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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchGiannis Antetokounmpo grew up in Athens amid serious financial hardship: his family struggled to afford food, and he and his family sold goods on the street. Before reaching the NBA, he played professionally in Greece’s second division, where CBS’s 2018 60 Minutes report said he and his brother made less than $500 a month from basketball. That figure describes their reported earnings, not the family’s total income.
What “before going pro” means in Giannis’s story
The phrase can be misleading. Giannis had already played professional basketball in Greece before entering the NBA, so his story is more accurately described as hardship before reaching the NBA. CBS’s 2018 60 Minutes report describes his family’s circumstances in Athens and his early basketball career.
How Giannis described his family’s financial hardship
In his interview with correspondent Steve Kroft, Giannis recalled that his family did not have much money. CBS described crowded housing and frequent shortages of food. Giannis put the hardship alongside the closeness and happiness he remembers: “You know, it was tough. We didn’t have a lot of money. But we had a lot of happiness. So we wasn’t broke happiness wise.”
Selling goods on the street
Giannis told Kroft that he and his family sold glasses, watches, CDs and DVDs. He recalled persisting when approaching potential customers: “I didn’t give up. I was like, I always keep asking them questions. And I was cute too. I was young.”
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Playing professionally in Greece
Before the NBA, Giannis played for a Greek second-division professional team. CBS reported that he and his brother made less than $500 per month playing there and sometimes shared one pair of basketball shoes. The reported monthly amount is their basketball earnings; it should not be treated as a measure of the whole household’s income.
From Athens to the NBA Draft
The Milwaukee Bucks selected Giannis 15th overall in the 2013 NBA Draft. In the CBS interview, he described being drafted as the moment he realized his family could have a better future. The draft position marks his transition to the NBA; it does not erase the professional experience he had already gained in Greece.
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Hardship was part of the story, not the whole story
Giannis’s account includes material struggle, but he also spoke about happiness and family. In a TIME interview published October 17, 2017, he described the daily challenge of providing food and recalled taking on family responsibilities when his mother was ill. About Amazon’s interview with documentary director Kristen Lappas frames the film as an immigrant story and a story about parental sacrifice; that is the director’s interpretation, distinct from Giannis’s own recollections.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Can this example tell us how many NBA players grew up poor?
No. The available sources establish important details about Giannis’s experience, but they do not provide a representative statistic for the share of NBA players who grew up poor. An article in the 2015 Journal of Amateur Sport discusses how celebrated stories of overcoming poverty can create the impression that the league is full of players from projects. It names Stephen Curry, Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul as counterexamples and cites a suggestion that a wealthier neighborhood background may predict NBA attainment. The discussion is not a current league-wide rate or a quantitative estimate of how common childhood poverty is among players.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFor that reason, Giannis is a documented example, not evidence that hardship is typical of NBA players. Individual accounts also should not be ranked by severity based on anecdotes.
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