Andreas Kokkinos
 | |
| No. 34 – Retired | |
|---|---|
| Position | Bigfur |
| Species | Red Dragon ( Varanidae ) |
| Gender | Male |
| Nickname(s) | |
| Greek Fire, Drakos | |
| Personal information | |
| Born |
October 31, 1997 Tarpon Springs, Florida |
| Nationality | American |
| Listed height | 6 ft 11 in (2.11 m) |
| Listed weight | 250 lb (113 kg) |
| Shoots | Right-handed |
| Career information | |
| School | Pensacola Predatorial & Mechanical |
| FBA draft | 2020 / Round: 1 / Pick: 7th overall |
| Selected by the Queens Pride | |
| Pro playing career | 2020–2022 |
| Career history | |
| 2020 - Feb. 2021 | Queens Pride |
| Feb. 2021-2021 | Las Vegas Wildcards |
| 2021-2022 | Winnipeg Voyageurs |
| Career highlights and awards | |
| |
| Contract information | |
| Contract year | 2020 |
| Player Contacts | |
| (IC) Agent | MW |
| (OOC) Creator | MW |
| (OOC) Actor | Unknown |
| (OOC) Usage | Ask me before any use |
Biography
Before I begin the story of Andreas Kokkinos, hatched to Christos and Virginia Kokkinos on October 31st, 1997, I’d like to tell a different story.
In the Kokkinos family of dragons, there runs a family tale of how dragons first came to be in our midst. Kadmos, the first Greek hero, would encounter in his journeys the protector of the land that would later become the city of Thebes: Drakon Ismenios, son of Ares and Demeter, and one of the first great dragons of the Greek myths. However, unlike in the myths where the dragon would kill all of his fellow soldiers before being killed by Kadmos himself, the tale tells that the dragon, after challenging Kadmos and his crew in an ordeal to prove their strength, would bless them using his last breath, giving them his form and his divine power before passing on to the afterlife. Their fur would drop out, their skin replaced with scales; they would take on the form of the great creature that they had just felled. In other words, they would become the first dragons of this world. They would use their new power to establish Thebes, one of the most influential city-states of Ancient Greece… until the Fates would take that power away from them, and they would be scattered across the rest of the world.
While it’s impossible to prove that prehistoric dragons were actually able to breath fire, perform magic, or do all the things that they could do in the myths and tales, little Andreas always listened to his family’s stories that were passed on from generation to generation. He dreamed of becoming a dragon like the ones in myths and legends; he wanted to fly, breath fire, and perform feats beyond typical limits.
To hear from his teachers in school that they were all made-up stories and that dragons didn’t actually have superpowers was disappointing news for little Andreas. However, he was not the type of dragon to fall to childhood angst; rather, he wanted to impress his friends and family in other ways. After all, if his dragon ancestors were somehow associated with these feats in the myths, it had to have basis in actual events, right?
So when Andreas was introduced to the world of high-flying and limit-breaking that the FBA had to offer through a live Typhoons game, playing professional basketball naturally became his next dream. He took to it with ease; his superior stature and wingspan compared to his peers made it easier for him to dominate the post, and as a result comfortably bring home the win. His growth spurt would keep him at the 4 and 5 positions throughout middle school and high school, and he’d look up to the pro players in the same position as him as inspirations, such as Murillo, Redfield, and Barrett. Amidst all this love of basketball, however, he’d also encounter something else that would make him revisit one of his childhood dreams: fire.
Andreas’s first direct encounter with fire performing came during his teen years when he saw a local group perform for someone else’s party on the beach, and when the performance ended with the leader, a Cuban crocodile, spewing flames into the air, he immediately approached the group after the party ended, asking to be a part of the group as soon as possible. The crocodile initially refused on the grounds that it was too dangerous for him to perform at his age, but he was eventually able to convince them, and his parents, that he’d be able to learn the moves without fire props until he was of legal age. As it turned out, hand-eye coordination with dangerous fire-lit objects was also a valuable skill in fire dancing as well as in basketball, so he took to it surprisingly well, managing to progress to the point where he’d be able to start performing with fire once he turned 18; he didn’t slouch off on his original passion in the midst of this side job, however, and eventually he’d finish high school as the best player on his team.
While he received multiple scholarship offers from his high school performance, Andreas eventually decided to attend Pensacola Predatorial & Mechanical, one of the local colleges in Florida. Given his interest in his family’s tales, he found himself drawn towards the Greek myths and wanted to know about how much they were based on actual history, and eventually majored in Anthropology, specializing in his ancestral origins of Ancient Greece. Although he initially had a hard time juggling between being a college student, a basketball prospect, and a part-time fire performer at the same time, he was able to find a groove to his schedule after going through his freshman year. Summer was when he’d focus on weight training and practice for his summer job as a fire performer, while his studies as well as court practices would be more prioritized while school was in session.
In his senior year, the team narrowly missed out on making it to the March FCAA tournament without current rookie sensation Garland Kaye Ulysses from last year; however, he was widely seen as the one bright spot in the team, averaging a double-double in points and rebounds per game and topping a list of Top 5 players who didn’t make it in the tournament. Knowing that he needed to venture to greater opportunities in order to further improve himself like Garland did, he decided to move on to the next chapter of his life by declaring for the FBA draft.
Andreas is not very tech savvy; he uses his laptop sparingly for school purposes, and his phone is an older model that he got as a college admission present four years ago. Most of his spare time is meticulously distributed between practices and hitting the gym to ensure maximum performance, which has left him little time to fully enjoy college life as most students tend to do.