Why The “Greek Freak” Matters, Even Outside Of Basketball
On October 21st, 2017, Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo stated his case for being a superstar. In a breathtakingly close game against the Portland Trail Blazers, he put up a career high of 44 points, proving his talents to an audience that had been growing since his rookie year in 2013. Sports media outlets praised him breathlessly, making his case for MVP status and overall greatness. Following that game, the Bucks gave Giannis the ball he used to launch himself into the public eye. On it, he wrote “this is for daddy, we got a win tonight and I got 44 points.” His father had passed away less than a month before.
Fast forward to 2019, and not much has changed. Giannis averages 27 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 5.8 assists a game, and his Milwaukee Bucks have the best record in professional basketball. Giannis was voted to be the captain of the Eastern Conference in this year’s NBA All-Star game, and is a more serious candidate for MVP than he was in years past. With this increased visibility comes increased awareness of Giannis’s unique life story. Born in Athens, Greece to Nigerian immigrants, he grew up with few prospects and little chance of prosperity in his future. Against all odds, he and his siblings were able to take their family across countries, income levels, and realities.
Despite American audiences’ association of Giannis with Greece, things aren’t quite the same in his home country, where complex historical factors and prejudices towards immigrants sometimes lead to a different reception. However, through his astonishing feats on the court and his willingness to use his platform to incite social change, Giannis Antetokounmpo is helping to change the stigma that immigrants like him face not only in Greece, but across the world.
Veronica and Charles Antetokounmpo left Nigeria in 1991 and settled in Greece in search of a better life. Three years later, Giannis was born, the third of five siblings. Incapable of finding employment through legal means, the family worked various odd jobs to put a roof over their heads. The family’s collective resume is a brief cross-section of the sorts of employment opportunities presented to immigrants from countries like Nigeria; picking oranges, babysitting, selling items on the street, and other thankless occupations. In an interview with The New York Times, Giannis recalls that “sometimes, our fridge was empty,” adding that on many occasions, his family “didn’t sell the stuff and… didn’t have money to feed ourselves.” The family persevered, and eventually the Antetokounmpo brothers became interested in basketball. For the family, it was a collective release, a cause to rally around in a desperate financial situation.
They were supported by some members of their community, most notably Spiros Veliniatis, a coach who saw potential in the family and convinced the higher-ups at Greece’s Filathlitikos team to support them financially so that the brothers could focus on sports. Prior to this point, the siblings missed many practices trying to make extra money for their family, and allegedly shared one pair of basketball shoes between the four of them. Veliniatis noted that the family as a whole “had serious survival problems and did anything to earn a wage. The fear of the extreme poverty that Giannis had experienced was the biggest motivator.”
Despite their demonstrable talents, the Antetokounmpo brothers were held back from greatness at first due to their citizenship status. Until the age of 18, Giannis was stateless, with no official papers designating him as a citizen of Greece or even Nigeria. It wasn’t until 2013 that Giannis, aided by his rapidly ascending public profile, was able to officially obtain a Greek citizenship. In an interview with Giannis and his older brother Thanasis, the siblings recounted times when their considerable skills were being noticed by coaches and recruiters from major European basketball leagues. Thanasis recalls being embarrassed that he couldn’t play for any of those leagues due to his lack of official papers, and only recently was allowed to play in international competitions. In spite of all of the opposition that they faced, the Antetokounmpo family always considered themselves to be Greek. The brothers all served in the Greek army and continue to represent the country they consider their home, often opting to play for Greece in international competitions. When Giannis was drafted to the NBA, he was holding a full-size Greek flag and doing the sign of the cross in the Greek Orthodox tradition.
Like many other countries in Europe, Greece has long attempted to cultivate a strong sense of national identity. While the citizens of some countries find common ground over core beliefs or shared access to resources, Greece’s identity is very much based on notions of ethnicity and religion. The only minority officially recognized by the Greek government is the small number of Muslims living in northern Greece, who represent less than three percent of the country’s total population. Even then, this group is not monolithic, encompassing Turks, Romani, and other ethnic groups. Roughly 97% of the country practices the Greek Orthodox religion, and the church exerts a strong cultural influence over the collective worldview of the Greeks. Though the country has been integrated into the European Union and increasingly plays a role in international politics, it has largely avoided many of the demographic and political changes that have come to be associated with globalization, especially in European countries. In 2016, Pew Research Center conducted a study to determine how European citizens felt about immigrants entering their country. 63% of Greek respondents believe that “having an increasingly number of people of many different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities” in their country would, in their opinion, make the country “a worse place to live.” There has always been a sort of underlying skepticism of those belonging to different ethnic groups in Greece, though these attitudes have admittedly been amplified in recent years.
This pronounced increase in xenophobic attitudes can in part be attributed to the advent of the European refugee crisis. The crisis was an extremely important moment in Europe as a whole both in terms of the immigration debate and in the larger scope of European political struggles. As civil wars, terrorism, and general political instability spread across the Middle East throughout the early 2010s, the residents of countries like Iraq and Syria began to flee their homes, often without a long-term plan for residency in other countries. Some ended up in refugee camps in places like Turkey, but some went farther afield, often trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy, improvised watercraft. Many died en route to Europe. Greece was among the countries hit hardest by the crisis, receiving over 50,000 permanent refugees in addition to providing homes to thousands more asylum seekers who were only stopping there temporarily on their way to other parts of Europe. The presence of these immigrants triggered serious debate throughout the member states of the European Union, as countries attempted to adapt to the high volume of people passing through their borders. Some of the more financially stable countries in the EU, including France and Germany, were able to take in considerably larger numbers of refugees thanks to their superior infrastructure and resources.
However, this crisis took place during a period when Greece was already reeling from crippling financial debt and other economic hardships. Politicians within the country were already in the position of grappling with the European Union’s elaborate set of financial arrangements and bureaucrats, and many argued that leaving the EU might be the best outcome for the future of the country. With Greece being indirectly forced to accept its role as a conduit or home for refugees thanks to its EU membership, the issue of immigration became even more contentious. What would have constituted an enormous logistical issue even in times of economic prosperity became a political and economic minefield, and on top of that was wedged into an already chaotic set of debates about the state of the nation. Seeing an excuse to introduce an element of racial politics into the EU debate, separatist voices on the fringe of Greek politics grew louder and uglier.
Perhaps the ugliest and loudest voice during the refugee crisis belonged to Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the leader of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. Though the party has been a fringe voice within the Greek political system since its founding in the 1980s, it gained a great deal of international visibility during and slightly before the refugee crisis thanks to its platform of outspoken anti-EU and anti-immigrant sentiment. In 2012, the party won 18 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament, making it the third most popular political party in the country at the time. Though this was not enough for the party to enact legislation on its own or serve as anything resembling a governing body, these gains showed the world the uglier aspects of Greek culture and gave extreme right-wing politics a voice in Greece and in the European Parliament. It is important to note that Golden Dawn saw its biggest initial gains in political power four years before the height of the refugee crisis. During later elections in 2015, the party saw particularly high gains on Greek islands like Lesbos, Chios, and Samos, where the largest numbers of immigrants were temporarily stationed on their journey from the Middle East to Central Europe.
Within the context of this hotly debated issue, Giannis Antetokounmpo was inadvertently used as a pawn, a figure onto which both sides projected their arguments by virtue of both his immigrant background and his status as a representative of Greece to the wider world. Mr. Michaloliakos compared the young basketball player to a chimpanzee during a televised interview. When Giannis and his parents met with then-Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Michaloliakos publicly stated that his family should’ve been detained and deported at the meeting. Conversely, Samaras attempted to position himself has a moderate and worldly politician, expressing his admiration of Antetokounmpo and encouraging him in his athletic endeavors. “I thank you for honoring our national colors… I hope you drive them crazy with your dunks… All of Greece is so excited for you.”
As recently as the fall of 2018, the Antetokounmpo family has experienced racism at home. After Thanasis’s Panathinaikos basketball team defeated rivals Olympiakos 93 to 80, Greek sports commentator Takis Tsoukalas publicly referred to Thanasis as a “monkey.” Giannis publicly responded on Instagram, stating that “if this could happen to Thanasis, who always proudly represents Panathinaikos and Greece with a smile, I can’t imagine what other people of color go through in Greece. I’m extremely saddened and disappointed.” The Antetokounmpo family has achieved international renown and put a spotlight on Greece through the stories of their upbringing. And yet, there is still a sizeable portion of his countrymen that, rather than embrace him, chooses to deny him of the ownership of his identity. This is something that should be much easier to accomplish than scoring 44 points.
For his part, Giannis has worked hard to combat this stigma. He continues to provide invaluable services for Greece as a whole, but more specifically has recently begun to work hard to secure rights for those like him. A few years ago, he and his brother Thanasis sat down for an interview with the nonprofit Onassis Cultural Center in order to discuss their lives, their experiences, and their hopes for the future. The interviewer, Aphrodite Panagiotakou, recalled previous programs that the foundation aired, involving academics, politicians, and other renowned figures which discussed issues of nationality. “We tried with sophisticated words to explain the value of awarding rights, then you came along and, in simple words, gave a different message.”
The brothers stressed that their rough upbringing and not his current success should be the focus of the interview, saying that “the most important thing is, people shouldn’t just look at us… There were kids before us, there will still be kids after us, and the same [situation] can happen again.” He explained that he had never been to Nigeria in his life and told the audience that the Greek identity is the only one that he and his brothers have ever known. To demonstrate this, Giannis and Thanasis co-starred in a commercial for the Onassis Cultural Center free of charge, in an endorsement for an undergraduate scholarship specifically designed to help out an immigrant to Greece who displays potential and talent. On behalf of the organization, Panagiotakou vowed that all of the funds for the schooling would be covered so that “a youngster without Greek nationality, or a young person who has acquired their Greek nationality within the last five years, [could] study and claim an opportunity to make their dream come true, whatever that dream may be.”
In addition to sponsoring the Onassis Foundation’s scholarship initiative free of charge, Giannis appeared in an official commercial for the Greek Ministry of Tourism, imploring people everywhere to come visit his beautiful country. In this way, he is able to make a bigger difference on his own than a whole group of academics and politicians can together. Rather than directly acknowledge the xenophobia that he has faced as a resident of Greece, he has allowed himself to serve as a symbol of what second-generation immigrants can accomplish. He also hopes to show his countrymen that he still cares about the good fortune of Greece even though he now lives so far away;
The story of Giannis Antetokounmpo represents the ways in which sports as a whole have become more global. A young, undocumented player toiling in the Greek basketball leagues being scouted and drafted by the NBA would have been unheard of 40 years ago, or possibly even 10 years ago. His story transcends geographic and cultural barriers and raises questions about what it means to belong to a particular country. Does Giannis belong to Nigeria because of his ethnic background? Does he belong to Greece, where he was born and found his identity? Or does he belong to America, the nation that gave him his greatest opportunity and platform?
He and his brothers claim that it’s this unique combination of experiences and cultural backgrounds that make them who they are not just as athletes, but as people. Giannis has become a representative of a compelling model for the ways in which immigrant athletes can advocate for change. Not only does he provide the underprivileged children of immigrants with a great role model, but he still hasn’t turned his back on his past and continues to look for ways to help these children find acceptance and peace in their lives. Though prejudice against people like him will always exist, the “Greek Freak”’s efforts help make sure that those who come after him don’t have to become NBA stars to be treated like everyone else.
