Editor’s Note: This story is included in The Athletic’s Best of 2022. View the full list.
MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Bucks two-way forward Sandro Mamukelashvili was understandably excited.
It was Oct. 6, 2021, and for the first time since the Bucks selected him with the No. 54 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, Mamukelashvili was going to get to practice against Giannis Antetokounmpo.
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While some of the younger players had been in training camp for a week, the Bucks were more cautious with the veteran players, holding some of them out of the first few days of camp after they had led the franchise to the first NBA championship since 1971. Finally, though, Mamukelashvili would get his chance to practice against the man who took home the 2021 NBA Finals MVP just two and a half months earlier with a 50-point performance in the closeout game.
Mamukelashvili, naturally outgoing with a gregarious personality, quickly found himself trying to fit in to match the energy of his teammates. So, he started talking and joking around, but in his excitement, he made a big mistake.
“He started talking s— to me,” Antetokounmpo recalled in a hallway of Fiserv Forum last Saturday, following the Bucks’ open scrimmage.
One year later, the memory was still quite vivid in Antetokounmpo’s head.
“He said, ‘Yo, Giannis, I’m gonna shut you down in practice today.’ and I was just tying my shoe, but he did not know me,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic. “It was like our first interaction, first time to meet somebody, but he didn’t know me. And he is like a kid that has so much energy, he loves to talk too much. He was like, ‘I’m gonna shut you down today. I’m going to bust your ass.’ And I was just tying my shoes. And I can see Jrue, I can see Khris was like …”
As he tells the story, Antetokounmpo pretends to look up from tying his right shoe, raises an eyebrow, flashes a disproving look at the rookie, then gives the same glance to his teammates on the left and right and goes back to tying his shoe.
“They had the face (too),” Antetokounmpo recounted to The Athletic. “And I just, I didn’t say a word to him. I just tied my shoes. I did my lift, I had my vitamin. Practice started, I had one target: Mamu. And I killed him. The Bucks posted a video on the Bucks’ Instagram, social media.”
Giannis already bullying the rookies on the court. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/e1bzYeSQpY
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) October 7, 2021
“Bro, he violated me,” Mamukelashvili said of that day.
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“I killed him,” Antetokounmpo said. “I dominated him.”
“And (the video) was just me dunking on Mamu, scoring on Mamu, crossing him over, blocking him, coming back, layup,” Antetokounmpo said. “And, you know, he sent me the video and I was like, ‘Come on. Why would they do that to you?’ But then we get back to the locker room and I was taking my shoes off and I said, ‘You remember what you said this morning, right?’ And he was like, ‘Uh, yeah.’ And then I went home. That’s how I operate. I don’t talk the game. I play the game.”
The training camp anecdote serves as a tremendous reminder of what makes Antetokounmpo such a great player and the edge that he plays with every single day, as well as a word of warning for brash young players.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
That story is completely fabricated.
Made up.
An invention in Antetokounmpo’s mind.
Mamukelashvili never said what Antetokounmpo claims he said. Mamukelashvili never cursed at Antetokounmpo. He didn’t tell Antetokounmpo he was going to shut him down the first day they ever practiced against each other. Mamukelashvili said something far more innocent in an attempt to appear confident and fit in with his teammates.
“Yeah, boy, I’m coming for you. Watch out,” Mamukelashvili recalled saying to Antetokounmpo.
Like Michael Jordan hearing something LaBradford Smith never said or Shaquille O’Neal lying to himself about David Robinson denying him an autograph as a teenager to fuel him in future matchups, Antetokounmpo embellished Mamukelashvili’s words in his mind to motivate himself on the floor. To Mamukelashvili, talking trash to the two-time MVP would have been unthinkable in the moment.
“I was joking around! I was just excited that I was talking to him, first of all,” Mamukelashvili said. “You come here and it’s the best player in the world and you’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ It was just fun and games, everybody knows. I’m not coming here thinking I’m really coming for him. I’m like 21 at the time.”
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And yet, somehow in Antetokounmpo’s mind, it became something entirely different. A few words from the new guy in training camp turned into his motivation for the day, a personal vendetta that he needed to settle on the court. His mission for that practice was simple and he would stop at nothing until he accomplished it.
Confronted with the actual details of what happened that day of training camp, Antetokounmpo pushed back initially. He demanded that someone grab Mamukelashvili from the locker room and bring him to the hallway to tell Antetokounmpo exactly what he said to him before that first practice.
“Watch out. I’m coming for you, boy,” Mamukelashvili answered when Antetokounmpo asked him to repeat what he said to him that day.
Antetokounmpo pressed Mamukelashvili with his version of the story, but the 22-year-old refuted Antetokounmpo’s story again and again. After complimenting Mamukelashvili on blocking one of his shots in the scrimmage and also beating the 2019-20 NBA Defensive Player of the Year on a spin move, Antetokounmpo let Mamukelashvili go back to getting dressed.
With Mamukelashvili back in the locker room, Antetokounmpo made an admission.
“I’m gonna say this — in my head, I don’t know if I did it in this situation — but in my head, sometimes I exaggerate things,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic. “I make things in a way to make me, to fill me up with fuel, to get more. And maybe, it was one of those incidents.”
“But I remember he said something. Like, ‘Yo, I’m gonna shut you down today. You’re not gonna score on me.’ Something like that, but I didn’t say a word to him. But the whole time I was lifting, all I could think about was those words. ‘I’m going to shut you down, man. I’m going to do this, that.’ But Mamu doesn’t know that. And that’s when you strike them. When they’re not ready. They think that moment has passed, but it hasn’t. It’s coming right back.”
Destroying a two-way player on his first day of practice because of a perceived slight that didn’t occur might seem like a little much, but with a storage room full of trophies, a championship, and a long list of accomplishments that put him No. 24 on The Athletic’s list of the top 75 players at only 27, this is what Antetokounmpo needs to do to stay on top of his game, right?
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Sort of.
While this mentality is part of what allows him to stay in the conversation of the league’s very best players as he wraps up his first decade in the NBA, it isn’t new. Antetokounmpo has been a maniacal and sometimes even pathological competitor from the moment he entered the league as an unknown, skinny teenager from Greece.
He remembers the very first time he pulled out his motivational mind trick in the NBA.
“Against Carmelo (Anthony). At home,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic.
The game he is referring to happened on Dec. 18, 2013. It was Antetokounmpo’s first NBA start. As a 19-year-old rookie, he put up 10 points, seven rebounds, two assists, two steals and a block in 41 minutes, 46 seconds before fouling out with 19 seconds remaining in a 107-101 double overtime loss to the Knicks.
While the game itself was unremarkable, Antetokounmpo’s behavior and attitude in the game stood out.
From the moment the game began, Antetokounmpo locked into defending Anthony, who had finished third in NBA MVP voting and led the league in scoring one season earlier.
Antetokounmpo appeared angry throughout the entire game. He bodied Anthony all over the floor. He tried to take a charge and complained to officials about not getting the call while laying on the floor, only to get right back into Anthony’s grille as he tried to get open on the next play. All night long, Antetokounmpo was a pest. He was annoying and draped all over Anthony. Throughout the game, Anthony could be seen smiling, which only seemed to rile Antetokounmpo further. Ultimately, the Knicks came out on top. (Anthony put up 29 points in the win, but made just nine of his 29 shot attempts.)
After the game, Antetokounmpo told reporters he wouldn’t stand for Anthony “bullying my teammates and me” and “talking to me all the time.” Anthony’s smile and those remarks after the game led to a long-held assumption that Anthony was talking trash to Antetokounmpo during the game, something Antetokounmpo claimed when he retold the story to The Athletic in 2019.
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“The nerves, your family, first start, Melo talking s—, but I remember that night,” Antetokounmpo claimed. “I didn’t back down.”
Added Anthony: “I appreciated that. And that was something I enjoyed when guys took that task.”
So, all these years later, what did Anthony say? More importantly, did he even talk trash to Antetokounmpo that night?
“No,” Antetokounmpo said. “I was trying to like …”
As Antetokounmpo begins to recount the story in a hallway inside Fiserv Forum nearly 10 years later, he takes on the role of his teenage self. He puffs his chest out and makes his shoulders wide, inhibiting the anger he felt that night in his first NBA start. He starts pacing with a scowl on his face.
“He’s disrespecting me,” Antetokounmpo says, as he paces back and forth in the hallway. “He’s talking s— to me. He’s talking down to me. Why is he looking at me like I’m a bum, man? Come on. No, I’m here. I’m here too.”
Antetokounmpo quickly breaks character to reflect on the way he acted that night.
“I’m a rookie now. I’m 18 years old,” Antetokounmpo says with a laugh. “Bro, I’m lying to myself.”
Back to the story.
“He thinks I’m a b—-, man,” Antetokounmpo continues, pacing and scowling and flexing again. “They think I’m just skinny. I’m not gonna do nothing, man. I’m gonna stay in this league. I’m not going to the G League. I’m going to the G League? No, f— that.”
After a few laughs at the memory, Antetokounmpo begins to reflect on that night and his mindset.
“Carmelo probably asked me like, ‘What’s your name?’” Antetokounmpo said with a final laugh. “Yeah, that’s crazy. It was that early.
“I do that all the time. You try to find that motivation not to get bored, right? Like last year, I had a good season. I averaged 30, 10 and 6. Now, what’s the motivation? You come here and say, ‘OK, I’ll do it again.’ You try to find something and you try to create scenarios. You try to change the script. It’s like a movie. You know? There is a script from here to the end of the year, you try to change it.”
Antetokounmpo enters his 10th season searching for his second NBA title. (Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)Entering his 10th NBA season, Antetokounmpo may need his motivational tactics to be stronger than ever before.
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Because through nine NBA seasons, he has compiled a résumé few in NBA history can better or match to start a career.
Six All-NBA honors. Six NBA All-Star nods. Five NBA All-Defensive Team honors. Two NBA MVPs. One NBA Defensive Player of the Year. One All-Star Game MVP. One NBA Finals MVP. One championship.
And last season, he put together a season few in NBA history can match or better.
Antetokounmpo averaged 29.9 points, 11.6 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game, a statistical campaign that has only been equaled by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson and Antetokounmpo himself in his second MVP season (2019-20), per Basketball-Reference. Without his team’s second-best player, he led the Bucks to a seventh game against the team that ultimately represented the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals last season. And in that attempt, he became the first player in NBA history to put up 200 points, 100 rebounds and 50 assists in a playoff series.
So, at the peak of his powers, in the middle of a surefire Hall of Fame career, what’s the next challenge?
“I gotta get better,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic. “Gotta get better. There’s other battles, other challenges I’m gonna face this year. We’ll have to improve. And I’m not ready. I need to be sharper. I need to work on my game more. I need to trust my game more.
“I need to unleash more of my game, more of what I’m able to do. Like I feel like I’m working so hard on things that I’m able to do, but I’m not unlocking it. And that’s the next step for me: to unlock things that I’ve worked on this summer and make my game easier.
“How can I make the game easier? It’s not going to be easy. For you to be great, it’s not going to be easy, but like how can I create for my teammates and also be effective too? How can I make my 10 points in the half instead of being like bump, bump, bump, bump, make it more efficient, no contact, no nothing? Guys hitting me, I feel like I get fouled every possession, just because I play through it.”
Since Mike Budenholzer took over as head coach of the Bucks four seasons ago, Antetokounmpo has been the most dominant player in basketball. As Antetokounmpo explained to The Athletic following the Bucks’ loss to the Raptors in the 2019 Eastern Conference finals, seven extra pounds of muscle and considerably more space on offense allowed him to “just go and f—ing dunk it” on offense, but that was never going to be enough.
He needed to get more skilled and find other ways to excel offensively without always needing to bust through the wall of defenders in front of him on each postseason possession. So Antetokounmpo started to make changes to his shot profile.
| At The Rim | Mid-Range | 3-Point | |
|---|---|---|---|
2018-19 | 66% | 21% | 13% |
2019-20 | 57% | 23% | 20% |
2020-21 | 54% | 29% | 17% |
2021-22 | 53% | 32% | 15% |
After living at the rim in his first MVP season, Antetokounmpo made a drastic change and took 20 percent of his shots from behind the 3-point line in his second MVP season. In the last two seasons though, he cut down on the 3-point attempts and started to shift more shots into the midrange.
Last season, Antetokounmpo took 32 percent of his shots from midrange, a number he hadn’t approached since taking 37 percent there in Jason Kidd’s final season as coach. More importantly, as Antetokounmpo focuses on unlocking things he has worked on during the offseason, he hit a career-high 41 percent of his midrange shots, including 44 percent on long midrange jumpers (between 14 feet and the 3-point line).
The math is simple: 2 multiplied by .44 is just .88, while 2 multiplied by .77 (his field goal percentage at the rim last season) is 1.54.
It will always be more efficient for Antetokounmpo to take shots around the rim, but for him to continue to grow as a player, he needs to keep developing as a scorer and finding different ways to punish defenses.
“How can somebody hit me, I take that foul, get to the free throw line and shoot two free throws without me getting tagged?” Antetokounmpo asked. “How can I go to the nail and if the guy pushed me, instead of me taking the push and keep playing — sometimes you’re going to need to do that — be like, ‘Ayy, that’s a foul,’ right? You know, show that guys are hitting me.
“Let me ask you a question, how can I get hit less and be as effective? Gotta be more free throws and more jump shots. More hook shots.”
And that is Antetokounmpo’s challenge this season. How can he find a way to still be an efficient and effective offensive hub for a league-best offense while also reducing the physical beating he takes on a nightly basis? And more importantly, how can he do that while also winning his second championship?
“This year, I can go and average 20. I’m OK with it as long as we win,” Antetokounmpo said. “If we win, I’m OK with it. I’m OK with it.”
Antetokounmpo pauses, then looks for a second and points at his partner, Mariah Riddlesprigger, and two sons, Liam and Maverick.
“I’m still going to be loved. You know, I could go this year and average 20 and then come next year and average 30. I just want to win.
“How can I win? If you give me the scenario of how to win, I’ll do whatever it takes to win. I feel like for us to be in a position to win I have to push myself to the limit, so that’s why every year, year by year, I push myself to the limit. The moment I feel like I don’t have to do that, you’ll see. Maybe not now, maybe when I’m 33, you’ll see me go down.
“I don’t need to do that. MarJon (Beauchamp), go get 25, I’m gonna get 16 tonight. Let me be like (Boris) Diaw, let me get you guys open. Let me do something else, but right now, I have to push myself to the limit. Khris (Middleton) has to push himself to the limit, Jrue (Holiday) has to push himself to the limit for this team to be great.”
Antetokounmpo never imagined he would be here. When he got his first chance to start an NBA game against Anthony, he never thought he would be trying to find a way to maintain an edge that kept him in the conversation with the best basketball players in the world.
“They ask, ‘Did you believe you’d be what you are today?’ I don’t,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic. “And there’s the other question, ‘Did you want to be what you are today?’ And I never intended to be what I am today. I wanted to be a great basketball player. I never wanted to be the best player. I said I wanted to be an NBA player, I never wanted to be one of the best.”
“But I worked extremely hard, so hard that all of a sudden I got to this point and I was like, ‘Holy s—, what the f—‘s going on?’ I’m at the top of this mountain.”
As Antetokounmpo speaks, he once again begins to act out the scene he is painting with his words. In the hallway of Fiserv Forum, Antetokounmpo transports himself to the top of a mountain, half-squatting to maintain his balance with heavy winds blowing around him, looking for any other signs of life.
“And I’m like, ‘Is anybody else here?’” Antetokounmpo continued. “And then you look next to you and you see the Kawhis, the Paul Georges. You see the Lukas, the Jokićs, the Embiids, the LeBrons, the KDs, the Stephs and you’re like, ‘I was kind of looking for the kind of good role players, like the solid great careers, like where are they?’ Not to disrespect them, they’re great. But I just wanted to be a great role player, a great sixth man. And all of sudden, when you work extremely hard, when you commit your life to it, crazy s— happens.
“And this is the f—ed up part — sorry, excuse my cursing — the messed up part is, I want to be here now. I’ve accepted it. I’ve taken the challenge, the next chapter of my life. But everything that comes with it, I don’t want it. I don’t want it. The attention. I’m in Abu Dhabi, like I’m shooting a free throw warming up like I always do, and there’s 50 people around me taking pictures — **chk chk chk chk** — I don’t want that. But at the end of the day, with my personality, I’m not going to shy away from it, but I’m going to focus on the game. If I focus on the game, I stay humble. I can keep on moving forward. I can keep navigating what’s coming next.”
And this is why Antetokounmpo needs a strong mind. He needs the motivational tricks, the offseason work, the seemingly endless energy, the edge provided to him by perceived slights. He needs all of that to accept the position he now holds in the game while also finding a way to push further and expect more from himself.
While Antetokounmpo only talks about it when asked and rarely volunteers much of anything about their relationship, this is where he leans on what he has learned from the player he has emulated most throughout his career: Kobe Bryant.
The will to win, the non-stop competitiveness and the on-court edge he has taken from years of studying Bryant, both on and off the floor, are what have come to define Antetokounmpo’s career.
“I will never say this, I will never disrespect the name of the great Kobe. I don’t like mentioning him,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic when asked to compare their mentalities. “I feel like he should be mentioned, should never be forgotten. But I don’t like mentioning his name to bring attention to the conversation that we are about to have. I wasn’t close to him. I wasn’t this with him or that with him. But I would say this, in some areas of his mindset, I think we’re very similar.”
While he may avoid discussing their relationship out of respect, Antetokounmpo has been deeply influenced by the late NBA great.
As Antetokounmpo headed to Los Angeles for his second NBA All-Star Game in 2018, he had one goal for the weekend. It was not bringing home an All-Star Game MVP or scoring 30 points or even leading his team to victory. It was sneaking in an opportunity to chat with Bryant and convince him that he needed a workout partner in Los Angeles during the summer.
And it worked. Antetokounmpo had that conversation and worked out with Bryant during the offseason.
The workout confirmed everything Antetokounmpo had thought before they worked closely together and helped set the path for the rest of his career moving forward.
“I might not be as talented as him, but when we’re talking about a guy that worked extremely hard from his first day until he retired. A guy that plays to win, a guy that pushes himself to the limit, a guy that has a killer mentality when he steps on the court,” Antetokounmpo said, as he started to recount that workout. “It’s almost like having — I think he had two personalities.
“Like when we were on the sideline and we were talking and I was taking notes, laughing smiling, joking around, talking. But when we stepped on the court, It was like motherf—er didn’t even know me. ‘I thought you were like my friend.’ Again. Again. Again. Again. ‘My bad, Kobe. How many more times are we gonna do it?’ Twenty-five. ‘OK, 25.’ No, 25 makes. Twenty-five makes on the same move?’ And it’s not like you’re just shooting. You’re going hard. I was like, damn, this guy is different.”
That same duality can be seen in Antetokounmpo.
There are the dad jokes in news conferences, the big smile and regular laughter on the sidelines in Bucks’ blowouts and the singing and dancing that seem to follow him around the world. Alongside that, however, Antetokounmpo is deadly serious. On the court, he wants to attack other teams and make defenders regret even daring to cover him. When young players make their way to Milwaukee, his example is impossible to ignore.
“I watch a lot of Giannis, like what he does to prepare for games and his mentality coming into games because I see he’s focused, so I’m trying to be the same because I’m trying to be a great player,” rookie MarJon Beauchamp recently told reporters. “He doesn’t talk to anyone. He just stays focused. He has the same habits, the same routine. He’s just locked in, I can tell by his face.”
Even now in 2022, Antetokounmpo told The Athletic he still studies Bryant — the moves he made, the way he worked, the intensity on the floor, but also the way he spoke in interviews and the way he carried himself. Every unearthed clip is a chance for Antetokounmpo to remember Bryant’s lessons and, sometimes, even pass those same ideas on to the next generation.
“I saw the Redeem Team trailer,” Antetokounmpo recounted. “And (Bryant) said, ‘I’m going to set the tone. This guy is my brother, Pau Gasol.’ He baptized his kid, he’s the godfather of his kid. And this guy says, ‘I’m going to set the tone. I know the play. I’m gonna run through him. I’m just gonna boom, run through him.’ And then BOOM. And everybody goes crazy.
“I took that clip, it was like on the trailer, and I sent it to my brothers. I can show you the text. I said, ‘In order for you to be great, you have to be a little bit crazy.'”
And Antetokounmpo meant every word of that text.
If Antetokounmpo was not a little bit crazy, he would’ve never gone out of his way to dominate a rookie, who was on a two-way contract in his first practice trying to click with new teammates with some good-natured trash talk. If he was less willing to bend the truth in his mind, he wouldn’t have aggressively defended one of the best players in the NBA at 19 years old.
It is the strength of his mind that helps fuel the extreme competitiveness that takes his game to another level. If he manages to use that psychological strength to his advantage for another decade, it may just become his legacy, as it did for Bryant before him.
“We have two different games, but when we talk about mentality, there are few people that have that mentality,” Antetokounmpo said. “But I’m never going to say like I have the same mentality, but I believe when I’m done with the game, people will talk about, ‘That motherf—er right there, he wasn’t the most talented guy, but he was a f—ing killer. And he proved it. He showed it from Day 1 until he retired. He never caused problems. He was always about his business, about his work. That guy, he was a f—ing killer.’
“Now, what I’ve accomplished? I don’t know what I’m going to accomplish. Have another championship? I don’t know. But I know that my mentality, it’s going to be something that kids can go back and look at like ‘How the hell did this guy do this?’”
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; Photos: Alika Jenner/ Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
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