A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (30 page)

At the main event, I didn’t get the John Wooden Award. In fact, I finished fifth in the voting. I thought that my stock should have been higher, but going under the radar was nothing new. And it was still an honor being in contention.

On the way home, Coach Crean didn’t bring up the NBA move at all. We barely talked the whole flight back. He was tired, he said, and since we had taken a red-eye, we both just went to sleep. After arriving early the next morning, I had to get to class in a few hours so he drove me back to my apartment with enough time left for me to clean up and be on my way.

After pulling up to the curb, Coach, wearing a serious expression, leaned over to me and stuck out his hand.

I looked back in confusion—what was he trying to do?

Without an explanation, he grabbed my hand, shook it, and then finally said, “I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done for Marquette University.” He elaborated on what the past three seasons had meant to him. Eventually he came back to the fact that what he had heard from the scouts was that I was a projected lottery pick. “So you remember that I told you: that if that was the case, I was going to have you pack your bags?” He paused. “And I’d be the first one to help you pack them. I just want to say congratulations.”

My heart was pounding. Words wouldn’t come close to describing my excitement, because in my heart I wanted to go, but I also didn’t want to disappoint him, and had anticipated a more gut-wrenching conversation. Instead, he let me off easy.

“The one promise you have to make is that you cannot announce it. I want you to finish the school year. Keep going to class and focus on your education. You leave here the same way you came in—as a good student.”

Smiling, I remembered that redshirt year and how my academic eligibility had improved so consistently that I soon had the highest GPA of the starting line of our team. Coach Crean had made that possible.

I promised him to do as he asked. He didn’t want me to go the way some other guys have done who enter the draft and stop their schoolwork, or don’t even go to class, and basically drop out. Keeping the promise, I didn’t announce for quite a while. Eventually it got to be too much to have to lie. Everybody around the school was bothering me and asking if I was coming back. Teachers would interrupt their own lectures to ask me for an update in the middle of class. The drumbeat for an answer was terrible! So after a month of this, I conferred with Coach C and arranged to hold a press conference so I could announce my decision.

By this point in time we were already late in May and I was setting up meetings with different sports agents. For a kid from Robbins, just twenty-one years old, this was all foreign to me and I only knew to go by my instincts.

Just as I had never forgotten how Coach Crean was the first recruiting phone call from a college, I was impressed by Henry Thomas, who originally called during the regular season, even before March Madness. Hank, as he was known, had followed my high school stats and had heard from my AAU coach that I had potential and that he should “keep an eye on Wade.” He did just that and eventually reached out to both Coach Crean and my mother-in-law, introducing himself with a packet of materials: articles, a brochure, and an impressive résumé.

Hank showed genuine interest, first by calling to speak to Darlene, who, once I’d made my decision to leave after junior year, helped him arrange a meeting with me at Marquette. Actually, this was on the same day as my press conference to publicly announce leaving for the NBA. Besides Tom Crean and my mother-in-law, Siohvaughn attended, as did Tragil. We all loved Hank’s enthusiasm and conviction that I was going to be a first-round draft pick. While others at the meeting asked more questions than me, I listened intently to Hank as he talked about himself, his background, and how he liked to work.

Hank Thomas was nothing like the stereotypical sports agent that I had been expecting to meet. Some of the other agents whom I later met could have been modeled right after Jerry McGuire. Tom Cruise look-alikes and everything. Not Hank. He did appear to be much younger than his age (somewhere around fifty) at the time. He was cool, down-to-earth, perceptive, energetic, yet protective and fatherly. From Chicago, too. Hank had played basketball in high school. As captain he had led his team to the city championship before being given a scholarship to play for Bradley University. After taking a course in business law, taught by a professor who was also a sports agent, Hank found his calling—a way to combine his love for basketball with a business career.

“Everything I did from that point on was to be an agent,” he told us. That included not only getting his law degree but also coaching during summer leagues. His first job after law school was as a tax accountant. Four years later, after taking a teaching fellowship at DePaul’s law school, while pursuing a master’s in law and taxation, he created a sports law course. Hank explained that by teaching sports law, he would have to learn everything he needed to know once he was fortunate enough to get a client. That day arrived in 1989 after he joined a law firm as a practicing lawyer and was approached by Tim Hardaway for representation. Before long, Hank’s success on behalf of Tim led to opportunities for him to become a full-time agent. He went on to have his own company, which he ran for ten years before selling it to CSMG—whom he had just joined before meeting me.

What impressed me most about Hank in that first meeting was the time he had taken to get to know my track record. He pointed to my skill level, and compared the work ethic I had, and the ability to work harder than anyone if need be, to Hardaway’s—a great compliment. But more than anything, I appreciated his approach to developing opportunities beyond only negotiating contracts. A career in the NBA wasn’t an end unto itself, he observed, but a means to achieve a great running start in life—a first really great job after college. He explained: “The opportunity is more than to be an NBA player, but to use that as the leverage point that will allow you to take care of yourself and your family for the rest of your life.”

Tragil, still not fully in favor of me leaving without a degree, asked how Hank had helped clients establish foundations. She also asked him about his own practice of tithing or giving back. This was the main question she had for all the agents I was considering. Hank spoke about his faith in a quiet, personal way that connected for us, how he tithed with money and with his time, and he shared with us his values of giving back to the community. As a father himself, he talked about me having a positive influence in promoting fatherhood. Tragil and I could see that he knew where we came from, without knowing the full story at the time, and that he understood the desire I had to be able to make a difference for kids and families in struggle.

Without giving Hank Thomas my official decision to sign with him or not, we invited him to attend the press conference that day. I appreciated him giving me encouraging feedback afterward and letting me know I could call on him with any questions.

The other sports agents I met were all excellent. But the one thing that Hank Thomas conveyed that the others hadn’t touched on was the sense that he looked to help cultivate the whole person. When I told Tragil that Hank was my guy and she asked me what clinched it, I told her, “I went to bed, slept on it, and woke up knowing.”

Call it a vibe, a gut instinct. I just knew. That became one of the most important and best decisions of my career.

Surprised but clearly delighted, Hank sprang into action on my behalf.

The first order of business was to line up tryouts. This involved reaching out to certain teams while fielding offers from certain teams reaching out to me. Hank’s confidence in me was contagious. These individual workouts, he believed, could be treated like a job interview. That meant not only getting ready for drills on the court and being thrown into actual practice with members of the team but also preparing for sit-downs with coaches, general managers, and other key personnel. Hank made sure that I knew their rosters and any history that might be relevant for an interview.

We knew going into the process that as teams were starting to take a closer look at me, my draft status was somewhat questionable because I was a ’tweener—still between a point guard and shooting guard in height. The question to Hank was “So what’s his real position?”

This was a real hurdle to overcome, even though I’ve always been a shooting guard. Hank believed that teams did themselves a disservice trying to fit players into strict categories. But that did happen to me to an extent. From the initial hoopla after the Final Four I dropped a bit and was not in as certain a position as that of, say, Chris Bosh, the other player Hank was representing in the same draft. The input from the number crunchers was that I could go as high as fourth and as low as twentieth.

My job was obviously to shoot high. I went on to work out for a crazy number of teams in a two-week span—something like thirteen teams in fifteen days. Most of the workouts went well in my estimation. On some I did really well; others were just okay. The Memphis workout wasn’t great for me. Hank heard that I didn’t play particularly well and that wasn’t a surprise. But the rest of the feedback was good. I felt strongly about the possibility that I could go to my hometown Bulls, who had the seventh pick that year. As for the Miami Heat, when I called Hank my feeling was “I didn’t awe nobody.”

With the fifth pick, Miami would have a jump on Chicago. But unlike other franchises that might telegraph their interest ahead of time, the Heat were known for playing their cards close to the vest. One thing I did know was that the little I saw of Miami was something out of a dream. Year-round summer? That was, after all, my favorite season. My thought was, I could get used to that! Then again, no invitations appeared to be in the offing.

From Miami, I went directly to Orlando, where my workout was very good. The coach, Doc Rivers, had gone to Marquette, so there was a connection that appealed to me. But Orlando had a fifteenth pick and I hoped to go higher than that.

Still, I had to work out with everybody that was in the lottery or close to it. With three days left until the actual draft and more workouts to go, I called Hank and said, “I wanna take these last days to just chill.” I was confident that whatever I’d done so far should have been enough. What I’d done over the past two seasons at Marquette and in March Madness, plus how I had showed up at the workouts, ought to have shown the serious buyers what kind of player I was and how I’d fit with their teams. There are times when you have to keep grinding and other times, like this one, when you have to know your worth, knowing that others will, too.

Hank was in agreement. His next assignment, as I went back to Chicago to get my head together and prepare for huge changes, was to obtain permission for sixteen-month-old Zaire to attend the June 26 ceremonies in New York City. Apparently, players as young as me didn’t typically have children.

There were many family members and friends whom I would have loved to have had there with me. The same group of fellas from home—Marcus, Vinny, my cousin Antoine (Wug), and great friends from college—had been part of the home team all this time. Then, of course, there was Dad, my first coach, and Mom, my first and most devoted cheerleader, and Grandma, my first mentor. The problem for my mom was that per the conditions of her parole she couldn’t leave the state. Though I could have argued that Dad and my brothers should have been there, there were only so many spots and I’d pushed the envelope already to bring Zaire. It didn’t occur to me that Siohvaughn was making the decision about who to have there and that my family, other than Tragil, weren’t priorities. That wasn’t her fault; it was mine. The whole crew really should have been with me.

But the logistics were beyond my pay grade at the time. The only extra tickets I could get were in general seating and those went to a few of the fellas. With a limited amount of places at the table, I decided that along with my wife and mother-in-law, Tragil should attend, as should my coaches, Jack Fitzgerald and Tom Crean. And Hank would be going back and forth between my table and Chris Bosh’s.

During the workout period, I had gotten the chance to meet some of the other players who were in the draft. Chris—or CB as I would later call him—was entering the draft after a year at Georgia Tech. Since Hank represented the both of us in the draft, CB and I had become friendly at the start, grabbing dinner together and exchanging contact info to stay in touch no matter where we ended up. One of the things I would come to admire so much about CB is how different he can be from everyone else on and off the court. He doesn’t care that he’s different. If everyone else is listening to music to get ready for a game, he’ll be reading. I love his game of skill and finesse, but I also know he has a place where he gets fired up, and plays with a passion that teams feed off of, and I love that even more.

Before heading to different cities for tryouts, I had met LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony at the weekend of medical and physical evaluations in Chicago that were required before our workouts took place.

As I was preparing to have my knee examined, the first player I met was this young man who walked into a waiting area and introduced himself. That was LeBron. For an eighteen-year-old high school phenom whom everyone was talking about, he was surprisingly down-to-earth and approachable. As time went on, I was always impressed by LeBron’s gracious personality. When you go to his hotel room or house, he’s the guy who offers you cookies or pretzels or whatever you want and then gets it for you! L.B., a.k.a. Bron, as I would also call him, is a great host. Most of us guys are lazy—like, “Want something to drink? Go get it in the fridge!” Not LeBron. He was that way from the start and never changed.

Carmelo Anthony was also someone I’d gotten to know early on in the draft process. During March Madness, I had watched him and Syracuse win the championship and had been out on Bourbon Street during the celebration to congratulate him. Once you’ve met Melo in person, you can’t
not
like him. In fact, as I would later say, Carmelo Anthony is so cool and so, well, Melo, that if you could choose to have a personality—like in a video game when you can create your own character—you’d want to be him. He is just who he is, bringing that Puerto Rican charm even into the game.