Exclusive: Giannis Antetokounmpo opens up on new documentary, Thanasis, and family

When you watch, ‘Giannis: The Marvelous Journey,’ you very quickly develop an understanding as to why the Milwaukee Bucks star’s life is so heavily centered around his family. Every aspect of his life has been touched by his mother Veronica, his father Charles, or his brothers Thanasis, Kostas, Alex, and Francis.

All of those family members helped carry him at one point or another and transformed him into the person that is now beloved by millions around the world.

“[They played] the biggest [role in my life],” Giannis Antetokounmpo told ClutchPoints. “My brother, Thanasis. I am the man that I am because of him. Not even close. This guy is… If you could mold the perfect brother. he has to be up there, man. And my dad. My dad taught me about hard work and being respectful, being considerate of other people. My mom always told me to never give up, chase my dream until the end. My little brothers are there supporting me.

“Without them, I wouldn’t be even close to the man that I am today. I’m not even going to say the player. Who cares about the player? I’m talking about the man, as a father, as a person. I wouldn’t even be speaking with you. I wouldn’t be even close if I didn’t have this in my life.”

Over the years, the jokes about Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Giannis’ older brother, have become more prevalent on social media. There have been jokes about his play, his antics on the sidelines, and even how overenthusiastic he appears during games.

In, ‘Giannis: The Marvelous Journey,’ fans will realize how big of a role Thanasis plays in Giannis life and develop an appreciation for what can only be called perfect older brother.

“I’ll say many times, if you could like create the perfect brother, Thanasis would probably be the person,” Antetokounmpo said this weekend. “He always looked after us, took care of us, was supportive of us. He’s always been there for not just me, but all our brothers.

“Back in the day, my brother Thanasis went viral with the Shammgod move. He basically shared shoes with me. He shared the Kobe 5’s or Kobe 6’s, something like that. It was the same colorway that I wore [in the All-Star Game], white and red. I loved them. Whenever he played, he’d take them off and then give them to me and allowed me to play. So we used to share our shoes.”

On Giannis Antetokounmpo’s new Nike Zoom Freak 5’s, the words, ‘Thanasis Thanks For Sharing,’ can be seen on each shoe. That, Giannis says, is a tribute to his brother for always being there and allowing him to play basketball with the basketball shoes they shared when they were kids.

“In 2019 in Charlotte, I got exactly those shoes, and I wrote on the shoes, ‘Thanks Thanasis for sharing.’ And I kind of paid tribute to him for sharing the shoes with me ten years ago. He never thought I was going to be an All-Star or the person that I am today. He was just with me because he loves me. I love him, too, so I wanted to pay respect for him.

“When I work with companies or Nike specifically, I want my shoes or anything that comes out to have a story that’s authentic to me, something that people can relate to. I don’t want to say a story about the shoe about something — I don’t know. What’s popular right now? [Let’s say] FIFA. Just put a shoe out there? No. I want all my shoes to have a story, which most of the stories include my family because that’s what I’m about. Everybody who knows me knows I’m about my family.”

At 29 years of age, Giannis Antetokounmpo has gone through a great deal in his life. Emigrating from Nigeria to Greece, where he traversed through the racism spread by the group Golden Dawn, was followed by being separated from his mother and father for years as he and Thanasis learned to live with only one another in foreign Milwaukee, Wisconsin until their family could be brought over to the United States.

And then there’s Mariah, who is now his fiancée and with whom he has 3 children with.

“Mariah is the real MVP, what are we talking about?” Giannis rhetorically remarked when I asked about his fiancée. “Mariah, I don’t know. If I was Mariah, I wouldn’t date me. Let’s keep it simple as that.”

As fans will learn through the film, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Mariah Riddlesprigger met at NBA Summer League early in his basketball career, and their first instance spending time together was with Giannis’ entire family.

“I think people think, ‘Oh, he always says it,’ but he doesn’t just say it. He shows it. His brother and his mom, me, like we’re always together. We’ve lived together multiple times, we do everything together, and he’s even before me and him were dating and he was always about his family. Like the first time we met in the story, I tell you, his family was there. The only one that wasn’t there was [his brother] Kostas.

“And so if they can’t do something, he’s not gonna do it. They mean the world to him and that means so much to me because that just shows who he is as a person. You guys can think it’s too much, but that’s who he is and that’s what he’s gonna say true to, so I think it’s really, really attractive.”

Giannis and Mariah welcomed their first child together in 2020. Being a father is something he always wanted to do, and he’s always striving to keep going in order to provide them with what he wasn’t able to have or struggled to obtain.

He’ll tell you in the film: Selling watches, sunglasses, and other little goods just to make enough money to get through the day was his way of life. Now his determination and drive come from never wanting to go back to where he and his family started this journey.

“I think that during the day, I might take two seconds and kind of reflect like, ‘oh, this is my eighth All-Star,’ or, ‘oh, wow, I did that,’ but that’s pretty much it,” Giannis told ClutchPoints. “Then the rest of the day is me trying to figure out how can I make this last? How can I be here again next year? How can I take care of my body? How can I be better? How can I help my team be successful? How can I be a better father?

“I can say, yeah, 2020 was the first time I was a father. But okay, I’m a father of three now. Today, what can I do to provide for them and be the best example for them today?

“For sure during the day I take two to five seconds to kind of reflect, but I don’t have time. I have to keep on moving forward. When I’m done, when I’m old and grumpy, when my kids have kids and their kids have kids and I see them, maybe then I will sit down more and reflect through everything I’ve been through in my life and everything that I’ve accomplished.

“But now it’s go time, man. I enjoy it, I’m not going to lie. I enjoy every single moment of it. I live my life very, very hard. I live it to the fullest. I don’t have too much time to relax.”

Basketball has played a really dominant role in Giannis’ life. Anyone who pays attention knows the grind of an 82-game regular season, the postseason, the preseason, and the offseason training for those eight months of basketball is absolutely grueling. In trying to continue providing for his family, Riddlesprigger has helped Antetokounmpo find balance more than anything.

“I think I try to keep him grounded more than anything,” Mariah Riddlesprigger tells ClutchPoints. “I just try to remind him that he’s human and he’s not like what everybody in the world sees him as. He comes home and he comes home to no basketball, no media, no nothing, and he just has me and the kids.

“He’s definitely got more balance. He used to be basketball, basketball, basketball. How they did affected the next day or affected that night. Now, he’s able to disconnect and have more to life than just basketball and I think while basketball is important and that’s given him and us so much, it’s also finding that balance. He’s been able to do that and it’s made him a better player, it’s made him a great father, a better boyfriend, and everything else.”

As for the NBA, Giannis Antetokounmpo is known as a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, a Defensive Player of the Year, a 2021 NBA Champion and Finals MVP, and a player named to the NBA’s legendary 75th Anniversary Team.

Giannis is also the Milwaukee Bucks franchise’s all-time leader in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, games played, triple-doubles, field goals, and free throws. No matter how you look at it, Antetokounmpo is one of the faces of the NBA and is heading to the Naismith Basketball Hall-of-Fame when his career is all said and done.

But while Giannis enjoys the NBA and everything it’s given to him as well as his family, he repeatedly tries to leave behind any notion that he’s the face of the league.

“I refuse to fall into the bubble,” Giannis Antetokounmpo told me. “I really refuse to fall into the bubble of being the face of the NBA, being an All-Star, being an MVP, being the best, whatever. I refuse to. When I take my kids to school, the teachers don’t tell me that I am the best basketball player, that yesterday I went 12-for-18. I don’t fall into the bubble, that’s a different world.

“I try to live in the real world, I try to live my life hard. I’m very happy with the things that we’ve accomplished and where God has brought us. This journey has been unbelievable. Any way you put it, it’s been unbelievable. I’m able to change my kids’ lives, my brothers’ lives, my whole family’s life, give them better education from the one I had.

“But a lot of people will fight for this, fight for, ‘I want to be the face of the NBA.’ For what? You’ll be the face of the NBA and what happened? Are you a better basketball player. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean [anything]. I don’t want this, I want to live life, a humble life, a modest life, a simple life, a quiet life, you know. Obviously, there’s things like this [movie premiere] that have to take place, but that doesn’t change me or who I am at my core, you know. And I try not to fall into the bubble. I refuse. I refuse to fall into the bubble of me, him, that, you, that, me. This guy’s better and this guy scored more. It’s for other people, not for me, man.”

When asked if there was anything that can be shared about Giannis that most people don’t know, his fiancée Mariah gave us a peak into their everyday life.

“I don’t know if this is made public, but he loves trashy reality TV,” Riddlesprigger said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t call it trashy, because I think some of it is kind of good, but we used to watch. ‘The Kardashians,’ and now it’s more like, ‘Love is Blind.’ Like, I don’t think it’s trashy, it’s just, reality TV you wouldn’t think he’d like it, he loves reality TV.”

Giannis: The Marvelous Journey is available to watch now on Amazon Prime.