In America, we tend to ignore the fact that the NBA is not just a sport played in North America, but one that has transcended borders and is played and appreciated worldwide. Even youngsters from impoverished nations are familiar with NBA superstars like LeBron James and Steph Curry thanks to the rise of the internet.
This is the storyline in the backdrop of Giannis: The Marvelous Journey, another one of Amazon Prime’s sports feature documentaries focusing on one of the biggest global icons in basketball today, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Better known as ‘The Greek Freak’, Antetokounmpo has emulated and exceeded the achievements of many power forwards who played the sport. He has won the championship and now wears the crown of NBA champion as a member of the Milwaukee Bucks, however, the journey that most mass media glossed over is the focus of this new documentary as well, but even more rugged than most would imagine.
Although Giannis was born in Nigeria, his family immigrated to Greece in the early 2000s with his siblings. Giannis is the star of the show in Giannis: The Marvelous Journey, but the fact remains that the Antetokounmpos as a family overcame many tribulations and remained bonded is apparent.
During the time this family immigrated to Greece, Greece was among the most antagonistic nations on earth. For a Nigerian family, there were racial tensions, combined with an economy that had collapsed, leaving a family.
The brothers narrate this story at the beginning of the film Kai walks with the other three brothers. One day he asks a younger brother to race him, and all four of them race together, take a break to walk, and then, after a minute or two, they race again. Eventually, what Giannis was trying to do was to run through areas that could potentially pose a threat to them.
As in everything in life, it is possible to intersperse terrible things with great shining beauty and joy. So, the brothers were also able to go to an internet coffee shop in Athens, where they used to watch snippets of the NBA games. The events described took place quite a few years before Web 2.0 came about. The bandwidth was awful, but here Giannis found out what his vocation was.
This documentary, which was directed by the Emmy award-winning producer of ESPN, Kristen Lappas, tells us briefly about what we have heard already about the background story of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Well, there was a player who was not as well known but created such a significant buzz in the early 2010s that the scouts and the GM of the Milwaukee Bucks took notice of him.
Lappas manages to transform this feature-length documentary into much more than a film about basketball, instead focusing on the bigger picture. Giannis is a dominant force of nature on the basketball court. His rise from a nobody at the start of his career in the NBA, to a fierce contender against some of the best players in the sport, and now being identified as one of the elite, is in the words of the documentary title, a wonderful sight to behold.
Despite the film’s portrayal of superhuman abilities, Giannis: The Marvelous Journey was never too outrageous for the average audience. The Antetokounmpo family has strong values and stands together, and so does Giannis, who knows that losing everything is very easy, and hence works harder than anyone. The NBA is a cash cow, filled with players eager to double dip on the rich, some of it repulsive to many and some of it fascinating to even more.
The Only thing Giannis cares about is playing basketball; he’s a different kind of beast. Sure many basketball players in the NBA come from low-class families in America, but his outlook as to what he has to accomplish with his achievements is different than other players born in America. It’s a good sight to watch as we witness many European players begin moving forward to greater attention in the NBA.
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