"What happened?
Am I screwed?
"
The question was asked by
Giannis Antetokounmpo
(Athens, 1994) to his tablemates while
David Stern
, former
NBA Commissioner
, announced
Anthony Bennett
as number 1 in
the 2013 Draft
.
The young Greek player did not understand what was happening.
He was just over 18 years old and in
Madison Square Garden
in
New York
, he barely spoke English and practically did not know what the choice of 'rookies' by the 30 NBA franchises consisted of.
A few minutes later, in
position number 15
, Stern himself mentioned Giannis's unpronounceable last name on the orders of the
Milwaukee Bucks.
.
The rest is history.
Antetokounmpo came to the NBA
without experience, without vocabulary, without muscles
and leaving behind an agreement to play for
CAI Zaragoza, which took 300,000 euros
for the inconvenience and for his exit clause to the United States.
He signed with the hands in December 2012, when he turned 18, but the Spanish club decided to end the season in Greece and then join the squad as a substitute point guard for
Pedro Llompart
.
Everything was going well until the Bucks appeared.
His jump to the biggest basketball league in the world changed everything, including his nationality.
Until he came of age,
Giannis had no papers
.
His parents were illegal immigrants from
Lagos
(Nigeria) and despite the fact that the young Antetokounmpo was born on Greek soil, the family's difficulties in finding work and money prevented them from obtaining nationality for their children.
Not even the appearance of
Spiros Velliniatis, who discovered Giannis at the age of 13
while looking for tall boys on the neighborhood slopes, managed to document his presence in Europe.
Velliniatis, yes, it was key for the family.
He helped
the parents
find an
800-euro
job
in exchange for taking his son, who shared sneakers with his brothers, to the team he led.
"
Everything is legal and illegal in Greece,
" he said in a report on Giannis' career in the 'New York Times'.
Velliniatis had played basketball at a Florida high school and coached the teenager Antetokounmpo until he was discovered by NBA scouts.
Meanwhile, the boy tried to earn some money for his house by
selling sunglasses and DVDs on the streets of Athens
.
"We lived in fear of being deported," said the Bucks player in 'Sports Illustrated'.
The fifth best salary in the world
His work ethic made his coaches fall in love.
Basketball was his life.
He stayed in the gym until the wee hours of the morning and often even slept there for fear of walking around town at night.
He lived in
Sepolia
, a neighborhood from where he saw the
Acropolis
and to which he still returns today to watch games on the street field that now has a huge mural painted with his face.
With the coming of age and the increase of rumors about his going to a major European league or the NBA Draft,
Antetokounmpo achieved Greek nationality
and eventually became 'The Greek Freak', 'The Greek Monster', Nickname and also title of the movie about his life that
Disney will
release
in 2022.
The role that he had been denied for 18 years
was handed to him on a platter by basketball.
"My brothers and I are Greek-Nigerian. If someone does not like that, it is their problem," he wrote on his social networks.
Antetokounmpo is now a two-time NBA MVP and
has just signed with the Milwaukee Bucks the largest contract in the history of the league: 228 million for five years
, an average of 45.6 a year, higher than what
LeBron himself
charges.
James
and that places him in the
Top-5 of salaries in the world of sports
.
If we look at the contracts of the big stars with their teams or organizations and analyze the annual average they receive, we find the
gross 100 million that Barcelona pays to Leo Messi
, the 70
million
from PSG to Neymar, the 65 from Juventus to Cristiano Ronaldo and the 50 that boxer Tyson Fury receives from the ESPN network.
The Greek narrowly surpasses the other young star of American sports,
Patrick Mahomes
, quarterback of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs and MVP of the last SuperBowl, and champions like
Lewis Hamilton
.
Some athletes may charge more than him thanks to
advertising
or variable earnings depending on the tournaments they win, such as
Roger Federer, Tiger Woods or Rafael Nadal
, but they do not charge directly and constantly from the sports organization in which they are.
The MVP's figures also improve if his
audiovisual contract with Disney and his advertising agreement of ten million per year with Nike are added
.
From the sneakers that he shared with his brothers to the Nike Air Zoom Freak that he names.
A movie story.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
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Lewis Hamilton
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NBA 2020 - 2021Giannis Antetokounmpo signs the largest contract in NBA history with the Milwaukee Bucks: $ 228 million
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