Why Giannis Antetokounmpo Chose the Path of Most Resistance

He also has a slew of framed jerseys down in the basement. Some of the jerseys are hung, proudly, on the wall; others are stacked haphazardly on a pool table or near the bar stocked with alcohol that Giannis doesn’t drink. Many are his, but curiously, he also has dozens of framed jerseys from other NBA players too. Some are perhaps what you’d expect: the uniforms of greats who’ve played the game and since retired or passed away. Dominique Wilkins, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant. But many of them—the majority of them—are from his peers: guys he competes against during the regular season and the playoffs.

He’s got a framed Blake Griffin Pistons jersey. He’s got one from Kevin Durant, and one from Steph Curry. James Harden—“A lot of people think that I have beef with James Harden, which is not true,” he said, because if it were, why would his jersey be here? He continued the tour. “This right here is from Luka Dončić, the wonder boy. Anthony Davis. L.A., you know him. Jokić. I love the game! Oh, this is mine from this year. This is from the MVP I won. The All-Star MVP. Bradley Beal. Damian Lillard. Derrick Rose. I love Derrick Rose. LeBron James, man. Look! Look what he wrote for me.”

Many of the jerseys are signed, some with brief messages, but this particular one, a LeBron Lakers jersey, had a longer note, and Giannis read it out loud: “To Giannis, a.k.a The Greek Freak. Continue to strive for greatness every single day you wake up, brother. Love everything you represent to this game of hoops, and off the court as well. The limit is not the sky. Go beyond it.” LeBron had signed off with the sketch of a crown.

Giannis beheld the inscription proudly: “That’s big time, you know?”

He is aware, if distantly, that by the hypermasculine competitive codes of the NBA, you are not supposed to venerate your competitors, let alone collect their jerseys, let alone adoringly read what those competitors write on those jerseys to note-taking reporters. But Giannis has never been good at those codes, and at times he has found freedom in defying them. For instance, he said, “People that talk to the sports psychiatrists and stuff like that, they label us ‘soft.’ We’ve seen that in the past, like, ‘Oh, man, I’m having anxiety.’ ‘Man, you’re soft. Go deal with that.’ That’s how it’s labeled. That’s why it’s hard for people to talk to somebody and open up. Even for me, it was extremely tough.”

He’s convinced that all the really good athletes are secretly in some form of therapy. Some not so secretly. They use a word or a phrase and he knows. The other day, Giannis was watching Naomi Osaka, the three-part Netflix docuseries, and was struck by the way the tennis star spoke about the challenges that have come with her success. This happens more and more now—in dealing with himself, he’s noticed how many other people are dealing with something. He said he could recognize a kind of struggle in Osaka’s eyes, even before she began speaking. “She wasn’t happy, she wanted to get away from the game and all that stuff, and it’s fucking hard, man,” Giannis said. He was talking about her, but he was talking about himself too. “I started doing it when I was 18. When you’re that young and you’re doing it, people don’t understand the amount of pressure because at the end of the day, you don’t only have to perform and be the best, you have the big brand that you got to fucking carry on your shoulder. You have your own country, Japan, that you got to carry on your shoulder. Or Greece, in my case. You have all these people that you got to take care of. Sometimes…”