2021 NBA Finals: Phoenix Suns vs. Milwaukee Bucks

https://theathletic.com/2723411/202...bucks-nba-championship-its-crazy-its-f-crazy/

MILWAUKEE — After riding on top of buses that took them through the city on a winding two-mile route through the middle of downtown Milwaukee with adoring fans lining the streets, the Bucks got on a stage built to the north of Fiserv Forum. While the area to the east of the arena has been developed with businesses with a sprawling courtyard — the massively popular Deer District — that was filled to max capacity throughout the Bucks’ championship run, the area to the north is still under construction. It will eventually be home to a hotel, but on Thursday, the gravel-covered lot held thousands of Bucks fans looking to party with the city’s first championship team in 50 years.

Two days after they won the 2021 NBA Finals in the building just south of the crowd, the Bucks threw some music on the sound system and gave their fans the chance to hear from each player on the Bucks’ roster for about 30 minutes. After the ceremony, the stage quickly cleared off and the team’s owners, coaches and players exited to continue their celebrations privately elsewhere. Bucks general manager Jon Horst was one of the first off the stage, but he remained in the VIP area to the left of the stage and embraced various players and coaches as they made their way out of the celebration’s crowd.

After a few minutes though, the embrace he was looking for most materialized, as if trying to pull off a chasedown block on an unsuspecting opponent, the 2021 NBA Finals MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, came out of nowhere, opened his arms wide and gave Horst a massive hug. Antetokounmpo pulled Horst in tight and talked to him for roughly 30 seconds before Antetokounmpo kept moving to find his older brother, Thanasis.

“No, I’m not going to tell you what he just said,” Horst told The Athletic moments after their emotional embrace.

As Horst chatted with The Athletic, Antetokounmpo made his way over to his brother, who was sitting on top of the black Jeep Wrangler he drove by himself at the rear of the Bucks’ parade caravan in order to maintain the social distance required to keep his teammates safe after the league’s health and safety protocols kept him out of Games 5 and 6 of the NBA Finals. Shortly after finding his brother, Giannis joined Thanasis on top of the vehicle and looked out over the massive crowd that had assembled to celebrate the city’s first championship in half a decade.

“It’s hard to put into words the feelings of it,” Horst said, while watching Antetokounmpo climb on top of the Jeep. “But the 50 (points), 50 in a closeout game to win an NBA championship. For him, the character of who he is, as much as he works at it, working at, him trusting us, us trusting him, to have a performance in the biggest moment, that’s greatness.

“That’s what the greatest do and he is one of the greatest. And I think he solidified that. We’re not going to stop there. He’s not going to stop there, but at 26 years old, he’s put himself on the map as being the greatest.”

With an NBA championship, an NBA Finals Most Valuable Player, and two NBA Most Valuable Player awards, Antetokounmpo’s trophy collection is quite impressive through just eight NBA seasons. In the history of the league, 14 players have won multiple NBA MVPs, Antetokounmpo joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the MVP that brought Milwaukee its first championship in 1971, as one of five players — Antetokounmpo, Abdul-Jabbar, and Bob Pettit — in NBA history to amass such a trophy case and win a championship by the age of 26. While Antetokounmpo famously told Bucks fans to refrain from calling him MVP and celebrating his individual success the last two seasons until he became an NBA champion, he fully embraced becoming a champion on Tuesday and fully celebrated the accomplishment the last two days.

“It’s insane,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic minutes after hopping on top of the jeep with his brother. “Touch my heart.”

At this moment, Antetokounmpo puffed out his chest and grabbed my left hand to put it where I could feel his heartbeat. It was indeed racing.

“My heart is beating fast, bro,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s crazy. It’s ****ing crazy.”

“But all I’m thinking about is how can we get better. Now that we’re on the top. A lot of people are going to try to pull us down at every opportunity. We have to get better. We have to take care of our guys and our team and everybody. We have to get better. We have to enjoy this as much as possible but I’m telling you. I’m telling you, we have to get better, you know what I’m saying?

“But at the end of the day, now they respect us, man. Milwaukee is on the ****ing map again. You know what I’m saying? And they gotta put some respect on our name. We are a dangerous team, we are a dangerous organization, we have a great culture, we have a winning culture and we want to keep getting better.”

Next to his longtime girlfriend Mariah Riddlesprigger, Antetokounmpo soaked up every second of the celebration during the Bucks’ championship parade on Thursday as he alternated between holding the couple’s 18-month old son, the Larry O’Brien Trophy and the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP trophy. While looking out over the massive crowd of humans lining both sides of the parade’s route, Antetokounmpo often shook his head in disbelief and smiled through a black mask as the Bucks wound their way through downtown. He also made sure to hype up his teammates along the way as well.

While truly joyous in Milwaukee on Thursday, the scene would have been unimaginable to Antetokounmpo just 10 months earlier when the Bucks competed in the restart of the 2019-20 NBA season in the NBA’s bubble outside of Orlando.

“I was miserable,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic of his mood in the bubble. “I was miserable.”

While the Bucks tried to regain the momentum they built by racing out to the league’s best record before the season came to a halt in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they never found their way. And a large part of it was Antetokounmpo’s struggles with the unusual environment.

Before entering the bubble, the Bucks’ insanely competitive superstar told reporters he did not enjoy the idea of sharing a living space with the same people he would be competing against each day. And even though he would be lucky enough to have his older brother with him, Antetokounmpo voiced concerns about not being able to see his family, a situation especially bothersome to him because his mother actually lives with him in Milwaukee.

“I’m going through pictures and I look at myself in the bubble, I was, I was basically sad,” Antetokounmpo said, when asked to explain how different things are now compared to the bubble. “I was sad, you know?”

“And now I’m here and I’m on top of the world right now. With the whole city supporting us. How many people were out here today? I don’t even know, but there are a lot of people. I’m happy, man. A lot of hard work, you gotta have patience and you gotta stay on the grind. No matter what is going on. If you’re sad, happy, feeling good, win, lose, you gotta stay on the course. And that’s what we did and that’s why we won.”

For Antetokounmpo to get himself in the right mindset to win a championship though, he had to find a way to move past the Bucks’ disappointing performance in the bubble. He had to find a way forward and out of the headspace that contributed to the Bucks dropping their second-round series to the Heat in five games.

“When I left the bubble, my family (is what helped me move forward),” Antetokounmpo said. “I disconnected from the world, disconnected from free agency talks, disconnected from my team.

“Even now, I unfollowed everybody on Instagram, all that ****. That **** does not matter. What matters is being happy. I was looking for my happiness, my joy of the game again. I found it. I came back. And we won. And we gotta keep doing it.”

 

Antetokounmpo has always been one of the NBA’s most competitive players, sprinting all over the floor on both ends of the court and maniacally doing everything he can to win each game of the regular season. In the past, a regular-season loss in the middle of the season would make Antetokounmpo stew in the chair by his locker while icing his ankle and looking over the same stats of the same box score over and over again. This season, the competitiveness on the floor remained, but Antetokounmpo’s demeanor in post-game press conferences after losses was far more positive.

Following Bucks’ practice the day before Game 5 of the NBA Finals in Phoenix, Antetokounmpo explained his feelings regarding ego, pride and the need for constant humility to The Athletic’s Sam Amick. His speech and calm disposition while delivering the speech made his off-the-cuff remarks almost feel rehearsed or, at least, very well-taught. But they were not. That’s just Antetokounmpo.

“Obviously there are people that help me,” Antetokounmpo said. “I talk to people. We have a sports psychiatrist at the team that comes in and helps everybody, not just me, but it’s just my mindset. That’s just who I am. A lot of people might not accept this because ‘Oh, he’s 26 years old,’ but that’s how I think. That’s how I think it.

“Basketball-wise, you cannot always get better. It’s going to stop. But right here (points to his temple), it’s infinite. You can’t stop. I might be 98 years old and keep getting better. And that’s the scary part. It’s not always about the physical. This playoffs, coming back after Game 4, my knee looked like an elbow. And I was playing with a sleeve, I wasn’t even 100 percent. People don’t say that. People don’t talk about it! I’m emotional, I should not be, but that’s ****in’ tough.

“That’s the tough part, not winning a game, it’s coming back after your knee looked like an elbow. But that’s how I’m built. That’s how I’m built. I’m never gonna change.”

With his reflection on the past year and a deeper look into his psyche complete, Antetokounmpo snapped back into the 26-year-old that stood on the hood of a Jeep just a few minutes earlier. And he embraced the chaotic energy that can only come from such a crowd for a quick detour of braggadocio.

“First of all, let’s start with this, mother****ers did not know I could pass,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic. “Because I was never at that level. We were never at the top level so they could see. So now they were able to experience how good Khris (Middleton) is, how good Jrue (Holiday) is, how good I am, how smart we are. That’s it.”

It was a quick reminder that the competitor, the one who raged after losses for the first seven years of his career, is still very much a part of Antetokounmpo, even if he does a better job controlling those impulses. And the man that mean mugs and yells at the top of his lungs after big dunks is still every bit the force of nature he has been for the last three seasons.

Antetokounmpo is still that man, but now he’s a champion.

“I’m happy,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic. “I’m happy now. As I’ve said in the past though, happiness comes and goes. You make a basket, you’re happy. You miss a basket, you’re sad. But like what I did find is joy. I’m joyful. I’m blessed. I realize that.”

“Nobody can take this away from us,” he said holding up the 2021 Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP trophy. “Until the day I die, I’ll be happy. Because I won one. You know what I’m saying? But at the end of the day, we have to keep moving forward. This, these things,” Antetokounmpo lifting the trophy again, “can hold you back. Keep moving forward, good or bad, keep moving forward. Find that joy for the game. Keep playing. Keep competing.”

And with that, the 26-year-old two-time MVP, NBA finals MVP and NBA champion set his eyes on next season.

“I love the challenge,” Antetokounmpo said. “I love challenges and right now, I’m looking for a challenge. I’m looking for it. And the challenge is we are at the top and 29 teams are going to try to pull us down.”

To those 29 other teams, good luck.

 

Guessing Milwaukee specific.

“Can I get the Yannis meal?”
“The what?”
“The Yannis meal.”
“We don’t have that.” (“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”)
“The Yannis meal. 50 piece nuggets. Not 51. Not 49. Large drink. No ice. Half lemonade. Half Sprite.”

 

Thanks Tilman!