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NBA Finals: Giannis Antetokounmpo’s date with destiny
By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist
Giannis Antetokounmpo wears the worry on his brow. And if you look closely enough, you can almost read the seeds of doubt written among those furrowed lines.
You see it when things are going well and it's time to try to hang on to victory. You see it when the Milwaukee Bucks are struggling and it’s time to bid for a comeback.
Antetokounmpo isn’t one of those athletes with ice in his veins and unshakeable belief. He has tasted the rare air of being a two-time NBA MVP, but he doesn’t yet have the most difficult accolade of all — the one he really wants.
As he chases his first title and what would be the Bucks’ first in a half-century, he feels the strain. He wears it, lives it and tries to free the jitters from his system with deep breaths when the strain reaches its most challenging point.
As he and his colleagues wage battle against the Phoenix Suns, Antetokounmpo isn’t Tim Duncan or Kobe Bryant. He doesn’t possess as much inner certainty or unapologetic swagger, and he isn’t blessed with the innate assurance that he will deliver when he is supposed to.
In other words, he is human, which only serves to make him more likable, to make the Bucks’ surge to the brink of an NBA championship all the more worthy and his achievements more relatable.
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Most of us don’t know what it's like to be nearly 7 feet tall and in possession of elite smarts for a sport and a degree of physical dexterity that sometimes defies belief. We don’t know what it's like to soar with perfect timing to administer a block for the ages during an NBA Finals game or leap mightily to connect on a game-clinching alley-oop that silences a road crowd.
But we all know what it's like to feel stress and to hear the nagging voices of self-doubt when we are presented with great opportunities, to question ourselves and our abilities, to nurse the painful possibility that we might not be up to the task of fulfilling our dream.
That’s what Antetokounmpo is going through right now. He is a young man who has made a new home in a foreign land and is seeking to fulfill what he hopes is his destiny: being an NBA champion and possibly cementing himself as the best player in basketball.
"He’s almost there," FS1’s Nick Wright said on "First Things First." "It is the culmination of a lifetime of hard work. [Game 5] was the first NBA Finals game LeBron James attended that he was not playing in. Officially, potentially, if they finish it off, [Giannis takes] the crown from LeBron."
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You never know quite what to expect from Antetokounmpo. There are times when he looks simply unstoppable and others when he can be shut down by structured and innovative defensive measures. He’s sometimes clutch, and sometimes — frankly — he’s not.
But as the viewing audience and the Suns have found out the past couple of weeks, he will never stop coming. When times get rough, Antetokounmpo will not shirk from the challenge, even when that means stepping to the free-throw line with his shaky delivery under the spotlight and the crowd counting their taunting ascent past 10.
Antetokounmpo has attacked this Finals series with positivity and energy. He hasn’t been flawless — not at all — and there have been times when teammates Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday have been called upon to be the hero and, before that, when Phoenix's Devin Booker looked to be primed for the series’ most decisive word.
With the Bucks' crucial road win Saturday in Phoenix, opportunity will come knocking. A Suns comeback (+320 with FOX Bet) is far from impossible, but it would be a hard sell to envision a pair of blowouts. At some stage, you figure, the Greek Freak and his teammates will feel that the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy is close enough to touch, if only they can keep things steady.
It is no certain thing. Antetokounmpo doesn’t have the luxury of a collection of titles already behind him, like James or Steph Curry. He has done a lot in basketball, but he has never been right here, with a place in history so near. He knows this might be Milwaukee’s shot, with the Brooklyn Nets likely to be strong favorites to emerge from the East next year, if fully fit. He knows now is the moment, and he knows how much of it rests upon him.
Will he wilt, or does he have one more big effort within him?
He earns a really big salary, but that isn’t why he’s doing this. He does it because he wants it, and every part of it is an emotional journey. You see the disappointment when it comes, and you see the pure joy, too, like during those closing stages Saturday when, yeah, it really helped Holiday to have a fast-advancing man-mountain with outrageous hops and elastic arms to lob it up to on an unexpected fast break with mere seconds left.
Antetokounmpo has the mentality of a champion — but not of a ruthless assassin. He has gotten to this point not because he is immune to the pressure but because this is what he wants so darn much that he’ll risk everything to try for it.
He’ll risk failure and embarrassment. He’ll demand the ball and go for the basket at crunch time, even when he knows Phoenix will try to foul him, which means more free throws, more mocking voices, more tension.
These Finals have a lot of stars, but the most crucial impact, narrowly, is coming from one man. It isn't pure domination, and it’s certainly not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. The chance awaits, at home, in Game 6 on Tuesday.
"It means a lot, man, but I can’t get too carried away," Antetokounmpo told reporters. "I’ve got to stay in the present. We know what the deal is: one game away from being in the history of this game, always there. Nobody can take that away."
Antetokounmpo marches forward, a superhuman physique with a very human mind, taking on his destiny, swallowing his fear, edging ever closer … if he can hold it together just one more time.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
