected confidence behind the scenes. In fact, they laughed about what the media was going to talk about once the contract was official.
In training camp, some of Antetokounmpo's teammates got playful, giving him a birthday gag gift of a bunch of pens for when he was ready to sign. There might have been an underlying nerve or two, but the core members of the team believed he was in for the long term.
On Dec. 15, a week before the start of the 2020-21 season, members of the ownership group and front office gathered in the team's offices. Champagne was on ice and, and with no restaurants open for seating, they'd sent out for pizza.
Antetokounmpo signed his extension, giving the Bucks the best Christmas gift they could've ever asked for. But not one they didn't expect.
-- Brian Windhorst
What does the future hold for Giannis?
Only a die-hard fan would have noticed an apparently small tactical adjustment in a midseason game, but everyone within the Bucks perked up on Jan. 18 in Brooklyn when Antetokounmpo set 32 ball screens -- nine more than in any game in the past three seasons, per Second Spectrum.
Brooklyn won that game -- Harden's second for the Nets. Kyrie Irving didn't play, but the Bucks walked out of Barclays Center confident they had at least some answers for the Brooklyn supernova.
The Bucks already knew Antetokounmpo barrelling into walls of defenders was not a consistent winning formula against the best postseason defenses.
They chased ball handlers who could run the two-man game with Antetokounmpo as the screener. They landed one in Holiday, and flirted with another in Bogdanovic.
The idea was recalibrating Antetokounmpo's game to be a little less LeBron James and a little more lob-catching Anthony Davis. That is not a simple metamorphosis. Antetokounmpo ascended as Point Giannis in 2016. He won two MVPs playing his style -- the style of a ball-dominant wing.
But in Milwaukee's most dire postseason moments, Antetokounmpo leaned harder into that recalibration. In every close game starting in the second round, he approached that record number of ball screens. It was a show of trust in Holiday and especially Middleton, but also proof Antetokounmpo understood he could inflict superstar-level production without dominating the ball.
There has been a rush to pigeon-hole this new Antetokounmpo into historical archetypes. Is he Robin to Middleton's Batman? Or the new Shaquille O'Neal?
Antetokounmpo defies comparison, in both substance and style. The O'Neal model fits on a superficial statistical level, but not the experience of watching Antetokounmpo. He still runs the offense from the perimeter a lot. He is the league's most dangerous open-court ball handler -- an onrushing terror, a constant threat to detonate atop some victim's head.
He was the league's most efficient pick-and-roll ball handler this season, though at below-average volume for a superstar. He isolates and posts up a lot. His efficiency on those plays comes and goes, but he gets more comfortable as he sees opponents over and over. He found a sweet spot on the left block and wing in these playoffs.
It is on defense where the comparisons to most centers fall away. Antetokounmpo is an all-court wrecker, seemingly capable of guarding entire 20-foot-by-20-foot areas by himself. There are only a handful of players in history who could have made that game-clinching block against Phoenix Suns center Ayton in Game 4 -- helping, pivoting, retreating, jumping and actually being fast enough and long enough to touch the ball. It was balletic and thunderous all at once.
Even Antetokounmpo's midrange game -- hooks, floaters, fadeaways -- looked more polished at times in this championship run.
And that's the thing: Antetokounmpo is still coming. He's 26. There is a temptation upon his reaching the mountaintop to write the ending of his story. Where does he rank all time? Is he already the greatest international player ever? (No, not yet.)
He might not win another title. Championships are promised to no one. But Antetokounmpo is still evolving, improving, expanding. How exciting is that?
-- Zach Lowe