Giannis Antetokounmpo proudly carried the Greece flag at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, but he nearly passed on that opportunity. Antetokounmpo revealed that when he was asked to be the flag bearer, he told authorities to give that honor to his Greece captain Kostas Papanikolaou instead.

“The day they told me and asked me if I’d be willing to represent the country and be the flag bearer, my first response was, ‘I want my captain, Kostas Papanikolaou, to do it.’ He had more national team appearances than me. But it was like, ‘No, we want you to do it because you represent everything that sports represents: the way you carry yourself on the court and off the court; we love you to do it.’

“And, I said, great. It’d be an honor for me to do it. And when I did it, as I said, the biggest honor that I’ve ever done in my life,” Giannis stressed. “… It’s something that might not happen again. I might win another [NBA] championship, I might win another MVP: who knows? But I might never carry the flag. So I tried those 45 minutes to soak it in as much as I could.”

It was quite admirable on Antetokounmpo’s part to want Papanikolaou to join world champion racewalker Antigoni DrisbiotiI as flag bearers for Greece. I think it was still more fitting for the Milwaukee Bucks star to get that honor, though.

Antetokounmpo does indeed represent everything that sports is about. He is a class act who has had to battle through incredible adversity to get to the top.

Giannis was born to Nigerian immigrants in Athens, Greece in 1994, and grew up in poverty. It was only when he and his elder brother Thanasis were spotted by a basketball coach named Spiros Velliniatis in 2007 that their lives started to change.

After a few years, Antetokounmpo gained interest from scouts and declared himself eligible for the 2013 NBA Draft. As far as we know, the rest is history. The 29-year-old has won an NBA title and is currently regarded as one of the top players in the world.

After all of that, it was only fitting that Antetokounmpo became the first Black athlete to represent Greece as a flag carrier. Among the three NBA players who represented their country in the 2024 Olympics were Dennis Schroder (Germany) and LeBron James (USA).