Translator: Chryssa R. Takahashi Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
Hello.
Indeed, six years ago, as I was on my way to visit a friend of mine at Sepolia,
Vasilis Xenarios,
I saw in front of me, at the playground, some wonderkids playing.
It was the Antetokounmpo brothers.
I immediately saw their talents, their dynamics.
And instantly, I realized that I had to do something for them.
But what had happened in order for me to have such instant thoughts?
This is what I will try to describe to you today.
It all started 20 years ago,
when in our neighborhoods
we welcomed all these waves of immigrants, of refugees
that didn't just have problems in their suitcases,
but also something more valuable - their own children.
There was no welfare for them, from nobody.
And I tried to deal with those things.
It started with Ethnikos Kato Patision,
my first basketball team
where I worked as a coach.
There, with my friend Manolis Perris,
we tried to approach those kids,
but we saw that it was very difficult, both because of the teams
which were not ready to welcome our new fellow citizens,
but also because of the parents themselves.
Because they saw us like strangers,
and they were reluctant to trust their children to those strangers
that want to integrate their kids into a game that is foreign to them.
That made us think.
And I started going,
trying to come closer to those people.
I tried to befriend them, go in their homes,
learn their languages,
eat their foods, share their problems.
But that wasn't enough either.
After being encouraged by my friend Manolis,
I started attending sociology classes
here, across the street, at Panteion University.
But that wasn't enough either.
I started attending theology classes at the University of Athens.
But that was lacking as well.
I started going to libraries, studying linguistics by myself
so I could make a database
to be able to understand the things that I hear and learn from people.
But I still couldn't understand exactly what they were saying
or how all that I heard coincided with what I read in the books.
Then I started going to their coffee shops.
There,
in the coffee shops,
I started to cross-reference that data,
make a database, a tool,
and at the same time, a tool
so that I can work on the things I hear
and have a network to approach these kids.
Living with those people all these years, I witnessed many successes.
But I also witnessed failures.
I was stigmatized by the failures more.
I will indicatively mention three.
One is George Zacharopoulos,
a kid that at age 15 could play for the men's team of Sporting
at the Greek professional championship,
but because he couldn't adapt
and be accepted as a biracial person in our society,
he slowly lost himself in drugs.
That kid was lost.
Another kid is Babis Mafoutas,
who, for the lack of knowledge of the law, delayed making his papers
and waited desperately for over six years
for the law to change so that he could play basketball
with his classmates on a basketball team.
The kid went crazy.
And the third one, the weirdest story of them all is Kostas Koulou,
a Greek kid, dad from Ethiopia,
who, because his dad went missing
in the Ethiopian civil war,
as well as his papers,
he could never prove to the Greek authorities that he's Greek.
That kid had to leave, go to the UK to make a living.
Having all that in my luggage,
and seeing these wonderkids in front of me,
the Antetokounmpo bros - because it's not just Giannis,
it's Thanasis, Kostas and Alexis -
I knew exactly what I had to do.
I instantly designed in my mind a way, a mechanism
that could support those kid for the next few years
till they could peak at their efforts in the sport.
Of course, with the help of the team where I was,
Filathlitikos Zografou.
But that wasn't enough either.
Because the first years didn't bring any success,
I had to stand my ground
while receiving all the doubts, the complaints from both sides.
But I was lucky in that sense.
Because as a child to a German mother and a Greek father,
I had learnt, going to Germany, to hear the worst about Greece,
and here in Greece, to hear the worst about the Germans.
(Applause)
Today,
I work as a coach in the area of Kato Patisia
within six kilometers from the center of problems,
but also from the dreams and dynamics in Kypseli,
where the situation is very difficult.
We can't practice when there's wind because of the cold.
When it rains, the court looks like a lagoon.
The facilities are incomplete, we have no balls,
but we are armed with the dreams that those kids give us
and the strength.
But today there is one more problem.
Apart from the survival -
because those kids come to practice many times without having any food,
and we try to find ways to intervene even there -
today we have something more.
It's also our kids, the Greek kids,
that now face the same problem.
Maybe the reason is that for so many years
we didn't do anything for the children of our fellow people.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)