I.
It was 1844 when Laacke and Joys first opened its doors. Laacke and Joys. Rhymes with khaki fanboys. The store was an outdoors outfitter and southeast Wisconsin staple in Brookfield, the Milwaukee suburb where Al Capone set up shop. Check out Laacke and Joys’ 1967 Camping and Marine Catalog. Thumb through ’68’s. Look at mom, in a tasteful two-piece, trying to enjoy her day. And look at the loser behind her. Probably can’t even swim. Definitely can’t get her attention. Total beta, already complaining about something. She just wants to have some time on the lake where someone isn’t asking her for something. Somebody should take his life jacket and hit him with it.
Into the outdoors? Laacke and Joys had what you needed. They sold liquid neoprene and braided dacron line. Seachart table lamps and coolers with marlins on them. You could get a Newporter Banana Peel Slalom for $24.50, a Light Weight Rubberized Nylon Storm Suit for just south of 13 bucks, or, if you were really trying to splash out, you could spring for the Norwegian Foul Weather Gear. “These wonderful Norwegian foul weather suits have become accepted as the finest available today.” We’re talking polyvinyl coated Egyptian cotton. “Each seam is specially treated to make it 100 percent waterproof.” They’re treating the seams special. This is primo stuff. Vikings don’t play. “The chest-high yachting pants and the one-piece nylon sailing suit do not come in ladies’ models.” Well that’s bullshit, but whatever. They also sold coats. The heavy kind you need to make it through a Wisconsin winter, the kind Giannis Antetokounmpo did not have when he arrived in Milwaukee for his first NBA season.
On the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 20, 2013, the weather was below 20 degrees in Milwaukee. Jane G. was shopping in the city’s Brady St. area when she saw a tall, young Black guy running by wearing a windbreaker. He looked familiar. Four blocks later, she drove by him again and realized it was the Bucks’ new rookie. She stopped her car and rolled down the window, asked if he wanted a ride. He asked if she was going to the Bradley Center, where the Bucks played. She said yes. When he got in the car, she told him he needed a winter coat. He told her his credit card didn’t work because he’d sent all his money to his family in Greece.
“We dropped him at the BC,” Jane G. later wrote in a comment on the Bucks blog Brew Hoop, “and he said, ‘Thanks, you really saved me!’ … I hope he now has a winter jacket and transportation. … What a sweet kid. … (My daughter’s friend says I should have mentioned I have an 18-year-old daughter, and should have taken him to Laacke and Joys to buy him a jacket.)”
Laacke and Joys closed in 2018. At the time of its retail death, the store had been open for 175 years. It was older than the rubber band.
II.
That was the start of one of the wildest superstar rises the NBA’s ever seen. As a kid in Athens, Giannis sold sunglasses on the street. [Disney movie trailer voice.] Then he discovered basketball. [FIZZ, BANG, POW.] He was tall, lanky, and raw, but talented enough to earn a spot for his hometown team, Filathlitikos, by the time he was 17. Maybe you’ve seen the highlight video from those days. It’s nine minutes and 46 seconds of Giannis frogsplashing the competition. Some of the grainiest footage you ever did see. A few of the gyms had indoor soccer goals behind the stanchion. Watch it now and it’s almost impressionistic. This skinny kid, skying, hitting turbo, getting on the rim.
For the 2013 NBA draft, Giannis was at Barclay’s hoping to hear his name called. He wasn’t in the green room, though. He was in the stands. He came with his agents and his older brother, Thanasis. Maybe you’ve heard of him? He’s the host of Thanalysis. Anyway, David Stern’s on stage—it would be his last draft—and he’s getting booed. “With the 15th pick in the 2013 NBA draft, the Milwaukee Bucks select Giannis Antetokounmpo.” Less than eight months prior, there wasn’t a team in the league that even knew Giannis existed. In the crowd, Thanasis pumps his fists and holds a Greek flag. Giannis beams.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, America. Giannis is a baby Buck with a long way to go, but aren’t we all? During his first preseason game, on Oct. 8, 2013, he hits a 3 and the announcer says, “They liken his body to Kevin Durant’s.” Twelve years, seven months, and 14 days later, someone will hear that and think, “You have no idea what’s coming. You think he’s staying like that? That’s a newborn kaiju, friend. They’ll write songs about his arms. Sure enough, “Fazers” is about Antetokounmpo’s shoulders. “My Father’s House” is about his triceps. “Lua” is about his elbows. Because the thing about Giannis is the gifts are undeniable but so is the work ethic. He’s a grinder. He cares.
When he first visited New York City, Giannis thought all of America would be like that, skyscrapers cutting holes in the clouds. See him in the driver’s seat in 2014, VICE along for the ride, making his voice deeper for the camera. Hear him say, “Oh my God, I’m guarding Kevin Durant.” Hear him say, “Everything got to be big. Your clothes got to be big. Your car got to be big. Your bed got to be big. Your shoes got to be big.” Hear him recount his confusion upon first encountering an all-you-can-eat buffet. “I saw Coach standing up and going back. When he came back I was like ‘Coach, what are you doing? You can’t do that.’ Coach told me, ‘It’s a buffet, of course you can do that. You can go and take as many times as you want.’ I didn’t know that.”
And now we pause to acknowledge Antetokounmpo’s discovery of smoothies—a watershed moment in professional sports and one of the most influential social-media posts of the 21st century.
Young Giannis was playful, wide-eyed. That mirrored his early years adapting to the NBA game. Those seasons were full of discovery, experimentation, and rapid improvement. At various points, the Bucks made him a shooting guard, a point guard, a small forward, and eventually a big. All the while, he kept adding to his game, hitting the weight room. Antetokounmpo grew two inches and added over 25 pounds of muscle during his rookie season alone.
“The first couple of times I played him, I didn’t even remember. It wasn’t until the third time,” said Kevin Garnett. “He looked like Bruce Lee. He looked super ripped.”
Prime Giannis was an absurdist whose highlights bordered on fantasy. A bewildering marriage of speed, length, strength, intensity, explosiveness, passing, and ballhandling that turned him into a titan. He made a signature move out of needing only one dribble to get from half court to the rim. This is a man with everlasting strides, a man who gets the lead out. Watch him get his first triple-double against Kobe and the Lakers in 2016. Watch him dunk from a step inside the free throw line. Watch him hit stepback game-winners in MSG. Watch him send Nikola Vucevic to the shadow realm. Watch him throw blind behind-the-back assists in midair. Watch him jump over Tim Hardaway Jr. and make John McEnroe question reality.
This is a man with hands the size of lobster traps. This is a man who has won two MVPs and a Defensive Player of the Year. He’s made All-NBA nine times, All-Star 10, and All-Defense five. In 2021, he led the Bucks to their first NBA title in 50 years. On a bum knee, he took home Finals MVP and made two of the most iconic plays in modern playoff history in the process. One was near the end of Game 4, a block on a Devin Booker–to–Deandre Ayton alley-oop with the Bucks clinging to a two-point lead. On the other, he found himself on the good side of an alley-oop again, this time on offense. With 20 seconds left in Game 5, the series tied 2-2 and the Bucks up one point, he finished one of the most ill-advised and spectacular oops in NBA history. Every coach in the world was shouting for Jrue Holiday to hold the ball, but Holiday knew he had something most players in that position don’t: a 6-foot-11, 240-pound superhero hauling holy ass down the center of the court. The Alphabet pointed up and Holiday let it go. Antetokounmpo stretched his hands to meet the ball and bent the rim.
The next game, Giannis hung 50 to clinch the NBA championship. He also added 14 rebounds, five blocks, and two assists, shot 16-for-25 from the floor, and went 17-for-19 from the line after struggling from there all postseason. Then he livestreamed himself ordering 50 nuggets from the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru. This is one of the defining players of his generation, a man who makes dreams come true.
III.
It’s a bummer. Used to be, if you asked me about Giannis I would immediately think of him going coast to coast in three steps. Or smoothies. Or Oreos. Or how horny he can be on Instagram. Now I think about thinly veiled Shams tweets and scrambled eggs. Because Giannis is in the midst of a protracted uncoupling with the only NBA franchise he’s ever known and it has become tiresome. His loyalty, his team’s failures—sorry, “steps to success”—and the front office’s desperate ploys to keep him have turned the NBA’s most buoyant star into one of its most exhausting.
Part of this is not Antetokounmpo’s fault. There is a gross thing that can happen to great players in small markets: everyone starts trying to trade them elsewhere. But Giannis hasn’t done himself any favors lately. There have been big-market musings, rumors, and what would appear to be an exorbitant amount of waffling over the years. This is a fiercely loyal man with a terrible PR team who is conflicted about what he wants out of the rest of his career. He clearly loves Milwaukee. He loves winning. Unfortunately, for the past several seasons, those things have seemed to be at odds.
At this point, the extended Giannis trade saga is nearing its 11th hour. God willing. Antetokounmpo is eligible to sign an extension in October, and Bucks ownership is on the record saying they’d like to settle the matter before the NBA draft on June 23. A couple of weeks ago, Shams reported that the Bucks are already “open for business” on the Giannis trade front. Either he tells them he intends to sign an extension and remain a Buck or it’s trade time.
The whiplash over the past several months has been extreme. Giannis was almost traded last summer, when he was reportedly open to being dealt to New York. But after that, and after months of speculation that he would be traded before this year’s deadline, Giannis posted the “I’m not leaving” Wolf of Wall Street clip along with the caption “Legends don’t chase. They attract.” He accompanied that with a pair of emoji: the red 100 followed by the smiley face with sunglasses. The next day, he announced that he had become a Kalshi shareholder. Months later, he and the Bucks got into a public spat over his health and availability. He wanted to play. The Bucks said he wasn’t ready. The league investigated and found no foul play on the part of the organization, but these are the kinds of things that suggest the whole situation’s a little too far gone.
Revisiting the early days of Giannis’s career, going back and watching old games and highlights, I was struck by how fun it all was. It was fun to see him flex on people. It was fun to see him Euro-step into poster dunks. It was fun to see him play harder than anyone else on the floor. It was fun to see him throw no-look passes on one end and send people’s shit into the stands on the other. It was fun to see him carve himself into something impossible. He’s always given all of himself, refused to cheat the game, and kept doing the work—even when seemingly everyone but him could see where all this has been headed.
IV.
Antetokounmpo’s heroics in Milwaukee haven’t been only on the court. One of the videos I keep returning to is titled “Lily Meets Giannis.” It was uploaded to YouTube on March 27, 2019, by a user named Pete Stauffer. The description goes, “My 11-year-old daughter had worked on several art projects for a year and half, and kept them in a folder in the hopes to one day deliver to the Greek Freak. He accepted graciously.”
At the time of this writing, the video has been viewed 962,304 times, which is surprising to me because my own personal view count of this clip is in the millions. Antetokounmpo was doing an autograph signing at a local car dealership, and Lily waited in line for six hours to give him the art she’d made. She carried it in a purple folder she brought from home. Inside were four pieces of art and one note. When she handed him the folder, she began to cry. Antetokounmpo saw the tears, got up, walked around the table, and gave her a hug.
