10/28/2023 0 Comments Giannis antetokounmpo years in nba![]() ![]() LeBron won his first title in his ninth season in the league. It’s unlikely to be his last time at the table. If I never sit at this table again, I’ll be fine with it.” “My mom was selling stuff in the street, and now I’m sitting here at the top of the top. “I hope I can give people around the world hope it can be done,” Antetokounmpo said after claiming the title. ![]() He is a charming, hardest-worker-in-the-room kind of star, with the charisma and backstory to go with it. In Giannis, the band has its perfect frontman. As the LeBrons, Stephs and Pauls age out, it will become a league of Antetokounmpos, Doncics, Embiids, and Jokics – the kind of international, Premier League-style competition that the NBA has long aspired to build. He’s the international star at the dawn of the game’s global age. He’s not just the one who stayed when others bolted for easier avenues. That it’s this star that delivered the one-for-the-little-guys victory doesn’t hurt. Keeping Luka Doncic in Dallas or Devin Booker in Phoenix will become less of a challenge when you can point to the impact of Giannis’ title on his legacy and the NBA’s culture at large. But it’s hard to put those wins alongside Dirk Nowitzki’s in Dallas or what Giannis has achieved over the past fortnight. Kevin Durant worked for his titles in Golden State he played out of his mind in each finals appearance that the Warriors won. “But this is the hard way to do it and this is the way we chose to do it.” ![]() “I could go to a superteam and just do my part and win a championship,” Antetokounmpo said after clinching the title on Tuesday night. It needed a solo star to push his team over the top, to make winning one for yourself, one for your team feel different, cooler, more important than microwaving two or three titles with a collection of Hall of Famers in a city the trio have no attachment to. So a homegrown superstar playing alongside a shrewdly built roster is exactly what the league needed. An expensive star drafted in for a few seasons feels less part of a city than Michael Jordan in Chicago, Steph Curry in the Bay Area or LeBron James in Cleveland (once he was forgiven for his own superteam dalliance with Miami). We’re all in favor of player empowerment and flashy free-agent signings but it has made championship teams more transient the championships themselves feel more fleeting. Winning a championship with internal growth and moves on the margin is harder best to call another Hall of Famer and find a landing spot that can help you both (and perhaps a third running mate), on and off the court. Once superstars’ careers and reputations were (supposedly) devalued because they lacked an NBA title, it drove them to find quick fixes, to join forces, to make a title easier. Ringz culture drove the creation of superteams. In a league full of player movement and big city superteams like the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers, Antetokounmpo is the superstar who stayed. Nobody will be applauding louder this morning than the NBA’s small-market team owners and the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver. Jrue Holiday was Jrue Holiday: equal parts a defensive menace and a high variance scorer who can disappear one night and then make how-in-the-what shots the next.īut Tuesday night was Giannis’ night. Khris Middleton found a level of consistency that has been non-existent throughout his career. The Bucks coaching staff made savvy defensive adjustments throughout, forcing the Suns into outside shots, a bold strategy that paid off. It was not all Antetokounmpo for the entire series. Giannis getting it done on both ends EARLY □ /DpBFumK5MB- SportsCenter July 21, 2021 ![]()
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