50 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
“Just from being around them,” says Gosz, “I think
Thanasis is the ringleader.”
“I hope I’m a good role model,” Thanasis says. “I try to
be the best example to my brothers. I never want them to
see me do something that I wouldn’t want them to do. That
comes from my mom and dad. It’s the way we grew up. Try
to set a good example and take care of yourself physically.”
Alex learned well. In January, Dominican played national
powerhouse Sierra Canyon of Los Angeles, at the Hoophall
Classic in Springfield, Mass., in a game billed as the sons
of LeBron James (Bronny) and Dwyane Wade (Zaire) vs.
the brother of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Sierra Canyon
won 90–55. “If we played them 100 times,” Gosz says,
“we’d lose 101 times.” Alex, who has received offers from
Ohio University and UW–Green Bay but not yet decided
whether he will attend college, had 13 points and seven
rebounds while wearing the weighted vest of high expec-
tations. “I took a big bite of humble cake out there,” he
says, and that word, cake, suggests something higher in
humility-calories than humble pie. “He’s a very pleasant
kid, to opponents and teammates,” Gosz says. “He’ll show
a temper but doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. He
could live like a rock star around his brother, but he does
his tasks here from 8 to 3.”
His temper flared after Dominican’s season-ending,
triple-overtime, 103–102 playoff loss to Brown Deer in
March, when Alex had to be restrained while charging
at the departing referees, an incident recorded on smart-
phone and screened on local news, the kind of scrutiny
that comes with his surname. The
incident stood in contrast with
the hereditary sense of purpose
the brothers have largely main-
tained, so that even as the Bucks
continue to pound opponents,
a meat mallet forever flattening
a pork chop, Giannis says: “We
gotta put our heads down, stay
humble and just keep going.”
Giannis is a soccer fan who supported Arsenal as a kid, in
thrall to their French striker, Thierry Henry. After the Bucks
beat the Hornets in Paris in January, in front of PSG stars
Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, the latter was asked what he
knew about the Freak, to which Mbappé replied: “People
told me he’s a good person.”
But Giannis is also in possession of that indefinable
quality that Mbappé might call Je ne sais quoi. “Cristiano
Ronaldo, Messi, all these guys, they have something spe-
cial,” says Thanasis. “When I say ‘something special,’ it’s not
just their soccer. You know how you meet people and you
have a conversation with them and you don’t really think
about what they do, you just think they have something
special? That’s Giannis. I don’t say this because he’s my
brother. He has...something.”
Charisma? Magic? “Yes,” Thanasis says. “And it’s nice
to meet people like this.”“SEGREGATION IS A
stated fact in every story about Milwaukee,” says Kaems, the
artist, who grew up in Sherman Park, which made national
news in 2016 for three nights of riots following the fatal
shooting of a black man, Sylville Smith, by a black police
officer (who was later found not guilty of first-degree reckless
homicide). In January ’18, Bucks guard Sterling Brown was
tased, thrown to the ground and handcuffed in the park-
ing lot of a Milwaukee Walgreens at 2 a.m. after parking
across two handicapped spaces. One of the officers on the
scene was fired after later posting racist memes on social
media. “Milwaukee is the most segregated, racist place I’ve
ever seen in my life,” Bucks president Peter Feigin told a
local Rotary Club that year, and the city’s metropolitan area
remains, according to the Brookings Institution, the most
segregated in the country. (During a panel discussion over
NBA All-Star weekend in Chicago, Barack Obama told
one of the panelists: “I want you to be a little more public,
Giannis, because I think you have something to give in terms
of giving back. And you can set an example for the people.”)
“That will take generations to change,” says Kaems. “But
there is good stuff happening simultaneously.”
Assuming large gatherings resume on schedule,
Milwaukee will be in the international spotlight in July,
when Fiserv hosts the Democratic National Convention,
and quite possibly a month before that, should that arena
cohost the NBA Finals in the heart of the so-called Deer
District: the new bars, restaurants and apartment build-
ings surrounding the two-year-old arena, where even thefire hydrants are painted with basketball iconography.
Few things unite a city, however briefly and superfi-
cially, like a championship. Lakhwinder Singh, 54, owns
the Corner Market, with its large mural of Giannis, and his
younger son plays basketball. “I went to the last Bucks home
game, saw Giannis,” says Singh, who came to Milwaukee
from India in 1995. “It’s a small city,” he says. “A nice city.”
His customers like the Giannis mural.
So far, there has been little public anxiety about Giannis’s
potential departure in free agency, though the city has
lost a basketball superstar once before. As with Giannis,
Milwaukee and Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) were on a first-name
basis, until he left for L.A. in the summer of 1975 after six
seasons with the Bucks, including the franchise’s only
NBA championship (in ’71). “Milwaukee is not what I’m
all about,” Abdul-Jabbar said then. “The things I relate to
aren’t in Milwaukee.” The New York Times cited his “disen-THE BUCKS BETRAY NO SIGNS
OF ANXIETY OVER THE UNSPOKEN
F-WORD THAT IS FREE AGENCY.
G
IAN
NISAND
MILWAUKEE