Brotherly BATTLES
Youngest Antetokounmpo charts his own story in Toronto
Alex Antetokounmpo’s earliest memories of basketball on the concrete courts of Sepolia, Greece — an immigrant community in Athens, near where his family grew up in a tiny apartment — are supercharged, fierce battles with his older brothers when he was eight years old.
The youngest of five siblings and carrying a small frame, Alex took his lumps. He also pushed back. If one went hard, he would push harder. No one would back down.
The sibling rivalry existed to make each other better. It was these cutthroat battles that lit a fire inside Alex. From that point, basketball was everything.
“They introduced me to the sport,” he told the Star. “It’s my passion. It’s what I love to do, and it just so happens that’s what my brothers also love to do.”
The NBA wasn’t really a dream until the third-oldest brother, Giannis, was drafted 15th overall by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2013. Alex moved to the U.S. at age 11 and got an up-close look at his brother’s rookie experience.
After four years at Dominican High School in Whitefish Bay, Wis., Alex broke out as a senior, averaging 20.3 points and 7.3 rebounds per game. Ranked 233rd in his high school class by 247 Sports, the forward was a three-star recruit without any offers from Division I programs.
He would go on to play in Spain for UCAM Murcia — Giannis, now a two-time NBA MVP, and the second-oldest brother, Thanasis, had also honed their skills in Europe. There, he caught the eye of Chad Sanders, general manager of the Raptors 905. Now Alex is playing in his first full G League season with the Raptors’ affiliate.
“It was a major growth period,” Sanders said. “It was similar to coming to Toronto. He’s now 20 years old, but still finding himself. It’s not something a lot of 20-yearolds are willing to do. You see who he is as a person by willing to take a step outside the box, taking a different path to everyone else and trying to be his own player.”
Of course, Sanders was familiar with the family DNA — Giannis, Thanasis and Kostas (four years older than Alex) have won NBA championships. That plus Alex’s athleticism and seven-foot-two wingspan intrigued the GM enough to explore his untapped potential further.
It would be easy to be distracted by the family name, but within the 905 program he’s just Alex — a young kid trying to accomplish a dream.
During games he gets a few extra cheers from fans familiar with the name stitched on the back of his jersey. Sanders said it’s a sign of maturity that he’s been able to handle the situation.
“(Alex) does a great job at being himself,” Sanders said. “I’m sure there is a target on his back (based on) who he is and his last name, but that doesn’t change anything about him. He is his own person. He’s creating his own path and I respect him for doing that.”
Raptors 905 assistant coach Travon Bryant said Alex is a work in progress, learning to stay ready despite limited game opportunities, and to play with urgency when he gets the chance. He’s averaging 2.6 points and 7.1 minutes a game.
There’s hype and pressure that comes with being the youngest brother of a perennial NBA MVP candidate, but Bryant said it’s not something they talk about.
“He’s running his own race. He has to understand that. He is Alex. He is not like any of his brothers. We have to help him try to get there,” Bryant said.
“He has potential to be a professional. The one thing that professionals experience, they have that moment and it kind of ignites them: ‘This is how I have to train to be able to live out (my) dreams.’ He sees how hard he has to work, but it’s still a way to go for him to be able to completely manifest that dream.”
Wisconsin basketball legend and retired Dominican High School coach Jim Gosz became a close friend of the Antetokoumpo family. After practices he used to drive Alex home, a 20-minute trip to the suburbs, and respected his privacy. They would talk basketball philosophy.
Sometimes Alex would FaceTime his brothers in Greek, or scroll through his phone in silence. Gosz said he avoided talking about Giannis or family matters.
“We had to protect Alex. He was like the Michael Jackson of basketball in Milwaukee,” Gosz said. “A lot of people would be coming out to games. Sometimes there’d be 50 kids in the stands with Giannis jerseys who had no affiliation with the school. They just wanted to see an Antetokounmpo on court. But Alex signed every jersey.”
During his sophomore year in 2017, Alex went into a shell when his father Charles died unexpectedly. The loss left a gaping hole in the Antetokounmpo family. Gosz said Alex had a “shutdown” moment at a critical stage in his development.
“Academically, his school work suffered; it took him a whole year to rebound from that,” Gosz said. “His legacy, he played for his father. He wanted to be something his dad would have been proud of.”
Giannis became the father figure. He disciplined Alex at times, confiscating his phone when he got too distracted. There were constant check-ins with Gosz to make sure he was going to practice and school. If Alex had a bad game, Giannis would take him to the gym and they would shoot until 2 a.m. He even coached his high school summer league team and would chew Alex out, always pushing him to be better.
“I’ll tell you one thing, it’s hard to be Alex. It’s hard to have three brothers get drafted. He wants to get drafted, but he’s got to get better every day,” Giannis told ESPN. “There’s going to be down days, there’s going to be hard days, it’s going to be days that he doesn’t have confidence, but that’s where we step in and say, ‘Hey, you’re going to be good, keep working hard. Keep your head up. You’re going to be really good.’ ”
The Antetokounmpo brothers are close-knit, and this weekend is sure to bring back memories of draining buckets on the courts of Sepolia — competing, laughing, having fun. Alex, Giannis and Thanasis will team up for Saturday’s NBA all-star skills contest in Cleveland.
For Alex, it will be another step toward perhaps becoming the fourth brother to play in the NBA. But if that dream doesn’t transpire, he says he won’t let it define him.
Asked what his basketball quest looks like down the road, he paused.
“Making my path and writing my own story,” he said. “Being OK with who I am.”
He’s running his own race. He has to understand that. He is Alex. He is not like any of his brothers. We have to help him try to get there.
TRAVON BRYANT, RAPTORS 905 ASSISTANT COACH