Giannis by Mirin Fader

Author:Mirin Fader [Fader, Mirin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

MEAN

Giannis would stand in front of the mirror and practice his scowl. He’d squint his eyes, suck in his teeth. His nose would wrinkle; his forehead would tighten. His lips would curl, and then he’d let out a grunt.

He was trying to look more aggressive, less adorable; more intimidating, less innocent. 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 needed to get mean.

“He had to practice it because he’s not that guy,” Robinson says. “He’s a lovable guy. A nice gentleman.”

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 tried to pattern his scowl after Russell Westbrook’s scowl. Giannis loved Westbrook: his demeanor, his speed, but especially his scowl. Giannis came into practice once, scowling and grunting. “This is my new thing,” Giannis told his teammates.

They ignored him. Laughed a bit. 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. “Bro,” Knight told him, “you still don’t have any muscles. Relaaaaax.”

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. The first time he did it, against the Pistons, he ran back to the other end of the court with so much aggression even Butler was surprised. “I didn’t know where the hell that came from,” Butler says, laughing.

Afterward, 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.

Giannis laughed. “Oh,” Giannis said casually in a “this old thing?” kind of tone, “I took it from Westbrook.”

Giannis’s scowl seemed out of place. Manufactured. “We’d be like, ‘Oh, he must have practiced that at home today,’” Knight says. The scowl was coming along, but it still wasn’t loud enough, mean enough. Convincing enough. “You gotta work on your roar,” Knight would sarcastically advise Giannis. “You gotta work on your yell. We gotta get you right, man.”

* * *

On the first day of training camp to open the 2014–2015 season, Giannis wouldn’t crack a smile. Not for a second. He couldn’t, since Parker was the new star; Giannis was still the curiosity. The two would eventually come to like each other, even become friends, but not at first. Giannis felt like the Bucks were supposed to be his team. He had earned that after the way he played his first season. And he was going to prove that he was the leader.

Some fantasized that the pair could become the Batman and Robin of a potential new era in Milwaukee, but Giannis didn’t want to be Robin. He needed to be Batman. “He wasn’t on the throne,” Oppenheimer says, “but the chair was empty. And he wasn’t going to help somebody get there when he thought he had the same amount of ability to get there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.