“When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. I did this, I did that. When you focus on the future, it’s your pride. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. I try to focus on the present. That’s humility. No expectations, going out there, enjoying the game, competing at a high level. That’s a skill that I’ve tried to master.”  - Giannis Antetokounmpo

One minute of patience, ten years of peace. - Greek Proverb

In the winter of 2012, NBA scouts began to hear murmurs from Europe about a possible prospect in Greece. While rumors of up-and coming talent in Europe are not abnormal, what was abnormal about this prospect was he wasn’t even playing in the highest league in Greece. Instead, Giannis Antetokounmpo, was milling around with semi-professionals in Greece’s second level basketball division.

From the lower ranks of an obscure Greek basketball division, Giannis has risen to a true “generational talent.” Better known in the United States as “The Greek Freak” he has taken the league by storm. Winning an NBA championship in 2021 and has twice been named the league’s most valuable player. 

Everything about this generational talent seems rare. But what we often find in the rare trajectories of talent’s like Giannis Antetokounmpo is the incredibly uncommon commitment to common tried and tested approaches to life and leadership. Humility, discipline, grace, excellence in the mundane and a commitment to serve others. In this deep dive, we see another young talent displaying sage wisdom and approach to mastery. At the young age of 28 years old, Giannis Antetokounmpo has taken the potential to be great and turned it into the manifestation of his talents. This happened by way of one thing - discipline.

Before we explore the unrivaled discipline of Giannis, we must pause and recognize that in the age of self-development we have misunderstood what true discipline actually looks like. Cold plunges, 4am workouts, extreme fasting and dieting. Discipline or some variation of it has become the sexy thing. It’s been a false driver for many, and been a paper tiger in the hearts and minds of many leaders feeling less than. Discipline has become a shame tool in our own minds and can lead to a lot of effort around things that don’t matter when it should be the vehicle for pursuing things that do matter. 

In the story of Giannis Antetokounmpo, we see a captivating case study for what can happen when we orient ourselves around a healthy relationship with discipline. Not some modern attempt to prove how “tough” we are or how different we are from other people. But a healthy relationship with doing the work that is required to become the type of master of our craft we aspire to be. 

Humble Beginnings, Humble Agency

The middle child in a family of five boys, Giannis was raised by parents who had emigrated from Nigeria. In a suburb of Athens, Greece the Antetokounmpo family scrambled and scrapped for resources to make it in Greece. All five boys helped support the family income, selling jewelry and other items on the streets of Athens to tourists and residents in markets across the city. 

To say the family was poor would be an understatement. Constantly scrambling to pay rent and find food, the Antetokounmpo brothers were raised to be resilient from the start. Their haven became the basketball court. Through the generosity of local basketball club directors and coaches Giannis and his brothers found their way into a rundown gym to play and train with other players their age. The training ground for the future NBA star was not an elite climate controlled facility with amenities. It was a rundown gym with windows broken out and a few backboards that had no rim and net. 

From the streets of Athens selling sunglasses, DVDs and other jewelry, Giannis would slowly hone his skills in basketball in the evenings to eventually make his way into a semi-professional league with an Athens team, Filathlitikos in the second-division of Greek basketball. Giannis would often stay after team practice for hours before heading home and falling asleep around midnight. 

It’s in this segment of Giannis' journey that we see the fundamentals that continue to carry him to this day. 

He assumed agency over his development. 

Despite the less than ideal circumstances around him he chose to orient his days around the development of his craft and the trajectory he wanted to be on. 

At any given time, you have agency over your development. We are often tempted to succumb to a scarcity mindset. 

“I need this before I can start.” 

“I don’t have the resources that they do.”

“I don’t have time. Too many obligations to fulfill.”

Giannis demonstrates one of the most powerful truths about becoming a disciplined person. A disciplined life starts with a disciplined mindset. As long as you have agency over your mind, you have agency over your development. That is not to say the road will be easy, or to say that you won’t need some outside help eventually, but how you relate to the road and the journey starts with how you assume agency over your mind.

For Giannis, despite all of the poverty and difficulty, despite days on end selling goods in the street to contribute to the family income, he still ended the day and started the day in a gym, alone, working on his craft. 

The bedrock of discipline is in the mind. And the bedrock of the disciplined mind is in humility. 

In his humble, day-to-day life in the second tier division of Greek basketball, Giannis began to gain the attention of international scouts from the NBA. Unable to play on the Greek Senior National team due to a lack of a passport or visa, Giannis was only able to train with the lower age group teams. 

As Giannis began to rise from obscurity, the scouts of NBA franchises came to the rundown gym of Filathlitikos to see him workout. While many franchises were intrigued by the talent, there were still serious concerns from NBA executives on how to project out his potential. For one, he was undersized and skinny (likely due to his fueling and diet). Another concern was the competition he was facing. While he certainly was talented, he wasn’t playing in the top division of Greek basketball. In this second division were semi-professional men with day jobs. 48-year olds taking smoke breaks at half-time. While his windmill dunks were impressive, there were concerns that it wouldn’t translate to the NBA or even the developmental league in the United States. 

It’s in this obscure corner of the basketball world a future MVP was found. In March 2013, the NBA world descended on the small rundown gym to see Giannis play. 28 representatives from NBA teams, many of them General Managers, showed up to observe this intriguing prospect. Was he the next Magic Johnson? Or was he a big fish in a small pond? 

Tons of potential. 

Compounding Obedience

We are all enamored with potential. Rightfully so. Amateur athletics is built around potential. It is a worthy pursuit to pursue the fullest of our potential. But there is a problem with the allure of potential. Potential assumes there are present gaps that need to be developed. Potential means in the present, your abilities may not cut it, but in the future, if the gap is closed you may have something. 

On June 27, 2013 the Milwaukee Bucks placed a wager on potential. Giannis was drafted in the first round, 15th overall despite never playing a single dribble of basketball at the highest level of Greek basketball. The Milwaukee Bucks sensed something.

Yes, Giannis was undersized, baby-faced and skinny. Yes, he was untested on the basketball court against the best players in the world. Yes, there was a gamble. But what John Hammond, the General Manager for the Bucks at the time sensed was that Giannis had some proven qualities even if his basketball qualities were unproven.

He had potential to grow, and Hammond felt what made Giannis a lock more than his basketball acumen was his approach to life. His humility, his disciplined approach to doing the work required to become great. His internal makeup made him less risky than others perceived. 

Giannis was a Milwaukee Buck and was thrusted into the fire right away. His potential would be put to the test

early and often.

That’s the challenge with “potential.” Potential has to be realized. If someone has potential, to some degree it means they really haven't done anything yet. Potential has to be realized and it’s almost always a slow process of unfolding. We think in hours and minutes, potential thinks in years and decades. Giannis was not immediately successful in the NBA by traditional metrics. But he was growing at a rapid rate. He was flourishing in this new chapter of his basketball career. 

The traits and qualities that caught John Hammond’s attention were proven to be authentic in Giannis. His humility made him a model teammate. He won over everyone in the organization from the veteran players to the janitors and athletic trainers. The soul of who he is became apparent for all in his contact. His discipline and work ethic from the streets of Athens, Greece came with him to Miilwaukee. He remained fully committed to doing the work that needed to be done, almost at a boring level. He didn’t partake in all of the trappings of nightlife and culture as a rising NBA star, now famous and wealthy. He quietly remained fixated on the honing of his craft. 

The only way for potential to be meaningful is if we’re fully obedient to the development process in the moment, through discipline and consistently doing the work. For all emerging leaders and the voices around young leaders, the greatest fear is “wasted potential.” The idea that despite having an exciting trajectory in front of them, someone will throw away the trajectory and waste the potential they have.

The reality is “wasted potential” really just means we were on to something but became disobedient to the work that was required and as a result we stayed the exact same or worse our abilities went backward. It means we were close to being great but still short of what greatness requires. The gap between our current level of abilities and the abilities needed to be great remained too big.

The only way to ensure this does not happen is to commit to doing the work. To learn the necessary requirements of growing in our craft and deploying humility to stay under construction. Staying under construction means staying in the present. 

Silent Confidence

It has never been easier to fall into the trap of self-promotion. Social media and our ever connected world has it’s amazing advantages, but it also can be one of the most debilitating things when it comes to developing the discipline needed to realize our potential.

Transformational leaders talk less and do more. In the developmental years of the early going of Giannis NBA career he demonstrated this principle better than anyone else. No talking - no promoting, no “I’m going to do this or that someday,” just clean, purposeful work. Just discipline.

After six years in the NBA, Giannis rose all the way to MVP. He won the Most Valuable Player award in 2019 after leading the Milwaukee Bucks to a resurgence and relevancy unseen in Milwaukee for quite some time.

After winning his first MVP in 2019, Giannis followed it up with another MVP award one year later in 2020 as he led the Bucks to the NBA championship in 2020. Potential realized. The obscure prospect from the lower tier of Greek Basketball had ascended all the way to the top.

How did he orchestrate the rise? Humility, discipline and remaining in the present. 

“When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. I did this, I did that. When you focus on the future, it’s your pride. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. I try to focus on the present. That’s humility. No expectations, going out there, enjoying the game, competing at a high level. That’s a skill that I’ve tried to master.” 

When it comes to doing the work, we must define things explicitly. Are we winning or are we losing? Are we doing the essential things we need to do or are we not? This exercise can be challenging for even the most seasoned leaders because we drift all the time. It can be easier to talk about what we’re going to do instead of just simply doing what we need to do. When we’re drifting, we have a lot of ideas about what needs to be done. When we are flourishing and anchored we have less ideas and more commitments to what needs to be done.

A Skill to Master

While you and I may never rise to the level of NBA champion and league MVP, we all have a trajectory we desire to be on. Our society is enamored with two extremes and these extremes keep us from staying on the path we really want to be on. We’re obsessed with two ends of the spectrum: Outcomes and potential.

Outcomes have always been the shiny object that catches our attention. You may feel really locked in to what you’re doing, making progress and staying in the present only to look up, compare your progress to someone else further on the journey and spiral out of control. Or you may be obsessed with achieving your potential. At the forefront that is a worthy cause. Our culture and society has made the achievement of potential the greatest good. With prospect rankings for youth athletes, graduation rank publicized and tracked, academic test results sorting and ranking students, there’s few things that get our culture more excited than staring at someone’s potential.

“Can you believe it? 1200 on the SAT and she’s ONLY a sophomore!”

The problem is not potential. Of course we should pursue our potential. The problem is it’s just one side of a lonely valley. On one end we have potential, celebrated and stared at by our society. On the other end we have the extreme outcome, celebrated and obsessed over. In the middle is the lonely road. The path that is boring, mundane, and full of uncertainties. 

The path of discipline has no guarantees. When we look at the linear story of Giannis it all adds up. But in the empty gyms in Athens, he had no guarantee that showing up and doing the work would lead to anything. 

That’s the skill all emerging leaders must seek to master. The ability to deploy discipline in the mind, body and soul. The skill of staying in the present moment, not enamored with the future possibility. Not allured to the shine of potential.

Potential is great, but its allure has the ability to distort how we show up to the necessary requirements of the work in front of us. 

Humility is in the present.