When I was reporting my first article on the Bucks, Mike Smith, who does color commentary on Clipper broadcasts, pulled me aside in the tunnel before tipoff. “How do you pronounce Giannis’s last name?” he asked me. “Ahn-te-to-koom-po?”

Yeah, that’s fine, I told him. “It’s actually more like Ah-detto-koom-bo, but the way you said it will be good enough.” He nodded. “Just make sure you get the Farsi names right.”

He got the joke.

I wrote about the Bucks’ very tall, very talented dude making a name for himself as a point guard. More than that, it’s about the retro-futurist basketball fantasy Giannis is finally beginning to fulfill.

Excerpts from this article were featured in a post on NBA.com and in the Bucks’ game program. V cool.