The two would eventually come to like each other, even become friends, but not at first. He couldn’t, since Jabari Parker was the new star Giannis was still the curiosity.
#I HATE PEOPLE WHO SAY KEEP IT A BUCK CRACK#
On the first day of training camp to open the 2014-15 season, Giannis wouldn’t crack a smile.
“You gotta work on your roar,” Knight would sarcastically advise Giannis. The scowl was coming along, but it still wasn’t loud enough, mean enough. “We’d be like, ‘Oh, he must have practiced that at home today,’” Knight says. “Oh,” Giannis said casually in a “this old thing?” kind of tone, “I took it from Westbrook.” “I didn’t know where the hell that came from,” Butler says, laughing.Īfterward, his teammates asked him, “What is that? Where’d you get that from?” They assumed he’d learned the scowl from YouTube-where he learned everything in those days. The first time he did it, against the Pistons, he ran back to the other end of the court with so much aggression even Caron Butler was surprised. Giannis’s teammates found it hilarious when he’d attempt the scowl after a dunk, something he started doing toward the end of his rookie season. “Bro,” Brandon Knight told him, “you still don’t have any muscles. But Giannis insisted on impressing them: He flexed his muscles after bench-pressing and flashed his scowl again, hoping his teammates would appreciate the intensity of his grunt. “This is my new thing,” Giannis told his teammates. Giannis came into practice once, scowling and grunting. Giannis loved Westbrook: his demeanor, his speed, but especially his scowl. He tried to pattern his scowl after Russell Westbrook’s scowl. Giannis didn’t want to be seen as a nice gentleman on the court he wanted to be seen as someone who would tear your heart out. “He had to practice it because he’s not that guy,” says Skip Robinson, then Bucks vice president of community relations and player development. He needed a new identity heading into his second NBA season-one vastly different from the goofy, endearing rookie discovering smoothies for the first time. He was trying to look more aggressive, less adorable more intimidating, less innocent. His lips would curl, and then he’d let out a grunt. His nose would wrinkle his forehead would tighten. Giannis would stand in front of the mirror and practice his scowl. In this section you can see the humble beginnings of his mean mug, and the intensity he now plays, and dominates, with, as just shown by his first NBA Finals triumph. That’s the title of the chapter this excerpt is pulled from. Giannis, still skinny and scrawny, wanted to look a little more intimidating, a little more menacing. He was tired of being thought of as “adorable” or “lovable,” as he had turned into a baby-faced internet sensation, causing fans all over the country to fall in love with him. But he was not the superstar he morphed into years later.Īs the Bucks fired coach Larry Drew and brought in Jason Kidd as his replacement, Giannis was looking to take on a much more prominent role on the team his sophomore season. Amid all of the misery, the losses, Giannis shined in glimmers his rookie year. Everything had gone wrong, from injuries to player suspensions to a polar vortex that made Milwaukeeans risk frostbite by just walking outside. The Bucks were coming off an awful 15-win season, the worst in franchise history. īelow is an excerpt from my book focusing on a time in Giannis’s life when a championship seemed firmly out of reach. It’s set to come out August 10 from Hachette Books. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that would happen back in December 2019, when I pitched my upcoming book Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP.
The Milwaukee Bucks have-miraculously- won the NBA championship.
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