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Greek basketball star Giannis Antetokounmpo will become the first black athlete to wear the Greek flag at the Olympics.
The two-time NBA Most Valuable Player will carry the flag in Paris on July 26 along with race walker Antigone Entrispiotti.
The Greek men’s basketball team qualified for the Olympics for the first time since 2008 on Sunday by defeating Croatia in front of a home crowd in Piraeus.
The 29-year-old, who was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2013 and led the team to the 2021 NBA championship, broke down in tears after the game.
“It’s an incredible feeling,” he said after qualifying. “I’ve always wanted to go to the Olympics since I was a kid.”
His journey to becoming the Greek Olympic flag bearer was not an easy one.
Antetokounmpo’s parents immigrated to Greece from Nigeria. For the first 18 years of his life, Antetokounmpo was unable to leave Greece and was effectively stateless, with neither Greek nor Nigerian documents.
In May 2013, less than two months before the NBA draft, Antetokounmpo finally received Greek citizenship. In a recent interview with ESPN, Antetokounmpo talked about his childhood.
“I’ve been selling stuff ever since I can remember, when I was six or seven years old. I was always out selling watches, glasses, CDs, DVDs and anything I could find, trying to help my parents. I did it until I was 17 because I had to. I had no choice. When I was selling these things, I was the best seller,” he said.
But even after becoming a star in the United States, Antetokounmpo still encountered racial discrimination at home.
In a 2020 TNT documentary, he said: “Greece is a white country, and life can be hard for people of my skin colour. Or people of other nationalities. You go to a lot of neighbourhoods and you encounter a lot of racism.”
His comments drew strong backlash from some in Greece, including Konstantinos Kalemis, then the refugee education coordinator at the Malakasa camp north of Athens, who used a series of racial slurs against Antetokounmpo and was fired for it. He also faced discrimination from government officials.
In 2018, current Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis repeatedly mispronounced his own name and falsely claimed he was born in Africa rather than Greece.
Antetokounmpo will be one of the first athletes to take part in the opening ceremony, while Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics, traditionally leads the opening ceremony parade.
Hellenic Olympic Committee President Spyros Capralos said the decision for Antetokounmpo to carry the Paris Olympics flag was “unanimous,” adding that both flag-bearers would “bring glory to our country.”
Antetokounmpo has not commented publicly, other than posting a video on X showing highlights from the qualifying games that mentioned the word “Greece.”
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