ALL-STAR GAME: TEAM GIANNIS VS. TEAM LEBRON

February 19, 2023

Giannis Antetokounmpo

Team Giannis

Press Conference

Team Giannis - 184, Team LeBron - 175

Q. Giannis, I'm going to give you a chance to gloat. Why did you pick Jayson Tatum?

GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO: He was available. One of the best players in the league. Capable scorer. Like he showed it tonight. I knew we had a little conversation. I knew he was going to play hard and take it serious, so it was a no-brainer.

Q. Now that we saw that you just went out there to play for 20 seconds or whatever, what is your concern level with your wrist and this coming week?

GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO: Taking it day by day, try to get healthy. You know, obviously I had the incident three days ago. I don't think it's smart in any way to, you know, play a lot of minutes in the All-Star Game.

At the end of the day, obviously, you want to participate, you want to run up and down, joke around, have some dunks, create some work.

But at the end of the day, I feel you also have to be mature. Hard decision, but mature decision to kind of, you know, take a break here, take care of it, and hopefully I can, you know, be available for my team when they need me.

Q. How does it feel to share this event with your brothers on the court, and what advice did you give them for this kind of event?

GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO: They've been with me nine events so far, so it's always great to be around family, people that, you know, makes the environment light, keep it light.

You know, as I said, they've been in nine events with me. We've done the Skills Challenge together. They always have fun. We always take pictures. It's almost like a routine. We always come together around the break.

Obviously, we will all want to probably -- not me, but probably the family will want to be in Mexico or in the Caribbean or back in Greece, but it's also nice to bring everybody together, enjoy the All-Star Game, take pictures with celebrities, eat some good food, and go back to work when it's done.

Q. Giannis, the other day you told me you want to become a coach one day. Maybe you should reconsider and become a GM instead.

GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO: I can be, like, Gregg Popovich, be the GM and the coach. I don't know. I just take it a day at a time, but I'm just happy that we were able to get a win, and I got one against LeBron, so I'm happy. I'm happy about that.