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As a 13-year NBA veteran and two-time league MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo has dealt with the media for quite some time and has become proficient at conversing with them and reacting to their reporting.
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After all, as the superstar he has been for most of his career, he has been scrutinized to no end, especially after failing to lead the Milwaukee Bucks back to the promised land following their 2021 championship.
NBA history has shown that the relationship between the media and the players can become testy at times, with feuds escalating between Stephen A. Smith and LeBron James, as well as Kevin Durant. Antetokounmpo, though, recently shared how shifting his mindset about the media helped him become an even better player.
Intense media coverage
As the world’s most popular basketball league, the NBA is covered by the media 24/7/365, with everything reported daily. From trades to free agent signings, to locker room conflicts to personal matters, nothing ever escapes the media’s eye. Antetokounmpo is no stranger to this, given his stature as one of the NBA’s biggest superstars.
And when it comes to his game, there’s a lot to be talked about. Smith is aware of this and admitted to dissecting Antetokounmpo’s game with the precision of a surgeon.
“So, you’re looking at it and you’re analyzing it from that standpoint. If a player, a coach, an organization has a problem with you dissecting and analyzing stuff from that perspective, you’re not talking about anybody’s personal life. You’re not attacking anybody personal. You ain’t getting nobody’s business,” Smith
“You’re strictly confining yourself to the game of basketball. My attitude is, what the hell is wrong with folks complaining about that? You ain’t playing in a garage. You playing in an arena. 19,000 people are packed. Millions of people are watching on television. Everybody’s watching you,” he continued. “And we’re going to dissect it because that’s what fans of the game do. And it’s my job to bring that to them.”
Antetokounmpo had been in the middle of a media firestorm for quite some time, with many interested in his future. With the Bucks going nowhere, the media felt it was only a matter of time before he was moved. It eventually happened this offseason when he was traded to the Miami Heat.
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Giannis doesn’t pay much attention to the media
Although Antetokounmpo is aware of the crucial responsibility the media has in helping the league grow across the world, he also realized that spending energy refuting every critique and report made about him isn’t going to help him become a much better player; it’s wasting energy that should have been spent in the gym to improve his game.
“What I figured out in 2019, 2020 is that you guys and you guys, sorry, the media, analyzing my game will not help me make a jump shot, right? Will not help me make a free throw or will not help me lead the team to the championship,” Giannis explained. “So I said, instead of me wasting time of being mad, because I’m really putting everything for the game. I don’t cheat the game. I rather, you know, I rather go hard now and rest later.”
“I’m like, instead of doing all that, let me just focus on my craft and let me focus on things that I can control,” he continued. “And I think from the moment I’ve done that, my career has been like this (mimics an upward trajectory).”
The point of Antetokounmpo’s realization is that the media will do what it’s tasked with: report on and talk about all things NBA, including superstars like him. As players, the best thing they can do is focus on the main thing: playing the game to the best of their abilities and leave all those discussions to the people being paid to do just that.
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This story was originally published August 12, 2026 at 5:16 AM.