Bobby Portis came to the Bucks to win an NBA championship. His love for the city and team brought him back.
It all started with an international phone call, the number acquired through clandestine means.
It was the summer of 2020, and Bobby Portis cold-called Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Giannis, I’ll take less money to come join up with you guys and we gonna win the championship this year.
“It was that simple,” Portis recalled.
Days later, Portis said Bucks general manager Jon Horst and head coach Mike Budenholzer were on the phone lining up a free-agent deal that would bring the big man to Milwaukee.
Call it self-confidence, self-promotion, perhaps a touch of hubris, but call Portis prescient. He did, indeed, help the Bucks win that championship. And then, a day after the parade through downtown Milwaukee, he was in his agent’s office mulling over his next step. He was a free agent again.
“Now this year they was calling me,” he said with a laugh.
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But this past summer, in a very short window to decide where to take his career, Portis went with his heart — which was to come back to Milwaukee.
“It was tough, man,” he said in one of a set of interviews with the Journal Sentinel. “It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money. I’m 26 and I’m not getting any younger. From a business standpoint it’s tough.
"People in my position probably would’ve left, you know? People in my position probably would’ve left, but me being in this city, I’ve never felt anything like this before, you know? It takes players their entire 10 years to even feel like that they’re loved in a city. I’m in my sixth year now and I bounced around. I felt love in Chicago. I really, really felt the love there, but this love here is special.
“I have a really, real deal connection with these people and fans here that I didn’t want to leave that so soon. And just being able to have a chance to protect our title. I’ve always heard all the stories that when you win a championship everyone is hunting you, going at you, every game is like a championship game, the road is going to be crazy, so I wanted to feel that environment as well.”
Portis' life changes after the Bucks win the NBA Finals
And has he.
There was the birth of “Bobby Potus” at the White House ceremony. There have been the boos washing over him and his team in every opposing arena, the rush of those visiting crowds as their team tries to topple the defending champions. There are the ubiquitous chants of his name at every opportunity at Fiserv Forum. Packers running back Aaron Jones has shown him love. So have the professional wrestling circuits. National sponsors like BP, Charmin and Science in Sport have come calling.
He admitted the playoff run changed everything, in two ways.
One was personal.
“The interviews, the after the game stuff, being interviewed, being to just be myself,” he said of how the postseason spotlight helped him. “Over the years I’ve grown more and gotten comfortable with talking. At an early age I stuttered a lot, so I was kind of shy. I never really wanted to talk because I never really wanted nobody to hear me stutter, so it was kind of tough for me early on.
"But as I’ve grown, I’ve gotten better with interviews and things like that and now I’m just a natural as far as being myself. I just think me just being myself has helped me get to this point.”
Portis finds a home with the Bucks, compares fan base to Arkansas Razorbacks
The second, of course, was professional.
“I mean, shoot, nobody wants to talk to a loser, though,” he said with a smile. “When I was on the Bulls, nobody wants to talk to you when you’re losing. Nobody wants to talk to you. That’s just what it is. If I was winning in Chicago like we’re winning now, man, we’ll have all the deals, we’ll have everything we want. When you win, it makes everything around you just better.
"Unfortunately, I wasn’t really successful in Chicago and New York like that. Just keep it real — I always keep it real — my teams I played on wasn’t successful so I didn’t really get a chance to experience the full, off the court things that comes with being on a big market team.
"Me being here, it really doesn’t matter that we’re a small market team or whatever it is, we have a great basketball team, and we won an NBA championship, and when you do things like that it just brings so much to you off the court.”
Which brings him back to Milwaukee, and that feel that pulled him to stay for a second season.
“One thing I really like about Milwaukee is like Arkansas, man,” he began. “It’s simple. You have fanatics here. Like you have fans, and you have fanatics. Fans, they love you when you’re winning, they love this team because they’re doing good. Then you have fanatics that just, they’re diehard fans that they’ll do anything for this logo, and this city, and this team or this player.
"That’s Milwaukee, what Wisconsin is about all their teams. They’re fanatics about everything and I love that. Where I’m from is just like that. I went to school in Fayetteville, that’s fanatics. They go crazy over the Razorbacks. I felt that same love that I felt when I was a kid again, and that’s why I like it here.”
Portis has become an efficient three-point shooter with the Bucks
For as much as the fans love him, for more and more prevalent appearances of No. 9 jerseys dotting the arena and the city, the biggest fit of course has come on the court.
There was no way Portis could have known he would spend most of the season starting in place of an injured Brook Lopez — sixth man of the year was a real goal, after all.
With that has come the most starts of his career (46), the most minutes per game (28.8), shot attempts (12.5), points (15.3) and rebounds (9.1).
He’s backed up an eye-opening 47% shooting last season from behind the three-point line with a 40.2% mark into the all-star break.
Portis has had 19 double-doubles this season.
Giannis Antetokounmpo's high praise motivates Portis
Which makes one think back to that summer phone call to Greece, with a fifth-year player coming off his third team calling the two-time reigning MVP with a promise to get Antetokounmpo and the Bucks over the hump.
“I knew exactly what he would bring to the Bucks,” Antetokounmpo said flatly. “What he did in Game 6. Simple as that. Wasn’t scared of the big stage, was not scared to shoot the ball, wasn’t scared to bring energy, wasn’t scared to go out there and compete.”
Then Antetokounmpo called his teammate one of the best American big men in the NBA, a comment that blew Portis’ phone up. But that wasn’t something the teammates needed to discuss digitally. Not this time.
“Giannis actually said that to me like four or five times to my face,” Portis said, smiling sheepishly with a bit of a head roll. “It’s actually a cool thing for one of the, what, he just got named to the 75 greatest players, to mention me as one of the best American bigs in the league. I mean, that’s an important thing, but there’s still more work to do.
"I do pride myself on just trying to be an overall basketball player, shoot the ball as well as I can, try to post up, try to get to the rim. I feel like I have to perform at all three levels on the basketball court. I don’t mean to talk about any other player or anything, but I don’t know if there’s too many guys that can shoot the three, post up and get to the rim at 6-10, 6-11, at that height. It is cool, it is fun for one of the best players to say that. We just trying to get better each and every day.
"Being around Giannis really pushes me, really makes me be the best I can be and really bring the best out of me, man, to see how hard he works, see how much he sacrifices to the game and to see how much he puts in to it, man. Just not with basketball, but just off the court, how much he puts into his body, how much he lifts and how much he trains. It’s all those things. I watch him, too. I watch that, for sure. How he watches me, I’m definitely watching him.”
Now, everyone will be watching if the Bucks can make a serious run at defending their title and where that will take Portis.