pick in 2013.

He has been the most successful of the four Antetokounmpo brothers so far - Thanasis spending just a single season in the NBA, rookie Kostas featuring in only two games for the Dallas Mavericks in 2018-19 and Alexis still in high school - a fact Velliniatis attributes to Giannis' personality.

"Giannis developed an attitude to survive... and a ruthlessness," he claimed. "Giannis had a different character, a harder character. The other kids did not embrace it psychologically the same way."

Role model

His incredible story has given Greece a new hero, but Velliniatis hopes Antetokounmpo's tale can provide inspiration for youngsters all around the globe too.

"Right now, wherever you go around the world and you tell them, 'Greece', they will think of Giannis," he said.

"I think the message forskins
an english where love means only the strange frenzy
between a man and his beloved, not between him and his car
an english without the privacy of its many rooms
an english with sufixes for respect
an english with more than thirty six words to call the sea
an english that doesn’t belittle brown or black men and women
an english of tasting with five fingers
an english of talking love with eyes alone
and i dream of an english
where men
of that spiky, crunchy tongue
buy flower-garlands of jasmine
to take home to their coy wives
for the silent demand of a night of wordless whispered love…

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About Bill Herbert

Poet and pseudo-scholar W.N. Herbert was born in Dundee in 1961, educated there and at Oxford, where he completed his DPhil thesis on Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and now