Milwaukee Bucks: Getting to know forward Thanasis Antetokounmpo
Growing up in Greece
Of course, Thanasis’ story obviously intertwines with the hardships and humble beginnings that we’ve grown accustomed to hearing about in regard to Giannis’ backstory and early life in Greece.
Like Giannis, Thanasis took to the streets to sell various items and accessories to help their family financially in the neighborhood of Sepolia as he reflected on in an interview with Euroleague.net late last year:
"“The most important thing is that we were really nice kids and everybody there liked us,” Antetokounmpo said. “They saw us and noticed that we were always smiling, happy. In the back of their heads, after all these years, I am sure they are really happy for us right now. Most people were great to us, that is the most important thing. They saw us as kids and were not afraid of us, but helped us. “That is the circle of life; you do something good for somebody and somebody else will do something good for you. We tried to sell sunglasses and other stuff to help our family. It was tough, but at the same time, everybody in the world has something in their DNA that makes you tougher when you go through a situation like that. You just have to find that, get through the day and then get through the next one, and the next after that, and see where it gets you.”"
While both he and Giannis played heated games of one-on-one against each other at their nearby basketball court for some time, it was their unlikely development that brought the two brothers to the attention of Spiros Velliniatis, the coach of Filathlitikos.
As Velliniatis told Thodoris Chondrogiannos for Vice in April of 2017, it was, in fact, Thanasis who Velliniatis had been struck by a couple of years earlier before seeing Giannis’ raw, athletic presence, playing alongside his two younger brothers:
"“It happened in 2008. “When I was coach in Filathlitikos—” a professional basketball club based in Zografou, in eastern Athens, “—we decided we needed to start looking for new talent immediately. I was in charge of [that process], so I began [scouting] in the neighborhoods. Then I remembered that, two years earlier, I’d seen a child in Sepolia that had really impressed me, so I asked [around] about him in the neighborhood. I found out later that he was called Thanasis. I thought I should go there again in case I met him.” Spiros revisited Sepolia, but didn’t find Thanasis Antetokounmpo. “I stumbled across three other kids who were playing tag on the Tritonas team’s court. I was stunned by what I saw. It was Giannis, along with two of his brothers, Kostas and Alexis. At that moment, I realized I was in the presence of one of the biggest basketball talents in the world, right in front of me.”"
That set the wheels in motion for Thanasis and Giannis to rise through the ranks with the Filathlitikos academy, reaching as far as the senior team, which was playing in the second division in Greece by the duo’s respective debuts in the 2011-12 season.
Along the way, the two Antetokounmpo brothers eventually caught the eyes of NBA scouts and front office personnel. That eventually drove Thanasis to originally declare for the 2013 NBA Draft like Giannis, but he withdrew ahead of that year’s international deadline date.
It was also during that pre-draft process when the Antetokounmpos finally received their Greek citizenship, which helped Giannis attend the 2013 NBA Draft Combine, further bringing him on the radar of NBA teams. While Thanasis may have waited one more year to declare for the NBA Draft, he, along with the entire Antetokounmpo family, accompanied Giannis on that year’s draft night when the now-shining superstar became the 15th overall pick selected by the Bucks.