Giannis Antetokounmpo has stopped doing false modesty. A clip from his own account went around Thursday showing him addressing a room of young players at a camp in South Florida, and the pitch started where you would expect, with the scouting report nobody wanted in 2013.
“I wasn’t a top pick. I wasn’t Rookie of the Year. I wasn’t all of that,” he told them. “But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m top 20 of all time… I’m gonna get top 10.”
The first half of that is not controversial. Two MVPs, a championship, a Finals MVP, a Defensive Player of the Year award, 10 All-Star selections and seven first-team All-NBA nods put him in the conversation with almost anyone from the last 30 years. He went 15th overall to Milwaukee and ended up on the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team. Nobody is laughing at top 20.
The Lists Do Not Have Him Close Yet
Bleacher Report’s 2025 all-time ranking put Antetokounmpo 24th. The Athletic also had him 24th on its 75th-anniversary list, and ESPN had him 18th. Those are roughly the same neighborhood, and the distance from 18th to 10th gets paid for with another championship, several more years of MVP-level production, or both.
That is the part of the claim that deserves pushback, because last season was the worst availability stretch of his career. He played 36 games, a career low, while dealing with hamstring and knee problems, and he appeared in just six of Milwaukee’s final 37. He still averaged 27.6 points, 9.8 rebounds and 5.4 assists when he was out there, which is the frustrating part.
“For the first time in my career, not being available for 40 games, it never happened to me,” he said of that season. “It was definitely tough.”
Miami Is the Last Real Window
Antetokounmpo turns 32 in December and is starting his 14th season, his first in Miami after the July 6 trade that sent him and Bobby Portis to the Heat for Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, the rights to Nate Ament and four future picks. Milwaukee got a rebuild out of it. Miami got a two-year sprint.
Here is the math on top 10. The names that occupy those spots on almost every serious list are Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Tim Duncan, Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry. Every one of them won at least two titles. Most won three or more. Antetokounmpo has one, from 2021, with a supporting cast that no longer exists.
The claim is conditional rather than delusional. If he wins a title in Miami and stays healthy enough to collect MVP votes into his mid-30s, top 10 becomes a real argument that reasonable people will have. If his body keeps costing him half a season at a time, he finishes in the high teens, which is an extraordinary career and still not what he just promised a gym full of kids.
Give him credit for saying it out loud with a number attached. He has been right about himself before.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.