Giannis Antetokounmpo has become one of the unlikeliest household names in the NBA today. Non-American, playing for a small market team in the Milwaukee Bucks, and with a Greek last name with 13 letters that most people can't pronounce. All those are unusual ingredients, but Antetokounmpo has made it work.
Yet the Greek Freak made an absolute splash this weekend, when a 60 Minutes interview aired, detailing his childhood back in Greece, his coming up as a professional player, his unique transition to the NBA game, and his eventual rise into stardom.
The do-it-all All-Star forward candidly admitted to not know exactly what he was signing up for in the first place but eventually being easily convinced after hearing that LeBron James himself was the last NBA player to be on the show.
“To be honest with you, at first when my agent told me, ‘They want you to do an interview, a piece for “60 Minutes,” ‘I was like, ‘What is “60 Minutes”?' ” Antetokounmpo said, according to ESPN's Nick Friedell. “I didn't know what it was, but they told me it was really, really big. The last NBA player that was on it was LeBron James so I was like, ‘OK, cool. I'll do it.'
“They told me they were going to talk about my childhood, where I came from and stuff like that, and I was like, ‘OK, that sounds good,' and they were really, really good people. They made me feel comfortable and it worked really well.”
Perhaps the greatest part of his literal 15 minutes of 60 Minutes-fame was the attention paid on how Antetokounmpo rose from humble beginnings and made himself into a star in the league with incredible work ethic and dedication to the sport, now in line to become the first foreign player to have his own signature sneaker.
“The piece was really, really good,” Antetokounmpo said. “I loved it. It talked about me, it talked about my family, it talked about where I came from. And the most important thing, it talked about how hard someone's got to work to succeed in life and that was really, really good that they did that. It was a great piece by them.”
Antetokounmpo has a unique rags-to-riches story, now finally reaping the joys of a four-year, $100 million contract — but if there is something that makes his story shine is just how humble he's remained despite the overwhelming success he's seen in the last few years of a standout career thus far.
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