the two squared off on Friday<\/a> and Giannis wasn\u2019t going to let their potential final meeting pass without a memento.<\/p>\nAfter the game, the Greek Freak received quite the gift from LeBron in the form of his signed jersey.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s a blueprint for every athlete,\u201d Giannis said of LeBron. \u201cNot just a basketball athlete. Be able to be consistent for 23 years, available, be a winner, lead by example is incredible. Any opportunity I have to be around greatness and compete against greatness, I will always take it. I never take it for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have the utmost respect for him and his family and the way he\u2019s carried himself for 23 years. Like I said, I missed going against him. I think it brings the best out of me as a player. He\u2019s one of the guys I definitely look up to on the court and off the court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once regular foes in the Eastern Conference, injuries have limited the match-ups between the two in recent seasons. Between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons, Giannis and LeBron played three times in 2022. But a lot of time passed between games.<\/p>\n
Now, LeBron is clearly on the tail end of his career. You can hardly blame Giannis, then, for seeking a momento from their potential final game, something he also acknowledged postgame while discussing why LeBron is someone he respects on and off the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never know. It might our last game against one another,\u201d Giannis said. \u201cI hadn\u2019t played him since 2022. He had, I think, a couple of injuries in that time. I had the opportunity in 2026, four years later, to play against him. So I just asked him, I said, \u2018Hey, can I have a jersey?\u2019 and he said, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s yours.\u2018<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he has respect for me but I definitely have a lot of respect for him. Every time I go against him\u2026obviously I\u2019m going to go hard. He knows that. Off the court, whenever I embrace him, he knows I have the utmost respect for him and what he\u2019s accomplished in his 23-year career because this is year 13 for me and I kind of understand now how hard it is to be consistent and available. It\u2019s not easy, right. It\u2019s definitely not easy. I can see how hard my journey has been. I can imagine how hard his journey has been so it\u2019s always going to be respect.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite being two of the faces of the NBA over most of the last 10 years, LeBron James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,771,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-527957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-lakers-news","11":"tag-milwaukee","12":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","13":"tag-milwaukeebucks","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115873068803939897","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}