AHEAD OF THE GAME

There isn’t a more distinct display of the man’s dichotomy than perhaps in sports, where despite the pervading aggression, violence, and physicality, as well as a pervading perpetuation of toxic masculinity, there lies a curious case of emotion when meeting certain inevitable extremes such as either loss or victory. In fact, it is in the quiet few minutes before an athlete enters an arena that he finds himself stripped of that toughened exterior, rendered still and silent, filtering everything from the noise and the nerves that he has to be at his very best. Despite what the archaic athletic archetype may be, this is when he becomes most the man—accepting the emotional highs, as well as the lows that essentially make him.

“’There is no way I’m getting emotional,’” Giannis Antetokounmpo recalls saying during a conversation he had with his family prior to the 2019