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Giannis Antetokounmpo Believes He Has a ‘Very Similar’ Mindset to Kobe Bryant

At age 27, Giannis Antetokounmpo has built up quite a resume highlighted by an NBA championship, an NBA Finals MVP, two Most Valuable Player of the Year awards, a Defensive Player of the Year honor, and six NBA All-Star appearances. 

The Greek Freak is part of every conversation regarding the best player in the world. And while he’s incredibly humble and just wants to be a regular person, he has become a global superstar – aside from Sweden maybe.

On the court however, Giannis isn’t the sweet, calm and humble person he is off the court. The Bucks superstar is a different person during the 48 minutes of a basketball game. Giannis also is working on his game very intensely and pushes himself to the limit on the daily.

In an interview, Antetokounmpo now invoked the name of Kobe Bryant and his Mamba Mentality, to describe his work ethic and approach to the game of basketball.

Per The Athletic:

“I will never say this, I will never disrespect the name of the great Kobe. I don’t like mentioning him,” Antetokounmpo said. “I feel like he should be mentioned, should never be forgotten. But I don’t like mentioning his name to bring attention to the conversation that we are about to have. I wasn’t close to him. I wasn’t this with him or that with him. But I would say this, in some areas of his mindset, I think we’re very similar.”

“I might not be as talented as him, but when we’re talking about a guy that worked extremely hard from his first day until he retired. A guy that plays to win, a guy that pushes himself to the limit, a guy that has a killer mentality when he steps on the court,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s almost like having — I think he had two personalities. Like when we were on the sideline and we were talking and I was taking notes, laughing smiling, joking around, talking. But when we stepped on the court, It was like motherf—er didn’t even know me. ‘I thought you were like my friend.’”