Ever since CBS’s 60 Minutes did a feature last year on Giannis Antetokounmpo, otherwise known as “The Greek Freak”, I decided to make a point of paying a visit to Sacramento when the Milwaukee Bucks came to town. Though I made the trip a few days ago, I was very nearly disappointed. Giannis, a Greek citizen of Nigerian ancestry and a first-name basis NBA star along with his peers LeBron James and Stephen Curry (you heard right), suffered a minor knee injury a few days before the game and had sat out the previous contest with the Chicago Bulls. He was a no-show for early warm-ups, and he was missing from the line of Bucks players when they ran out for their pre-game shoot-around. Just as I was ready to give up, though, on my hopes of seeing the likely successor to LeBron and Steph as the face of the NBA, he emerged from the tunnel to join his teammates and make my evening complete.
Giannis looked like himself at first when he started the game, but it was clear after the first quarter that he wasn’t at full speed, playing a little tentatively and not out for his usual number of minutes. Every so often, however, he showed the Sacramento crowd why he was on a first-name basis with the league, such as his tomahawk dunk of a missed free throw in the third quarter. He finished with 17 points, 7 rebounds, and 24 minutes, a decent showing under the circumstances, as the Buck beat the Kings in overtime 141-140.
Make no mistake–Giannis has, even for NBA players, a rare combination of power, agility, and reach, basically a morph of the best qualities of LeBron and Kevin Durant. He is leading the Milwaukee Bucks, a franchise whose futility over the last there decades equaled that of the pre-Steph Golden State Warriors, to the best record in the NBA and a likely trip to the Finals to compete with the Dubs for this year’s Larry O’Brien Trophy. If that prediction holds up, I will also venture a guess that Giannis and the Bucks will give the Dubs far more trouble than LeBron and the Cavs offered in the previous two Finals. Even if Giannis fails to deny the Dubs additional rings for their collections, the series will go down in history as his coming-out party, and we will be seeing his face and enormous hands, a full twelve inches from wrist to fingertip, a lot more in the years to come.
One final note. I left the game with five minutes remaining and the Bucks up by double digits, wishing to get an early start home with work waiting for me the next day. Big mistake. The Kings, as they have done so often this season, went on a shooting tear after I left, wiped out the deficit and even took a two point lead with 28 seconds left. Though they lost in overtime, the Kings demonstrated yet again that you can never count them out of a game, even if they are down to a top team like the Bucks. They may still be a work in progress, but the Kings, like Giannis, are also truly must-see NBA.
