#Zoom freak 3 mvp windows

But Giannis absolutely adored his older brother, Thanasis, and wanted to spend as much time with him as he could. He dreamed of becoming a soccer player like his father once was back in Nigeria.

Initially, it took some persuading to get young Giannis on a basketball court. Giannis Antetokounmpo training in the black/white colorway of his Nike Zoom Freak 1, which released on July 10. Not when his story began back in Greece, inside this gym, where the sneakers he laced up didn’t even belong to him. It’s a shoe he never could’ve imagined, in his wildest dreams, calling his own. A shoe that could make a kid believe in his dream.” “I wanted a good-looking shoe that could tell a story that a kid could relate to,” he continues. Inscribed on the soles of each shoe’s heel are the names of Antetokounmpo’s four brothers: Francis, Thanasis, Kostas and Alex. The outer midsoles of each sneaker feature the names of his parents: his mother, Veronica, and late father, Charles, who emigrated together from Nigeria to Greece in the early 1990s to provide a better life for their boys. “I wanted my shoe to basically introduce me and my family to the world,” says Antetokounmpo. At 24 years old, he’s the first international basketball player to receive his own Nike shoe.

They’re called the Nike Zoom Freak 1s - Antetokoumpo’s debut signature sneaker. Leaning between his long legs, he began tying the laces of a new pair of sneakers: orange and navy Nikes, with an interlocking “GA” logo on the tongue and another logo on the heel intertwining No. At the end of June, five days after he was presented with the Maurice Podoloff Trophy and delivered a tearful MVP acceptance speech, Antetokounmpo arrived at his childhood gym in Zografou, walked onto the court and took a seat in a chair too small for him way back then and even smaller for him now. More than a decade after he walked through the building’s doors for the first time, Antetokounmpo, now an All-NBA forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, returned as the NBA’s newly minted MVP. And when I play in the NBA, I’m gonna be ready.’ ” “Like, ‘Listen, I know I’m playing in this gym, but I’m working to be in the NBA … because I know, at some point, I’m gonna be in the NBA. “The way Giannis would see things from a young age, the way he was so serious about things, the way he perceived … he had a different mentality than everybody else,” says Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Giannis’ older brother and former Filathlitikos teammate. By the time Antetokounmpo was 17, chairs were lined up against the wall on the near sideline for throngs of NBA scouts, general managers and owners to watch the promising prospect work out. After his two eventual agents came to see the phenom for themselves, they started to spread the gospel of his crazy potential. At 14, he began playing with the men’s team. Zivas drilled the kid at all levels of the club, including with the women’s team, while teaching him to navigate the court as a point guard with speed and discipline. I n the heart of summer, not even the five towering air-conditioning units mounted throughout the space can overcome the scorching heat after a few trips up and down the floor.įor two years, Antetokounmpo trained here multiple times a day before being selected to join Filathlitikos’ youth team.

#Zoom freak 3 mvp windows

Atop one sideline, a wall of cloudy windows allows the powerful sun to creep inside. A pair of stanchions took their place and now hold baskets with rims slowly beginning to rust. The two original hoops that once hung from the gym’s ceiling have been retired and permanently raised to the rafters. “His eyes, they were shining.”Īntetokounmpo learned the game of basketball on the aged hardwood of Filathlitikos’ court, its measurements, particularly in width, more fitting of a small soccer field. “I just hadn’t seen a kid like that before,” he says. “His legs were immense, but his torso was small in comparison to the rest of the body.” Zivas, a slender man wearing years of coaching under his eyes, still remembers the first time Antetokounmpo came into his gym. “He was like a cricket,” says Takis Zivas, head coach of Filathlitikos B.C., Antetokounmpo’s first team. Long before the world knew him as Giannis Antetokounmpo - the Eurostepping Greek Freak with the 6-foot-11, 242-pound body and mythical athleticism - the reigning NBA MVP played at the home of Filathlitikos Basketball Club.

Behind them is where one of basketball’s best-kept secrets once hooped. Nestled between collections of abundant trees is a set of stairs leading to a ground-level entrance, where a small lobby gives way to the double doors of a basketball court. ATHENS, Greece - The gym sits on the east side of central Athens in the densely populated suburb of Zografou.