13 years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks
selected the youngest player in
that year's NBA draft.
I want to be an NBA
player.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, a lanky
18-year-old from Greece, was seen
as a roll of the dice by a
struggling small market franchise.
But Giannis grew up, he put the Bucs
on his shoulders, he won fans'
hearts, and he made Milwaukee a
champion.
That love affair is over now after
the Bucks dealt Antetocounm po to
the Miami Heat.
Here to discuss what Giannis meant
to the city and where things went
wrong is Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
columnist, James Causey.
James, welcome.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I suppose it's an emotional
time anytime that
a star player like Giannis
gets dealt for the
fans, but it just seems to me like
he had such an
attachment to the city of Milwaukee.
How would you characterize it and
what did he mean to the City?
Well, I like to put it to
you this way.
Giannis was our son.
I mean, he came to us as a young
man, very, very young,
and the city wrapped its arms around
him and he embraced us.
He was our unicorn.
He was a guy who got us a
championship.
He was the guy who,
a funny story about him, one time he
was trying to get to the
arena and he got lost and somebody
saw him on the side of the road and
picked him up and dropped him off.
That's who Yannis is, and that's
who he was to us.
So losing Yannas is like losing
a big part of our
city. He played for us for 13 years,
one of the longest reigns in the
NBA, and
he's gonna be dearly missed,
but it was time for him
to pursue other endeavors.
He's sort of a thoughtful guy too,
is he not? The way he talks about
success being a journey and
living in the moment.
Oh, yeah, of course.
And you know, he was more than just
a basketball player.
He also organized a
diaper drive that
was critical for
young moms who needed diapers
for their babies.
Him and his wife were very
sponsored that he
he was seen a lot in
the community.
He was like I said he was
our son and and we
embraced him and we loved on him
in You know, he got us
our championship, our first
championship in 50 years.
So that's something that can never
be erased.
Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that his
story is such a perfect storm.
He got so much better,
so fast.
And then this
Milwaukee downtown was rebuilt.
You had this state of the art arena,
the house that Yannis built.
You won the championship.
It just seemed like everything was
going so great.
So why did it fall apart?
Well, it fell apart because
honestly, I believe it was
a lot of bad moves by
the Bucks trying to
keep the team
above water that didn't work,
you know, the shuffling of coaches
that just didn't work.
And what we're hearing now
is not keeping Giannis in the
loop. And he was a person who
honestly wanted to be kept inside
the loop, he wanted to know what was
going on, what was the team's
direction. Moving forward, and
it seemed like he was not privy
to that type of information.
And for a young man who
gave his heart and soul to the
team and to the city, I wish
that it could have been better and
that communication should have been
better.
And we know one
thing, he always wanted to win.
And I think the Bucs tried to
satisfy that, but at the same time,
I think he should have been privy of
the inside dealings that they were
trying to do to make sure that that
happened.
You know, it's tempting for me to
look at the Bucs and
Yonis and think it's only been a few
years since they were on top of the
world.
Why can't they just kind of
force it? Try a little harder.
Fix this thing.
Well, that's the NBA.
That's sports, actually.
You know, you think you're part of a
dynasty and quickly things
could change. But it was a lot of
things that happened.
Middleton got hurt.
You know the team seemed like it got
old overnight.
The league changed to a
three-point shooting team and not
so much downhill that made
Giannis famous, the, you know,
charging to the basket.
So the league. Really adapted and
changed. And I don't think the Bucks
were able to keep up with those
changes in how to lead change
so quickly.
So Yannis is gonna come back to
Milwaukee this next season
and that famous last name is
gonna be on another team's
jersey, how do you think he's gonna
be received?
He's gonna he's going to receive
one of the loudest ovations ever
and one thing that I could say
you know I just never wanted to be
the bad guy in this situation he
never came out and
we didn't hear him demand a trade
even though you know some rumblings
within the Bucks organization
that he wanted out but he never made
that public so I have
to give him credit for that I really
think he wanted it to work here but
he's He's gonna be, he's gonna
receive probably the loudest
ovation. Ever for
this for this city.
So I look forward to it and it's
going to be the hottest ticket in
town.
All right, James, we'll leave it
there. Thank you so much for joining
us.
Thank you for having me.
For more on this and other issues
facing Wisconsin, visit our website
at pbswisconsin.org
and then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight.
I'm Shawn Johnson.
Have a good weekend.
Thank you.