It's one even the late Kobe Bryant saw coming. Back-to-back MVPs and last season, a championship to match. Giannis was projected a high draft pick and that's exactly what he got: "With the 15th pick in the 2013 draft, the Milwaukee Bucks select Giannis Antetokounmpo!"Īnd the rest, as they say, is history. A tricky name to pronounce and one draft announcer David Stern practised heavily before making the announcement. Prior to the draft Antetokounmpo would have been unable to travel outside of the country as he had neither Greek or Nigerian documentation.īut his rise to stardom changed all of that.Īfter rejecting 18 years' worth of applications for citizenship, immigration officials finally accepted and documented Giannis and his family as Greek.Īfter this they decided to change their original surname of Adetokunbo to its new form - Antetokounmpo. In all, 29 of the 30 NBA franchises made the journey to Filathlitikos' small arena to assess Giannis before the Bucks picked him up in the 2013 draft That led to scouts getting over to Athens to see his performances with their own eyes, and in 2013 he put himself forward for the NBA draft. There wasn't much film to assess him on and if there was, it was grainy and hardly visible. NBA scouts were put on notice of the teenager from Athens who was taking the game by storm. In 2011 he signed for Filathlitikos and after two seasons in Greece, Giannis was making a serious name for himself. The exit plan that would begin in the lowly Greek second division and finish in Milwaukee.