44 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
When the victorious Knights of Dominican High—green
letter jackets, white sleeves—board the orange school bus
idling outside Shoreland Lutheran on a 27° school night in
Kenosha, it could be any year in the last half-century, if not
for the Beats pinching Alex Antetokounmpo’s temples like
a laurel wreath, or the Amazon warehouse that slides by
the bus windows on I-41. The building goes on forever, like
the repeating cityscape in a cheap cartoon—a 2.4 million–
square-foot monument to material desires, the consumer
goods so central to American life that this facility and others
like it are called fulfillment centers.
Antetokounmpo finds serenity in basketball, including
the play after halftime, when he caught and dunked a lob
from a half-court inbounds. “Alex lights up when he hears
the word ‘lob,’ ” says Dominican coach Jim Gosz, though
the 6' 7" senior also appreciates the hourlong bus ride with
his buddies back to the suburb of Whitefish Bay up the
coast from Milwaukee. “It’s fun to travel with the guys,”
he says, and Alex has traveled farther than most, having
arrived here from Athens in 2013, at age 11, when the Bucks
selected his 18-year-old brother Giannis—then two inches
shorter, 35 pounds lighter and 100% more obscure than
he is now—with the 15th pick in the NBA draft.
That obscurity cut two ways. “I didn’t know much about
the NBA,” says Alex, “but my brother told me he got drafted
and we’re moving to the United States. I didn’t know
Milwaukee, but I knew I didn’t want to go.”
On arrival, the boy was astonished by the size of
American supermarkets—Wisconsin’s vast Pick ’n Saves
and Woodman’s and Festival Foods—and the multifarious
fast food options. After exiting the highway tonight, the busfollows a Boulevard of Broken Seams, aka Silver Spring Drive,
a gantlet of Jimmy Johns, Taco Bell and Dunkin’ Donuts
leading directly to Dominican. “Chik-Fil-A, Culver’s,
Blaze Pizza.. .” says Alex, ticking off his favorite franchises,
a hymn to the drive-thru, dollar-menu, fast food fever
dream of American suburbia.
When at last he arrives home—to the red-brick five-bed-
room in River Hills that he shares with Giannis; their mother,
Veronica; and Giannis’s partner, Mariah Riddlesprigger—
Alex doesn’t watch the Bucks-Pelicans game on TNT. (There,
Giannis is amassing 34 points, 17 rebounds and six assists
while laying waste to New Orleans and its talented rookie,
Zion Williamson, in what will be the night’s lead story
on SportsCenter.) Rather, Alex streams a Wisconsin Herd
game, “to see my other brother,” 27-year-old Thanasis
Antetokounmpo, a 6' 7" forward who has been on the
Milwaukee bench for much of the season and is getting
minutes tonight in the NBA’s developmental G League,
which features another “other brother,” 22-year-old
Kostas Antetokounmpo—Dominican High, class of 2016—
who plays for the South Bay Lakers, on a two-way contract
with the actual Lakers. Is it any wonder that Alex speaks
of basketball as the family business, describing it during a
break from practice at Dominican the following afternoon
as a “job” and a “craft” and an “industry”? He is serious
bordering on somber, and dripping with sweat.
“I used to be starstruck,” he says of his brushes with
LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard and the other superstars
he encounters with Giannis, who is himself the best player
on earth right now, and a soon-to-be back-to-back NBA MVP
(though on March 11, the season was suspended untilSNEAKERS SQUEAK ON HONEY-COLORED
HARDWOOD. THE GYM, IN WISCONSIN, HAS A STAGE
BEHIND ONE BASKET, A VOLLEYBALL MAROONED
IN THE RAFTERS, A BAKE SALE IN THE LOBBY,
A RAFFLE IN THE RETRACTABLE BLEACHERS AND A
BRASS BAND PLAYING “LOUIE LOUIE” AND
“ROCKIN’ ROBIN,” THE TIMELESS SOUNDTRACK OF
HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL IN AMERICA.
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