A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (29 page)

Mom would say again and again, in later years, that she found her strength behind the walls. Because through the solitary confinement she was able to commune intimately with God and come to her understanding of “binding and loosing,” as it is explained in the New Testament, she sought the path of self-healing before ministering to others. She began by writing down what are known as warfare prayers. Mom put it this way: “I lived a life of fasting behind the walls. I learned to be a warrior. I built up a bulldog mentality. I hate the Devil and I found out he don’t like me.”

After Mom moved into the prison’s general population, her ministry evolved naturally just by her sharing her story. That was the journey she continued in studying to become an ordained pastor after her release. Her message to all was simple, whether they were struggling with addiction or hopelessness, whether it was a family member or loved one. “To anyone caught in a bad place, I’m here to tell people not to give up. My kids never gave up on me. They prayed for me. Believe in the power of prayer. I’m living proof.”

Jolinda Wade would say that on March 8, 2003, when her hair got messed up in front of the cameras, the road to her redemption was not at its end, but it was also not just starting. She’d come through this last regular season, at long last, as the MVP of her life. Now she was gearing up for a championship run. One of many to come.

THE CURTAIN ROSE ON MARQUETTE’S DRAMATIC 2003 quest for the NCAA basketball championship in Indianapolis, Indiana, on March 20. Before tip-off, more than a few backstories were getting ready to collide on the court in a first round that would determine our fate as well as that of our opponent, the College of the Holy Cross. At a conference record of 24–5 we were third-seeded; Holy Cross was seeded fourteenth. Marquette hadn’t gotten past the opening round since 1996; the Holy Cross Crusaders hadn’t gotten past that hump in decades. Though the expectation was that we were in a stronger position to win, part of the madness of this March tournament is that many a favored team has been known to fall to a lower-ranked team. In fact, in the two previous years Holy Cross had come close to knocking out Kansas (in 2002) and Kentucky (in 2001), both powerhouses. The Crusaders might have been on an even more potent recent winning spree than us, having lost only one of the last twenty-one games. In other words, the end of this story couldn’t be predicted or written until the game was under way.

An interesting twist to the tale was that the head coach for the Holy Cross Crusaders was Ralph Willard. Coach Crean had been his assistant coach when the two were at Western Kentucky and Pittsburgh. How was this all going to play out? Anybody’s guess, anybody’s game.

What I did know, within minutes after finding our rhythm, while I found myself getting into early foul trouble, was that my teammate and road roommate, Travis Diener, had the hot hand. Like we’d never seen from him. The third-highest scorer for us during the regular season, Travis went on in this game to have a career high of 29 points—which included six three-pointers. Often underrated, he raised his game and lifted the Golden Eagles with an intensity and gutsiness that had to be intimidating to the Crusaders. We led most of the game until just before the end. With only twelve seconds left, we had started to pull away when Holy Cross cut our lead to three points. But then we scored in response and went on to win the game, 72–68.

We had done it! We had made it out of the first round!

Two days later, still in Indianapolis, we faced Missouri, who had won a squeaker against Southern Illinois in their first round. Steve Novak, then a freshman on our team, six foot nine and formidable, came off the bench and rose to the neck-and-neck challenge, as did I, going on to contribute 24 points, 8 rebounds, and 7 assists for the game. With the clock ticking down to the final buzzer, the score was tied at 80–80 when Missouri managed to get off a shot. Everything suddenly switched into slow-mo as we watched the ball rise from the key, arching toward the basket and . . . a miss! With new life, we charged into overtime and literally were perfect. Firing on all pistons, we won with a golden score of 101–92. Missouri’s coach was quoted as saying, “I’ve never seen a team shoot perfectly in overtime.”

Cue the music. We were on our way to the Sweet Sixteen, last reached by Marquette in the 1994 run, which Duke stopped. No stopping us this time. Not after coming this far. The pressure ratcheted up considerably as we traveled to Minneapolis for the semifinals of the Midwest Region, where we would face the second-seeded Pittsburgh Panthers, known for being a very physical team.

Normally I would welcome that kind of combat. But whatever was happening, and sometimes it just happens, I had a terrible first half, scoring all of two points. We were losing badly enough at halftime that when we went into the locker room, the game wasn’t looking good. Coach C went off on everyone, especially me.

And then he gave me a look I’d never seen in his eyes before, one of those eye-of-the-tiger looks, with a do-or-die expression on his face as he said something I never saw coming: “Dwyane, listen, if this is going to be your last game, just go put it on the line.”

For a moment I almost didn’t understand. Coach had never talked to me about the possibility of my playing on the next level. It had been an unspoken subject, raised only recently by the ESPN guys, who had been showing some of my highlights from March Madness and comparing me to some of the other elite college athletes gaining NBA attention so far. A few of the analysts called me the best college basketball player in the nation but others were still like,
Dwyane who?
The buzz so far was mostly for Carmelo Anthony and the unlikely wins he was giving his team, Syracuse.

So this was the first time Coach C had raised the question, something that I wouldn’t have brought up out of respect, and without saying it in so many words, he gave me his vote of confidence. The message was that I had fulfilled his hopes and had a shot of going further, and could do so even at a time when another season for Marquette was on the table. It was between the lines that I heard him tell me—
Son, you’re going to the NBA, so leave your mark now. Leave it out there on what could be your last college game.

Tom Crean knew me and knew how to flip the switch that sent my engine into overdrive. I went out in the second half and scored 22 points and the team rallied, putting away the Panthers easily. The headlines in some of the syndicated sports outlets read, “Dwyane Wade probably ended any debate over whether he is ready for the NBA.” One article said that I had turned the game into a personal highlight film.

Besides the thrill of winning the Sweet Sixteen and now advancing with my team to the Elite Eight, I was on top of the world because of what Coach Crean had said to me. I’d revisit that moment often over the years to come, reminding myself to treat every game as if it could be the last one and to always put it all on the line. I also took away the lesson that I would have to relearn at different stages in my career, that just because you’re having a bad first half, it doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have a bad second half. A metaphor for life as well!

Two days later, March 29, again in Minneapolis, we advanced to the Elite Eight for the Midwest Region Finals, which put us in the role of David versus the Goliath of Kentucky. The Wildcats had swashbuckled their way into March Madness on a twenty-six-game winning streak. Kentucky was a huge, storied basketball program and, in everyone’s mind, we had no shot. I went out, playing with a little piece of everyone who had ever believed in me in my heart, and just did what Coach Crean had said to do in the last game. This was when it hit me that I really might be leaving—that this could be my last college game. All the NBA talk from outsiders hadn’t gotten to me, but I believed the reality coming from my coach and played like it.

Kentucky didn’t see us coming. We had nothing to lose and elevated our game to become the proverbial little team that could. One of Kentucky’s main weapons, another future NBA player, Keith Bogans (now with the Chicago Bulls), was playing with a sprained ankle. Kentucky would later say he wasn’t at his best. Mainly they were overconfident. When we came out to the court to warm up, I could see they weren’t taking us seriously. I nodded in their direction as I talked to my teammates, saying, “Look at them down there. They think this is going to be an easy game. Let’s go show them what Marquette can do.”

And we put it on ’em, because we believed that we could win, and then we won one for the history books—by fourteen points!

Unbeknownst to me that night, this was the game that really put me on the personal radar screen of Pat Riley. Since Riley went to Kentucky, he would have had special interest in the game anyway, and while watching the game to see how his school did in the tournament, he apparently happened to see me dismantle them. Little did I know how my journey ahead had been shaped by that game.

Though I knew as the minutes flew by that I was playing well, I didn’t know how well. Finally, after the game was over and we started running around the court in celebration, enjoying the tradition of getting to cut down the nets and being awarded shirts and hats for the Final Four—our next stop—an awestruck reporter asked, “You know that you had a triple double?”

Wait. Did he just say a triple double? I actually said something like “Huh?”

He repeated his statement that in the game we had just played, I had a triple double: 29 points, 11 rebounds, and 11 assists. In a daze, I learned that a triple double had only been recorded three times before in the history of the tournament. One of the previous records belonged to none other than Magic Johnson, for Michigan State. Still in disbelief, I turned to one of my teammates and blurted out, “I got a triple double!”

He was as flabbergasted as me. Triple doubles were that rare. Our interview wound up being a comedy routine. But our convincing win over Kentucky was anything but funny to Kansas, the powerhouse basketball team we met in the Final Four in New Orleans on April 5.

Not only was Kansas a better team than us, but they did their legwork and prepared for us. We had never played against a team with their style or their speed. They used that disadvantage to their extreme advantage. Whenever we scored they’d get the ball out right away and hustle down and score. We hadn’t seen anything like that. Most of our opponents we could outhustle with enough time to go set up our defense. Not Kansas. They didn’t let us set up at all. And we got clobbered. Smashed. Killed. We lost to the Jayhawks by thirty-three points.

So many mixed emotions accompanied our trip home from the Final Four. We had to feel triumphant. For Marquette, a small school, to have come that far—a feat only surpassed by the Golden Eagles in 1976–77, when we’d won the championship—was to scale a mountaintop, an opportunity for us to play on the biggest stage of college basketball. But the loss was also a heartbreaker. You get that far, you have a singular focus: you want to win. You want to bring back the trophy for your team and your school. You want to climb Mount Everest and feel what only a select few others have experienced. Yet we had put Tom Crean’s Golden Eagles in the minds of the basketball world from that tournament forward. The AP poll ranked us at number six in the nation after our showing.

The AP also named me a First Team All-American, the first for Marquette to have a player so named since 1978. The United States Basketball Writers First Team All-American was another accolade I received, along with being named a National Association of Basketball Coaches Second Team All-American, as well as being nominated by ESPN as 2002 Shooting Guard of the Year, among other amazing distinctions.

We all took home the sweet with the bitter.

Coach Crean did turn out to be right. The game against Kansas (who went on to the tournament finals and lost to Syracuse) would be my last college game. But I didn’t know that on the trip home by any means. Getting to that decision would require some intense deliberation. And nothing Coach said or indicated in the near aftermath even hinted at what I should be thinking about my decision.

Before I could begin to process where this could be headed, I needed to go home and see my family and then lay my head on a pillow to sleep on it. My best decisions have always been made that way. When the moment came, I would listen to guidance that I trusted, go to bed, pray about it, sleep, and then wake up in the morning and know what to do.

“SO HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT NEXT YEAR?”

Coach Crean brought up the question during a flight to Los Angeles, where he was accompanying me for a week of events before the April 12 presentation of the 2002–2003 John Wooden Award, given to the most outstanding collegiate basketball player of the year.

More to the point, he added, “Have you decided what you want to do?”

I knew this conversation needed to happen since nothing had been said yet. As one of the finalists being flown out, I felt fortunate to have Coach C with me. But I was also nervous. Too many unknowns remained. Did the chance of being able to support my family make up for not finishing my degree? If I threw my hat in the ring and found no serious suitors, would I blow later opportunities after another year of college basketball? Answering as unsurely as I felt, I said, “Yeah, I mean, I’m kinda in between.”

Coach Crean nodded and took a deep breath. “Fine,” he began. “This is what we should do over this trip. You’re going to make a list of the pros and cons of coming to school next year or leaving. And I’ll do my job to get people’s consensus about you as a draft pick.”

I smiled, thankful yet overwhelmed.

Coach continued, “If you’re seen as a lottery pick, then we know what to do. If not, we’ll have a decision to make.”

With that in my mind, I spent the week savoring the possibilities, hanging out with fellow finalists who were already projected to go to the NBA, and starting to get a feel for how I would maybe thrive in that atmosphere. By the end of my stay I had stars in my eyes and was thinking,
Man, I do want to go to the NBA!