A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (6 page)

My happiest summer days, as I remember them, had to do with getting to watch or play basketball. Many of these memories are connected to my real introduction to the sport through my father. Dad—or Daddy, as I still called him in those days—was the person who first put a basketball in my hands. He was the first person to embody the deep passion for playing that I’d later discover in myself.

Sundays in summer meant that if Tragil and I were lucky, Daddy would swing by and pick us up after church and take us to watch him play. Tragil used to brag to her friends that our daddy was taking us over to the park in his neighborhood for his regular game in a summer men’s league. When he’d show up as promised and load the two of us in the back of his old sky blue Chevy, I can recall the faces of the other kids watching us go off with this good-looking young workingman—like a celebrity, in a way.

That feeling of being special, of wanting others to see that our daddy loved us and was taking us to his game, stayed with me for days. Sometimes weeks. And so did every detail of the game and the festivities afterward. Most of the men on my father’s team were working guys like him, so this Sunday basketball game was the highlight of their week. A lot of the guys brought their families—wives and grandparents and kids all on blankets with coolers and picnic baskets packed to the brim or fixings for barbecuing right there at the park.

Nobody ever had to ask me, “Are you hungry, son?” I was always hungry.

These Sunday games were no mere hobby or pastime to Daddy. The court was his stage, his place for taking all those dreams he used to harbor for doing something important with his life, for becoming a star. At various points, Big Dwyane, as Mom used to call him to differentiate from me, wanted to be a recording artist, a professional baseball player, and, yeah, get into the NBA. In time to come, I’d understand that he wanted out of the hard life and he wanted that for us, too. But he didn’t necessarily know how to express the fact that those desires to give us something better came from love. Daddy was definitely rough around the edges.

Nowhere was that more evident than on the court. I mean, he was so tough. Of all the guys, Dad was always the one fixing to get into a fight. Anytime you heard arguing in a game, that was Dwyane Wade Sr. chewing out somebody for something. He was also intimidating as hell and as athletic as athletic gets. Not the best shooter, Dad, about six foot three, was a high flyer. Very muscular. He could outrun, steal, rebound, and do it all—except he couldn’t shoot threes worth a damn. He could go to the basket, slashing like crazy, and dunk so hard the ground shook. That was his game. And he was good at his game.

In what turned out to be my first school of basketball, Dad played with a lot of guys who were also good. Once a lot of the local league players got older, they developed specialties. There might be that one guy who was a shooter. All he had to do was shoot. Then you had the point guard, who specialized in ball handling and control. Then you had the slasher like our dad. Over the years, I had a chance to study him and all the specialists and learn a lot from watching. For example, on Dad’s regular team there were two guys named Michael—who went by Big Mike and Little Mike. And, not surprisingly, Little Mike was really little and Big Mike was really tall and athletic. The two had all these moves they’d worked out together, with Little Mike throwing lobs to Big Mike, who would then make child’s play out of easy baskets. Those two looked masterful to me.

The moment Daddy dropped us off back home, I’d start working on Uncle Roger to let me borrow his basketball. On the days when he went to work as a security guard, I’d have to ask Grandma for permission to take it for a few hours. Roger was a cool uncle, not a super-talkative guy, but then neither was I, and occasionally he would come outside and give me pointers on dribbling or bring a baseball to play catch with me.

And then something happened that today is still not clear in my mind. No one explained what it was but one day I came up to return the basketball that Grandma had let me borrow and found Uncle Roger at home—staring blankly out the window. He barely registered my presence, like he didn’t know me. The most I could get out of anyone was from one of my aunts, who told me, “Roger got real sick and he was in the hospital.”

When I asked if he was going to get better soon and be himself again, my aunt didn’t say another word.

Uncle Roger was never the same again, never able to go back to work, never interested in coming outside on hot summer days to play with me. The fact that nobody had a better explanation for what happened was troubling. On some deep level, I was even angry about the terrible communication and had this thought—
you know what, when I get to be in charge of a household, we’re gonna talk about important things that are happening and not sweep them under the rug.
And in that thought, I came across the awful truth: that I was in charge of nothing. The fear that a similar or worse fate as Uncle Roger’s would come to my mother only intensified.

Somehow, without me having to say anything, at my lowest moments, the part of Jolinda Wade that was her true self—her God self, as she would say—would let her out of her inner prison and be Mom. High or not, she’d take my hand and look right at me and ask, “Who your favorite girl?”

“You, Momma” was the only answer and the only truth.

Then, especially on those long summer days when she wanted to get out of the house and do something to make me happy, we’d borrow Uncle Roger’s basketball and walk over to the park.

As it so happened, Washington Park, one of the most famous, popular parks in Chicago, ran adjacent to our neighborhood. In my seven-year-old mind, the park was as big as a city, complete with a huge swimming pool area and different playgrounds, and a series of basketball courts lined up as far as the eye could see. Like how I imagined heaven to be!

To get to the courts, Mom and I only had to walk six blocks or so. A part of me couldn’t wait to get to the park and another part of me wanted these hours to last as long as possible. So while Mom carried her box of vino—like Wild Irish Rose, nothing fancy—and a blanket or chair she’d set up in the grass to sit, I’d dribble on up ahead and then dribble back, warming up for the competition.

Probably the most vivid of our summer outings to the park happened one July afternoon in 1989, when I was about seven and a half. Tragil, who had just turned twelve, had gone swimming with her friends and my mother had said, “You and I, let’s go have us a date.”

When we got to the basketball courts at Fifty-Third Street, before Mom could set up her chair and find a good spot where she could watch me play, the first order of business was to find a game where they’d let me in.

As she always did, Mom pushed me ahead of her and said, “Go get you a game, baby, go on.”

If it was anyone but my mother, I would have just stood around, hoping for an opening. But this was what she told me to do and I had to find a way onto one of the courts. That day, as usual, most of the pickup games with younger players already had their teams set. The older guys, a lot of them in their forties, were in the middle of games that appeared to be even more closed. As I knew from Daddy’s games, the men in their thirties and forties were hard-core about their minutes on the court and only had so much time to be at the park. But having had better luck in the past getting in on games with older players, I tried with them first.

“Cool if I come in?” I asked one of the men who looked like he was an organizer.

“Not today” was the answer.

At the next court, I couldn’t even get anyone’s attention.

At the third court, the older guy in charge started to say, “Not today,” too. But he was interrupted by one of the guys on the opposing team, who argued with him. “C’mon, let the little man play.” Fine, the main dude said, “You take him.”

With that, I signaled to Mom, who nodded proudly and made herself comfortable on the grass nearby. As she would later say, she was not only my favorite girl but my first true cheerleader.

Now that the hard part of getting myself a game had been accomplished, the real fun began. And I have to admit, nobody saw me coming. The team that took me must have thought they were giving some kind of charity to a little kid. The other team must have been ready to take a breather and run right past me. Well, guess what? I surprised everyone, mostly by being one of those testy players—by using everything I had to my advantage and by exploiting the opponent’s disadvantages. When the guy who didn’t want me to play started to dribble the ball—watch out!—I was low to the ground and had no trouble grabbing it and tearing off with it, then posting up and putting it in!

By the end of the day, I was something of a hero.

The joy of this particular summer afternoon that I had shared with my mom, like others, couldn’t last forever. I knew that. And I accepted that, just because of my hours of watching the reality show that was life from our porch. Mom said as much that evening after she called to me and said, slurring her words slightly, “Baby, time to go home.”

I said all the things that a seven-year-old would say, that I was having so much fun, that I didn’t want to stop playing basketball, and so on. But I helped her up anyway so we could leave.

To cheer me up, Mom then told me something I wouldn’t hear again until many years passed. “Remember, baby,” she said, with a dreamy expression on her face, “your life is bigger than basketball. Remember that.”

Not sure what she was trying to tell me, I remembered and believed that had to be the case—because she said so. Also, because she had been the one to say, “Go get you a game.”

I got that lesson. I figured out, at that age, that the world wasn’t going to bring me my dreams. That job was going to be up to me.

Twenty-two years later, I could look back and recognize that’s exactly what I did. And hopefully, as I announced to the three boys on Friday, March 11, 2011, that it was their bedtime, I could find an opportunity to pass on one of the most motivating lessons of my childhood.

But in the meantime, I was going to read them my favorite book, a story about change. Maybe you’ve read it. The title is
Green Eggs and Ham.

Chapter
Two

Prayers, Promises, and Dreams

S
ATURDAY
AFTERNOON
AND
EVENING

M
ARCH
12, 2011

A
MERICAN
A
IRLINES
A
RENA
,
DOWNTOWN
M
IAMI

W
HEN THE TIME COMES TO SHARE THE NEWS ABOUT THE custody judgment with my teammates and the Heat staff, I make the decision not to say anything before our game against the Grizzlies. As usual, everybody’s doing whatever it is they usually do to get into that place of mental focus that we need to have before a game. This day, some of the guys listen to music, others are reading. Scratch that. Chris Bosh is reading.

The only person that I choose to pull aside before the game and tell about my getting full custody of the boys is LeBron James.

He reacts with the same surprise, joy, praise, and relief as everyone in my inner circle has expressed so far. But since he knows we have a game to play, he does a good job of not letting on to the other guys.

That being said, it’s hard to hold back all that pent-up emotion that comes pouring out of me during the game that follows, so much so that I’m thinking that some of the guys have to suspect some kind of added level of intensity and freedom from me on the floor.

But in spite of that hunch, as soon as we return to the locker room when the game is over and Coach Erik Spoelstra asks for everyone’s attention so I can say a few words, I’m surprised to look around and see everyone staring back at me with big smiles.

Well, yeah, we had a great game. But this emotion I’m feeling from everyone is more than about how we played. Not that I expect the guys to come to tears over my news. Too much manly pride. Too much testosterone.

Still, it means the world to me to hear the cheers and feel the support when I announce that my custody ordeal has come to an end and that finally I get to be Daddy, who I’ve fought so hard to be. Everyone in the Heat organization has been like family all along, being there for me during the hardest days.

Of course, other than the insanity of what was reported in the media during the divorce and custody battles, the guys still know few of the details from behind the scenes. That was my choice, both to protect my family’s privacy and to prevent all of that internal emotional pressure from hurting my game and, by extension, the team.

And, as I think about it in these moments, keeping my emotions boxed in like that has always been for better and for worse. On the plus side, I can see that part of what drives me—my will—comes from the fact that I’ve always had to fly under the radar to prove myself; so not letting anyone know what’s going on has given me a needed edge. Part of it may be a mental glitch, just the way I’m wired, but blocking out the turmoil allows me to play harder and better under pressure. That goes for injury, illness, and whatever is happening off the court. Some people call it being in the zone—a kind of hyperfocus that requires you to set all the noise of the day aside, to become a warrior the minute you change out of your street clothes and into your uniform. To do that, I’ve had to learn not to allow hurt, anger, fear, or negativity mess with my head, but instead to transform the internal pressure cooker into the competitive engine that drives me.