Last month, Giannis Antetokounmpo was named the NBA’s most valuable player. Considering the NBA’s status as the world’s premier professional basketball league, this distinction effectively marks him out as the best player worldwide. This is just one of the many awards the twenty-four-year-old Milwaukee Bucks forward has achieved in his short professional career.

However, Giannis’s life has not always been so glittering. His parents, Charles and Veronika, arrived in Greece in 1991, making their new home in Sepolia, a neighborhood in north-central Athens. Around the time of Giannis’s birth in 1994, immigrants in Greece faced many obstacles, and his family was no exception. Racist insults and attacks were an everyday experience, and while they had come to Greece in search of a better life, their financial situation was always precarious. From childhood, Giannis and his two brothers had to contribute to his family’s budget by hawking watches, bags, and sunglasses in the streets.

Other problems stemmed from Giannis’s nationality. Despite being born in Athens, as a child he had no citizenship — he was considered neither Greek nor Nigerian. When he turned twelve, he started playing basketball. Only then did he gain a purpose in life and a reason to dream of a better one, even as he battled the anxieties and daily struggles of a stateless immigrant.