Milwaukee Bucks
PHOTO: Wikipedia
BY MATTHEW LA CORTE, JACOB CZARNECKI for the Niskanen Center
JULY 20, 2021
On July 3, the Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Atlanta Hawks to advance to the NBA Finals, an accomplishment not seen in the city in almost 50 years. Leading the charge for Milwaukee is the six-foot, eleven-inch Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Greek-born star is one of the best basketball players in the world today and a global ambassador for the NBA.
The best foreign-born player competing on the league’s biggest stage is the latest apex in the decades-long internationalization of the NBA. The stellar results of that process carry broader conclusions for immigration policy. But first, it’s worth understanding the particular lessons drawn from Antetokounmpo’s compelling journey, which took him from statelessness to global stardom.
Stateless and vulnerable
In December 1994, Giannis Antetokounmpo was born in Athens, Greece, to Nigerian immigrants. His parents arrived in the country without legal status in search of better employment opportunities. While in Greece, Giannis’ family faced the dual threats of potential deportation back to Nigeria and anti-immigrant attitudes within Greek society.
As a teenager, Giannis avoided going out at night for fear of being attacked by members of Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party responsible for numerous assaults on immigrants.
Giannis’ parents also struggled to maintain long-term employment due to their legal status, meaning he and his brothers informally sold consumer goods such as watches and hats to keep their family afloat. However, at the age of 13, Giannis would begin to see his family’s fortunes shift dramatically, as Spiros Velliniatis, a coach in the Greek amateur basketball leagues, began scouting him and his brothers (three Antetokounmpo brothers now play in the NBA).
The coach offered to find Giannis’ parents better-paying jobs in exchange for the right to train the brothers full-time — a lifeline provided even though Giannis struggled to dribble a basketball when he began training.
Despite a late start, Giannis’ work ethic and natural gifts would quickly make him one of the most sought-after basketball talents in all of Greece. NBA scouts and executives flocked to the country to see the future star in action. Eventually, Antetokounmpo was drafted 15th overall by the Milwaukee Bucks at the age of 18.
This accomplishment was nearly undone by the realities of his immigration status, however. Greece does not offer birthright citizenship as it exists in the United States. Instead, Greece requires at least one parent to hold Greek citizenship for the child to receive it. Thus, without papers from Greece or Nigeria, Antetokounmpo was considered stateless — despite having lived in Greece his entire life.
His stateless status threatened to prevent Giannis from traveling to New York for the NBA draft, leaving him with limited options to proceed other than attempting to secure a Nigerian passport. Luckily, the Greek government stepped in to provide citizenship to their budding star before the draft, ensuring that Antetokounmpo would be identified as Greek on the world stage — not Nigerian.
The struggle of Antetokounmpo’s parents to provide for their family reveals the challenges of being undocumented, and even after many barriers had been overcome, this statelessness could have prevented him from ever realizing his immense potential. It is easy, then, to see how a lack of legal status impacts individuals and families without the benefit of a star athlete in their ranks — conditions that apply to millions in the United States.
But the story also highlights an upside of American immigration law. Many of the issues Antetokounmpo faced during his youth derived from Greece’s lack of birthright citizenship — a policy central to the U.S. immigration system since the passage of the 14th Amendment. His tribulations display the value of this policy in the American context, enabling children to live their lives unburdened by immigration decisions their parents made before they were even born.
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Update: On July 20, the Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Phoenix Suns to win the 2021 NBA Championship. Giannis Antetokounmpo became the sixth player in NBA Finals history to score 50 points and unanimously won the 2021 NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) award.
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Read the full story at the link.
The last time the Bucks won the NBA crown, I was an L-1 at UW Law. That great team was led by Kareem (then known as Lew Alcindor), Oscar Robertson (“The Big O”), and Bobby Dandridge (“Bobby D,” who later went on to help the Washington Bullets — now the Wizards — win their sole NBA title). All three are Hall of Farmers, as no doubt Giannis will be some day.
And, yes, the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is one of the wisest provisions in American law! Not only does it prevent statelessness, but it also guarantees that even when Congress drops the ball and fails to legalize long-term American residents without documentation, there will not be generations of “underground Americans.” For the most part, the “next generation” become U.S. citizens through birth in the U.S. and our country goes on to grow and prosper. They also receive full political rights, rather than being disenfranchised and forced into an extralegal, exploitable fringe society.
🏀🇺🇸Congrats to Giannis and all the the Bucks, and Due Process Forever!
PWS
07-21-21