A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (41 page)

“Whatever I need to do,” I promised him, “I’m gonna do it.”

After that, I had no problem delivering on whatever was asked—whether it was coming off the bench for Kobe, having to defend like crazy, seizing the right moments to be exciting to the team, dunking, stealing, blocking, and being aggressive and very efficient. Without the ball in my hand a lot of the time, I had to cut and get open so guys could see me. The consensus was that with Chris Paul and myself coming off the bench we were able to be the X factor in giving our team the power it ultimately needed.

As the much-needed Redeem Team we hoped to be, the United States finished first in Group B pool play, winning games against Spain, the reigning world champs, China, and Germany by averages of over 30 points. We went on to the quarterfinals by playing the fourth-place finisher in Group A, Australia, again winning by a sizable margin. In the semifinals we faced Argentina, the team that had won gold and beaten us in 2004. With Argentina’s Manu Ginobili kept quiet because of an injury, we won by an emphatic 20 points. A resurgent Spain had fought its way to the finals and appeared ready for us on August 24 when the gold medal game took place. But as battle-tested as they were, we were even more so—and grabbed the gold with a 118–107 victory.

The stats gave me a little something to gloat about when I ended up being the leading scorer of the Olympic team. That was accomplished while coming off the bench and averaging nineteen minutes each game. But beyond the stats was the reclaimed—and in some cases newfound—recognition that in some ways did more to define me than the climb to Mount Everest had. Headlines across the sports world described me as the Comeback Kid of the 2008 Olympics. U.S. men’s basketball had reclaimed supremacy and I guess that I had, too. On most lists for the top five All USA, I was named first, followed by LeBron James (Cleveland) and Chris Bosh (Toronto), then Kobe Bryant (Los Angeles) and Jason Kidd (Dallas). While I had been friends with Bron and CB ever since we’d come into the draft together five years earlier, our time in Beijing was the most we’d spent together on a team and the chemistry between the three of us on the court was something we all noticed.

We didn’t come up with a plan to play together like that someday on a single team in the NBA. But perhaps the seeds were planted for such a concept to grow later on. And in the meantime, I returned from the Olympics to the Heat’s 2008–2009 season with a fury. In spite of the accolades coming my way after Beijing, I couldn’t relax or take anything for granted. For the first time, I was really about myself, about proving myself with every possession of the ball.

Because I was dealing with so much bullshit off the court—and it would become only more oppressive—basketball became my only outlet. The shy, quiet guy in me was no more. I was mean. I played angry and I dominated. Stats might not matter if you don’t win a championship, but my statistics went nuts as I turned into a scoring machine. After a game early in the season when I scored 40 points, 10 assists, and 5 blocked shots, making me the second player in NBA history to do so, the next record I broke was from scoring 50 points in a game that was lost by the team. (The Heat lost in the end by 20 points.) Then there was the Wilt Chamberlain record of scoring 50 points in a game with 16 assists; I became only the second player after Wilt to attain that. Later, in a double-overtime win against the Chicago Bulls, I scored in the double digits—my seventy-eighth consecutive game of doing so, which meant tying my own franchise record—and again had stats only achieved before by Chamberlain: 48 points (71.4 percent shooting), 12 assists, 6 rebounds, 4 steals, and 3 blocks.

Besides leading the league in scoring for the season I became the first Heat player to score an average of 30.2 points a game and the first NBA player to attain 2,000 points, 500 assists, 100 steals, and 100 blocks in a season. By the end of the season, I had achieved what I and those close to me felt was definitely a MVP kinda year. Still, I came in third in the voting for league MVP, behind LeBron and Kobe.

If that had been the only moment of disappointment in the spring of 2009, I would have been on my knees in gratitude. As usual, this was once again a reason to play with more firepower, as I had all season—explosive, tapping all the anger and nervous energy churning inside of me. I was so grateful for every game minute I had to play, I wanted games to last as long as possible so I didn’t have to go back to the vengeance of all vengeance that was being cooked up.

The season was seen widely as a serious success after the Heat came back from winning only fifteen games the previous year and then made it into the first round of the playoffs the very next season—making us the first team to do that in thirty years. In that round, we ran up against the Atlanta Hawks, a really tough team, and we just didn’t have enough to go further. Nonetheless, we were also redeemed and ready to continue the rebuilding we had begun.

Without a doubt, I felt energized by these fresh lessons in what can happen when you put your mind to something with focus and clarity about the goals being undertaken. In the middle of the onslaught, I could have sat it out or had my heart taken from me. But I still had too many people who believed in me not to battle back and be the athlete and the man they knew me to be.

STUBBORNLY, AND THAT COULD BE THE CAPRICORN SIDE coming out, up until November 2008 in those early stages of the season, I kept the faith that Siohvaughn would come to her senses and agree to shared time with the boys. Finally, thinking I was asking for a last resort, I sought court intervention because nothing else had worked. The orders were either ignored outright or followed partially but not completely so as to deny me the only thing that mattered—time with Zaire and Zion.

Over the next two and a half years, order after order, motion after motion would be treated as if the law didn’t apply to her. Whether or not I was allowed to speak to the boys, mainly Zaire of course, had to do with whether his mom would allow it. My calls were placed every other day or more. We tried e-mail and texting and we set up a prepaid cell phone for Zaire. His mom later told the court that it was my fault for not calling the boys over weeks at a time and that the prepaid phone was not suitable for a child who couldn’t manage time or money.

Similarly, when the court asked about the difficulty I was having, Siohvaughn said that visitation happened mostly without incident. One of the judges overseeing that part of the divorce found just the opposite, that the last-minute struggles during pickup and drop-off was causing stress to the kids. The finding, as it was described in the custody judgment, would eventually be that she was engaging in an “escalating effort to alienate” the boys from me and, increasingly, from everyone in my family.

Finally, an order was given that I could see the kids for Christmas 2008 in Miami. Siohvaughn had not wanted them to come to Florida but as she couldn’t withhold her consent, she ended up accompanying the boys and staying with them in the house we still owned. I did have a few outings planned with the kids, and we talked about fun things to do for the rest of the holidays, when I scheduled times to pick them up and continue my visitation. On Christmas Eve day, when we were going to go out, she called to inform me that Zaire was very sick and Zion was coming down with something, and they shouldn’t leave the house.

Instead, I went to see them there. When I got to the gate and texted her to open up, there was no response. The next thing I knew, local police arrived in force, speeding up as if a crime were about to unfold, approaching the car cautiously, hands on guns, to ask what I was doing there. Apparently she had called to say that a suspicious vehicle was parked outside and that she felt threatened by who might be in it.

When I told them the situation, they escorted me inside and I was, at last, able to see my sons. However, Siohvaughn convinced the officers she didn’t feel safe and asked them to stay until I left, just in case. Whatever message was sent to the police officers who had a car outside until the time came to go, I can only imagine. The judge in the custody phase later described this as “drama-trauma,” noting, “The presence of the police certainly has a chilling effect on the visitation parent and sends a bad message to minor children.”

My original hope had been to take Zaire and Zion with me to see their grandmother Jolinda, who was in Miami, as well as Dada and some of their cousins who wanted to see them. That wasn’t permitted; nor were the cousins allowed to come see the boys—who incidentally didn’t seem to be under the weather in the least. Since my visitation was supposed to have been for several days, including Christmas Day, I fully expected to be able to pick them up and have them come with me for special activities, including a Wade’s World Foundation event dedicating a house to a family that had been burned out of their home and that would have been inspiring, along with adventures planned for my boys who were hurting in this whole process. Nope.

Those kids, as the story went, had been so sick and up all night that she had to take them to the hospital emergency room in the morning. This was more drama-trauma, since the hospital records indicated there was nothing seriously wrong. Aside from the fact that Siohvaughn had been successful in thwarting the court order, as the judge later stated, she reported that I had come alone for a Christmas visit that day. That wasn’t true; in fact, I had declined going through another ordeal that felt to me like a setup. The sad truth that nobody could change was that a six-year-old and a toddler were kept from having a loving visit with their dad. And it was Christmas. I hadn’t seen them in all this time and couldn’t even give them their presents until they returned to Chicago and we shipped them out.

While all this was taking place, I was continuing my intense level of play in our regular season—taking all my fear and frustration out like a battering ram on the basketball court. What was happening with my boys was a constant in my mind. Obviously most fans had no idea of what I was going through, even if the divorce showed up here and there in the news. And there was much more coming.

In hindsight, I should have guessed that my desire to be happy and out there dating, maybe even having a serious romance, would not go unpunished.

BREATHTAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL AS SHE IS, GABRIELLE UNION and I had started our relationship as friends.

Early in my career and hers, our paths had crossed a few times, including in Miami in 2007 at a Superbowl party that we were asked to cohost. During 2008, we started running into each other again, surprised that we had so many friends in common. Eventually, we struck up a friendship on the phone and I reached out to her for encouragement with the challenges that were happening in my life. We probably didn’t become involved romantically until early 2009.

Did I sweep Gabrielle off her feet from the start? Not to any degree she’d ever admit. Gorgeous, funny, intelligent, and soulful, she was an actress I’d watched through most of her career. Not to mention a former high school all-star point guard! As we got to know each other, we were mostly cordial in the beginning, but during the time we spent talking on the phone, we really got to know each other. We weren’t in a rush to start dating either. I was in Miami; she was in Los Angeles. Over time, we found out how compatible we are and, more than anything, that we genuinely like each other—one of the little-known secrets to lasting relationships.

When Siohvaughn went on a character-assassination rampage against me in this period, Gabby just encouraged me to keep to the high ground, as I had been doing. She was wise to remind me of what I knew—that even if terrible things were being said about me, trying to hit back and disparaging my sons’ mother would be hurtful to them.

One of the hardest hits on my character, and one that I couldn’t let go unanswered, came on January 17, 2009, my twenty-seventh birthday, when I learned that Siohvaughn and her lawyers had filed a proposed amendment to the divorce petition claiming damages against me because I had been unfaithful during our marriage and had given her an STD. A what? Um, that was news to me. If she had contracted one, it wasn’t from me. In fact, I went through a series of tests and submitted medical records to prove it. In early February, the damage some of these accusations caused led me to file a defamation suit against her.

The claims were discredited and her suit was eventually withdrawn. But before that happened, the gossip went global and was relentless. Not being paranoid or anything, I was pretty sure that when I was out and about people were giving me dirty looks.

In the months that followed, once Gab and I were seen as a couple, the media feeding frenzy that had been started by Siohvaughn focused on my girlfriend as the vixen home wrecker responsible for turning me against my high school sweetheart and abandoning my boys.

By that point, with the divorce marathon nearly a year old and getting nowhere, I should have toughened up. But I was shocked, and more than anything, I was hurt for Gabrielle. Her world was different from the fish bowl you live in as an NBA player, where you can expect to get trashed by untruths that come with the territory. When I took a hit on my career and my brand, I could generally hope that after a few news cycles the dust would soon settle. Gabby had to confront the untruths a different way and she did lose some opportunities, it’s sad to say.

We grew closer during the deluge. Because we live in a world where people believe what they hear, taking the high road is not always rewarded. Between the rumors and the accusations that were out there, even public statements made to set the record straight weren’t always read in full. Even when false claims were soon retracted, it was often too late to unring the bell, as they say.

Any hope of a reasonable compromise with Siohvaughn about anything went out the window. She so angered one judge by failing to appear in court that she was later taken into custody and ordered to pay ten thousand dollars bail for her release. She only became more defiant. What got me through on a day-to-day basis, besides the support of my girlfriend, my family, and of my close circle, was the same focus that had driven me in preparing for the Olympics.