A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (19 page)

That was my cue to go. I tried to stay longer, hoping that my mother could see through the haze to notice something about me that was starting to change, hoping that she would give me a sign that she was not too far gone. That’s what some of the members of the extended family had been saying—that she was a lost cause. I refused to accept that. But some kind of sign would have helped ease my soul.

All she said, was, “See ya later, baby.”

I KNEW FROM LOOKING IN THE MIRROR AND NOT FITTING INTO my clothes or shoes that over the summer of 1998 I had experienced an actual growth spurt. Finally. But only when I returned to high school in the fall did I find out the actual measurement.

Four and a half inches! I grew from five foot seven and a half to six foot two! Improbable odds for a kid just wanting to play high school varsity basketball. But apparently not impossible.

The basketball coaches suddenly wanted to know my name. The year before, they knew me as the stepbrother of Demetrius McDaniel and that I had done well at the sophomore level. But the only sense they were given that I had varsity talent was from my dad’s prediction to Coach Fitzgerald. They were still not expecting much other than that I was taller and that I might have grown into my feet and hands.

Once the season kicked in, everything suddenly seemed effortless. Like magic. In our first few games, I came roaring out of the gates early and the transformation was like superhero time. Those first few games, I’m ballin’, I mean like
ballin’,
putting up close to thirty points a game, blocking, stealing, making crazy shots, and even dunking like I’ve been doing it all my life. The tougher the competition the better I would play.

Coach Fitzgerald must have been thinking that Dwyane Wade Sr. was a prophet. Or, at any rate, he might have been thinking that Junior maybe could be getting ready to deliver for the team that year.

Jack Fitzgerald was the ideal coach, mentor, and surrogate father figure to come into my life and my basketball training at that time. On the short side, Coach Fitzgerald was Irish to the T, a red-faced pit bull when he needed to be, tough as nails, willing to get in anybody’s face. Nice-looking, too, Fitzgerald had a great head of hair he always had combed just so and was also what I thought of as a sweater coach. At games he always wore these dapper sweaters and confused the competition with his preppy attire. They had only to wait until the game was under way to find out he was a classic tough Irish guy through and through.

The most important lesson I learned from him over the next two years was really this: how to be a teammate. Even though I was the best on the team, Coach Fitzgerald would never let me go out in a game and score 40 points—even though I might have already scored 24 in the first half. He wouldn’t let me take bad shots or show off the fact that now and then those bad shots of mine had a good chance of falling in. Coach encouraged leadership but wouldn’t let me outshine my teammates. That was new because I’d been raised up in the backyard, where it was every man for himself. That wasn’t the Fitzgerald way. He wanted me to know—Dwyane, this isn’t about
you,
it’s about
us.

While this may sound like the basic message given to all younger players, it’s all too often lost as ballers ascend to higher levels. Jack Fitzgerald really drove the idea of team into me and today it’s a big reason why I’m able to play with stars like LeBron James and Chris Bosh—because I believe in team and don’t believe in self.

For his part, Coach Fitzgerald would later say that what he most valued in me was an ability to be fearless. He liked how I, too, would confuse the competition by being the quiet guy on the bench and becoming someone who could tear up the floor and kick ass on the court. He came to the conclusion that I liked challenge, something I was learning about myself. The bigger the game, the bigger the crowd, the tougher the opponent, I used the uneven matchup to prove that I couldn’t be intimidated.

Every now and then, especially in playoffs, Jack Fitzgerald would unleash the hounds in me and tell me just to go out and let loose. On one such occasion I went into the history books for a tournament by scoring 48 points in the morning game and 41 points in the afternoon.

As this development was unfolding during my junior year, out in New Mexico at college, Demetrius started hearing how the team and I were doing. Somewhat skeptical, he let it be known that he would have to come home and see for himself. And so that next summer as soon as he arrived back in Robbins, he offered Donny and me a prime opportunity to win back the pride he’d stolen from us all those years when he used to beat us both together.

We took the battle out into the backyard. The three of us started going at it like in the old days. Demetrius had gotten even stronger. What was different now, besides my height, was that I’d reached another level of confidence. And I was pretty good, too.

So there we were playing in the backyard, going at it full throttle, hoopin’ like madmen, and I just felt that an important rite of passage was before me, a big moment. We were matching each other basket for basket, steal for steal, when at last everything came down to a final push from us, the underdogs. I had the ball in my hands and I took it at Demetrius and went up for the basket and he jumped and before I knew it, I went
higher
than him, elevated out of nowhere and I just dunked on him!

The incredible feeling of disbelief and belief and joy was like—Holy you-know-what!?

Donny’s eyes just about popped out of his head, as if he’d never seen anything like that. We’d just climbed Mount Everest. Dunking on Demetrius was that high of a bar.

And Demetrius pulled back, sweat flowing off him, with the strangest mix of joy and sadness in his eyes. As if this story had been written long ago and was now being enacted. The torch had been passed.

I fell down on the ground and sat there on the grass catching my breath. All these years I never thought that I’d ever get to be as tall as my father. Well, I was about to do that and would grow another two inches by the end of senior year. But dunking on Demetrius meant something much more telling.

Oh, yeah, I thought, it’s time.

W
EDNESDAY
NIGHT

M
ARCH
30, 2011

O
N
THE
AIRPLANE

AFTER A GREAT WIN AGAINST THE WIZARDS, I’M IN MY SEAT on the plane to Minnesota, chuckling to myself over the earlier conversation with the boys. Once again, those little moments of laughter are big reminders of why the fight to have them in my life mattered so much and should matter to all of us dads and moms. Also, two realizations about fatherhood and parenting in general have come at me over the last few hours that are worth noting.

First, of course, is the fact that as dads we sometimes make our own jobs harder than they really should be by insisting that our kids conform to our idea of what makes for their joy. In my various households where I grew up, we may have all wanted similar things but had to find our own paths to what we were good at, as well as what we loved. Demetrius and I are a prime example.

After that day in the backyard, I went on to my senior year and followed down the path of playing ball at the high school and college level, later as a pro. Demetrius returned to play college ball for another year but by then had completed that ride as far as it was going to take him. Then something amazing happened. He returned to Harold L. Richards High School as an assistant varsity coach under John Chappetto—and in 2008 helped guide the Bulldogs to their first state championship. To bring everything full circle at one point, our youngest brother, Kodhamus, was on the team, being coached by Demetrius.

Each of us has our own path. Dads and moms, whether together or not, can support every child’s ability to believe in himself or herself.

And here’s the second thought. Sometimes, in helping our kids pursue their dreams and joys and interests, we don’t have all the tools and skills needed to assist them. At such times, we shouldn’t feel like we have to be the ultimate experts on all aspects of parenting.

As I learned in many different ways over the years, there are always resources for vital information as long as we’re willing to admit we don’t have all the answers.

That’s a lesson, by the way, that you can take to the bank.

Chapter
Six

Marquette

T
UESDAY
AFTERNOON

A
PRIL
5, 2011

A
T
HOME
IN
M
IAMI

“W
E CAN’T ALWAYS DO EVERYTHING WE WANT TO DO,” IS THE answer I offer to Zaire about why I’ve said no to him playing in an actual basketball league this spring.

This has come up in one of our “How was your day?” conversations. Most of our talks since my return have centered on my reassuring them that the road-trip injury sustained in the game against the Nets, a killer inner thigh bruise, was going to get better.

No, I wasn’t going to be able to play in our next game, as the regular season entered its last week. I was going to go for rehab and hope that I’d be back in the game after that. There was a lot of pressure on the team to finish strong in these last games before the playoff. Without getting too worried or too confident, I was just trying to keep an even keel.

And that’s the balance I’m trying to find in this situation with Zaire. Telling my kid no about something that matters so much to him is something I don’t enjoy. I’m still hurting for him that he was prevented from playing or watching me play at my games or even on TV. Whatever he loves, I want to encourage it as motivation. But, then again, since we’ve been talking about setting goals and having a work ethic in general, we have to find the balance together.

When Zaire first asked about joining a basketball team, I told him we would wait and see how he applied himself in school. If all went well, we agreed, he could play on the condition that he had to go out and play for fun. I knew the pressure that would be on him to live up to some expectations because of being my son. He didn’t mind, he said—almost with a bring-it-on attitude. Like father like son? Oh, no, I thought, he’s only nine!

All in all, Zaire and Zion are both adjusting well at home and in their schools. Zion sometimes doesn’t listen to his teachers (or to anyone else for that matter) when he comes up with something he wants to do. Zaire is better at listening and he does want to do the right thing, but between basketball, video games, and girls—yeah, girls, even at his age—he sometimes doesn’t focus on priorities. Or then there are his occasional outbursts when he’s not getting to have the fun, fun, fun that he likes.

Often his schoolwork reflects focus or lack of it.

Hmmm. I’m trying to figure this out. On one day in a particular subject he has an A; and three days later, same subject, same material, he flunks the test. In the instances where he didn’t do well, I know for a fact that he studied.

“Zaire, you are much smarter than me. So your grades should be much better than mine.” My question is whether he has test anxiety like I used to have or trouble retaining information, also one of my own challenges.

He thinks about this and realizes that, no, he is just in too much of a hurry. And on one test he was thinking about a friend of his in class who had a family member that died. He was feeling sad about that.

“Anything else?”

Well, he admits, sometimes the class work is not fun.

Our goal then is to get the focus back on the things we call important—our daily responsibilities, schoolwork, respect, how little steps build habits that lead to success. I just have to be a stickler on those things, I explain to him, pointing out that the daily structure is important because if you wake up in the morning and can’t maintain focus on what’s on the chart, I can see why you might forget to write your assignment down in class. If you’re rushing to go out and play at recess, no mystery that you skipped questions on your test.