Ahead of 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend, Nike released two special-edition pairs of eight-time All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo’s sneakers — each adorned with the phrase, “Thanasis Thanks for Sharing.”
Those words carry significant meaning for Antetokounmpo and his second-oldest brother, Thanasis, who have been teammates with the Milwaukee Bucks for the past five seasons.
Yet, the expression of gratitude traces back nearly 15 years to Athens, Greece, where Giannis and Thanasis — separated in age by two years and four months — learned the game of basketball while playing in the same sneakers. As teenagers, they shared a red-and-white pair of Kobe Bryant’s signature Nike Kobe 4s, despite having different-sized feet, and even while playing on the same teams.
A case could certainly be made that, without those Kobe 4s and Thanasis, Giannis — the NBA champion and league MVP, known as “The Greek Freak” — might not have become the first-ever international player to receive a signature basketball shoe line from Nike. Since 2019, Antetokounmpo has headlined his own Nike Zoom Freak line and an alternate, more affordable line of models known as the Nike Giannis Immortality.
Now, on the stage of All-Star Weekend, Giannis will use his sneakers to officially tell Thanasis what he’s been saying for all these years.
The “Thanasis Thanks for sharing” Zoom Freak 5s feature the phrase, in Giannis’ handwriting, on the collar of each shoe, while Giannis’ No. 34 and Thanasis’ No. 43 are, respectively, embossed on the heels of the left and right shoe. Printed on the heel tabs of the Immortality 3s is “Thanks for Sharing” — the sentence that started it all.
Charles and Veronica Antetokounmpo raised five sons in Athens — Francis, Thanasis, Giannis, Kostas and Alexandros. The Nigerian immigrant parents ingrained two important lessons into the brothers: Never take anything for granted, and always look out for each other.
“Having my own shoe is one of those things that I never expected. But, it’s something that means a lot to me and my family,” Giannis told Andscape in 2018 when he recounted the story of sharing shoes with Thanasis to me personally for the first time.
This is the first time I’ve shared this conversation between me and Giannis.
It was late August 2018, on the night of the launch party for the basketball video game NBA 2K19. Antetokounmpo, who was revealed as the first-ever international player in 2K history to grace the cover, granted me a 10-minute interview. And during a thoughtful response about what the moment meant to him, Giannis couldn’t help but talk about his then-upcoming debut Nike signature sneaker, the Zoom Freak 1, which wouldn’t be released for another 10 months, in July 2019.
“Kids from overseas, they really don’t believe they can make it to the NBA or have their own shoe,” Antetokounmpo told me in 2018. “But, those kids can make it to the league and get their own shoes. They can do everything that American players, like LeBron or Kobe, can do. Being able to be the international guy who is opening the path for them is amazing. Hopefully, they all get a chance like I did.”
Giannis began beaming even brighter at a distinct memory surrounding the pair of Nike Kobe 4s that he and Thansasis had the chance to share on countless occasions in their teens.
“I’ve worn so many shoes in my career, but those Kobe 4s are the ones I remember most,” said Giannis that night before pulling out his phone and spending a few minutes searching online for the exact pair. “I remember everything I did with that shoe.”
It wasn’t even Giannis’ pair of shoes — at least, at first.
Back in 2009, at the age of 17, Thanasis signed his first major professional basketball contract to play for a team named Maroussi in the top division of the Greek Basketball League. One of the best parts of the deal: Thansasis received a brand-new pair of team-issued, red-and-white Kobe 4s.
When his big brother first returned home with the shiny-new kicks, the eyes of lil bro Giannis, then 15 and still playing in the Greek league’s third division, widened like those of future NBA opponents as soon as they see the Greek Freak barreling down the lane at full speed.
“I asked, “Can I wear them? Please!” recalled Giannis, who can’t forget Thanasis’ immediate response: “No.”
Yet, the younger Giannis did as little brothers often do — exactly what he wanted.
“One day, I just snuck and took the Kobe 4s,” he recalled. “I wore them, and when Thansasis found out the next day, he was pissed.”
For Giannis, the following part of the story has become its most-lasting memory and moral. He and Thanasis started sharing sneakers because their now-late father, Charles Antetokounmpo, told them to.
“My dad said, ‘Our family doesn’t have a lot. So, you guys should share your shoes,” recalled Giannis to me of the counsel from Charles, who died from a heart attack in 2017 at the age of 54. “After that, Thansasis would wear the Kobes one day. Then, I would wear them the next day.”
At the end of the interview with Antetokounmpo in 2018, he left the conversation with an admirable declaration:
“If those Kobes ever come out again one day as a retro,” Giannis told me, “I’m gonna get my family, my friends — everybody — a pair of those. Because those shoes meant so much to me and my journey.”
Fast-forward to NBA All-Star Weekend in February 2019, and Nike made Antekounmpo’s wish a reality. Though the Swoosh didn’t re-release the original team-edition red-and-white Kobe 4s from 2009 at retail, the brand made a special, one-off pair for Antetokounmpo in his current size 16. Before taking the court in the 2019 All-Star Game in Charlotte, North Carolina, Giannis pulled out a black sharpie and scribbled a heartfelt message on the white toe tips of each shoe: “Thank you Thanasis for sharing.” Nike used the same inspiration from those 2019 Kobe 4s on the designs of both the Zoom Freak 5s and Giannis Immortality 3s.
“Everybody was asking me, ‘You saw what your brother wrote?’” Thansasis told Andscape in 2019. “I actually got really emotional because he made me remember the story. The Kobe 4 was our first legit, really nice shoe we wore growing up.
“I can remember me and Giannis wearing the Kobe 4 [in Athens], saying, ‘This is the best shoe ever!’ We were so happy.”
For the design of his debut signature, the Zoom Freak 1, in 2019, Nike drew direct inspiration from the shoe-sharing story. Especially after Giannis specifically told the brand’s design team, “I want the upper shape and fit of the Kobe 4” for his first shoe, as recalled by then-global vice president of basketball footwear, Kevin Dodson.
“One of the things that makes Giannis unique is he came from a background and area where basketball sneaker culture wasn’t really as prevalent as it is with some of the other athletes who grew up here in the states,” Dodson told Andscape in 2019. “Giannis had all these very distinct memories of wearing that Kobe shoe and sharing it back and forth with his brother.”
A few weeks before the early July 2019 global release of his debut shoe, Nike traveled all the way to Athens to unveil the Kobe 4-inspired Zoom Freak 1 for the brand’s first international signature headliner. As part of the global launch, Giannis and all four brothers returned to the Filathlitikos Basketball Club’s gym, where they learned how to play the game that forever changed their family’s fate. On a lobby wall right before the court entrance hangs a collection of old Filathlitikos team photos — one of which features a frail, 15-year-old Giannis sitting with an oversized pair of red-and-white Kobe 4s on his feet. In a few other team photos on the wall, teenage versions of both Giannis and Thanasis pose proudly near each other. Little did either know then what their family’s future would ultimately behold in the realms of both the NBA and sneakers.
Now, kids in Greece can wear — whether their own pairs or ones they share — Nike shoes that bear both the names of Giannis and Thanasis Antekounmpo.
