A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (21 page)

Pretty much all the boxes at DePaul earned check marks from me. That is, until the end of the interview with the coach when I had an opportunity to ask questions myself. The one question I asked him, as I did at every school, was simple but significant: “If I don’t pass my ACT will that change things?”

A pause followed. The coach said that if I couldn’t pass the ACT, that would mean that I wouldn’t be eligible to play until my junior year. But, he explained, they didn’t think with their roster that I’d be ready until then anyway. They had Q and another guy who was more seasoned.

I sat in the coach’s office and tried to maintain composure. That was not what I wanted to hear. What I was looking for was a belief in me no matter what happened, a sense of “we want you and we’ll work with you and do whatever it takes.” DePaul wasn’t making that offer.

So then came the visit to Illinois State. Talk about rolling out the red carpet. First off, I loved the head coach, Tom Richardson—great person, great knowledge of the game. He later went to coach at Vanderbilt. When he came to high school to see me play, after our interview, Coach Richardson challenged me to a shoot-off. And proceeded to beat me! Well, not by much.

Then came the visit, starting with the helicopter that was sent to pick me up and bring me to campus and then return me after the weekend was over. My eyes were wide open. When I walked into the gym, there was a full-on presentation with my own jersey and my name in the starting lineup, and music, pomp, and circumstance. The players were cool, too. They immediately made me feel at home and escorted me from one fun activity to the next. There was a big college football game and a memorable party. I’d never been to anything like those events in my life before. Needless to say, after all that royal treatment, Illinois State clearly had the most appeal.

The main hitch was that I wanted to play basketball at a higher level than where they were. And again there was no assurance about what would happen if I didn’t pass my ACT.

Ironically, the visit to Marquette was boring. Oh yeah—and cold.
Very
cold. If Milwaukee could get that chilly in October, I could only imagine what it was going to be like in January. They assigned me to be shown around by Cordell Henry, the player that Coach Adams had brought me to watch previously, and the two of us didn’t do much. No going out to parties the first night. No big fuss. The main event, Midnight Madness, was fun. This was my first time to participate in this traditional kickoff of the official collegiate basketball season, falling usually in mid-October. As it so happened, in an effort to rebuild the program, Tom Crean had only just instituted this as a Marquette tradition, making it a first for the university as well. During the pep rally before the clock struck midnight and ushered in Marquette’s season, I was shown a lot of love and felt the genuine Golden Eagle spirit. But if fun was going to be the criteria, Illinois State had my vote in the bag.

The moment of truth for me occurred during my parting interview with Coach Crean. In his early thirties, Tom Crean wasn’t a bad-looking guy, with his great head of dark hair and hip glasses. Smart and energetic, he was physically fit and notably tan in an athletic, outdoorsy way—even though, frankly, I saw that he was terrible as an actual player. Not his calling. Coach Crean was married to Joani Harbaugh, San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh’s sister, and, as a member of that extended family, could have been mistaken for any of the good-looking Harbaugh guys. His most noticeable trait, however, was an intense power of observation. Like he was capable of reading your mind.

Known as a keen evaluator of talent and for his top-notch recruiting abilities, he asked me questions that showed depth in my view. I liked that. Besides, he had already shown interest by making me his first call and by being my first call. Most of my questions had been answered already over the course of the visit. Then, finally, I looked straight at him and asked, “If I don’t pass my ACT, if I’m in trouble when the last scores come in, what happens then? Are you guys prepared to stick with me?”

Without hesitation, Tom Crean nodded and said, “Absolutely. We are committed to you as a person first, even more so than you as an athlete. We believe in you.”

Later, I found out that Coach C probably didn’t have the right to say that and he had to go back to the school to make sure that he could stand by that. No matter, I was sold all the same.

Overall, the values of the Jesuit Catholic school appealed to me, especially the emphasis on being of service to others. Also meaningful was the Marquette motto,
Cura Personalis,
or “care for the whole person.” Here was a college where I could flourish on the court
and
in the classroom.

Marquette had my vote. But the excitement and relief that should have accompanied my decision wasn’t there. In spite of Tom Crean’s assurance that they would stand by me no matter what, I was so disappointed when I learned midway through my last basketball season at Richards that my second ACT scores had only shown modest improvement from the first time. Not enough to pass.

I had one more shot. Everyone was counting on me. Failure wasn’t an option.

ONE OF THE SECRETS TO GREAT COACHING, AS WELL AS PARENTING, goes back to the old song about accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. That was a guiding philosophy for Coach Fitzgerald and Coach Adams. With me they might have played good cop/bad cop now and then. But once senior season was off and running, they placed full trust in my own process of self-evaluation. They saw me as a leader, a player-coach, and encouraged me to be the expert on the ground, responsible not only for decisions on the court but for motivating the rest of the team to play smart as well as hard.

Individually, I knew how to turn up the dial on the court and was able to put a page or two in the high school history books that year. Ending up with an average of 27 points and 11 rebounds per game, I set school records as a senior for the most points and steals in a season.

In my personal life, I tried to accentuate the positive and, because I had no power to eliminate some of the negatives, I trained myself to ignore them. Not so healthy in the long run. Maybe not so healthy in the short run, either.

Be that as it may, I continued to avoid the ruckus going on at our house by spending more time at Siohvaughn’s. When I was a high school senior, she had already left for her freshman year at Eastern Illinois University. But her mom generously extended the invitation for me to come by, study over there, and enjoy the quiet, as well as the meals and supportive conversation, and stay over.

Darlene genuinely wanted to help, I thought. She would ask me to do odd jobs, anything from changing lightbulbs to taking out the trash, and then would pay me for it. That was a way to put a little money in my pocket without making me a charity case.

The choice to spend more time at Siohvaughn’s house, even without her there, was simpler than others might have thought. That was an opportunity for me to not have the worry of the phone or the electricity being turned off or the tension of being in an unstable environment. And perhaps because I knew that the next year I’d be leaving home anyway, Darlene’s house felt like a place where I could begin to make the transition to the big life just around the corner in my dreams.

As I’ve thought about this in recent times, I’ve come to recognize that relationships matter in your life at certain stages and may be exactly what you need at the time. But often those relationships can run their course or you can outgrow them. In the same way, I felt that Dad had been there in my life when I needed him and had given me the lasting tools to survive in this world. In fact, my dad had probably helped to push me out the door without even having that as a conscious goal. I had a vision for getting out of that life of hardship, as far away as I could, and I don’t think he would have wanted anything different for me in the end.

To the best of my knowledge, Dad didn’t take offense that I wasn’t around as much as in the past. He and I were never estranged or anything. His home with Bessie remained my official place of residence. But once I graduated from high school, I was more or less out of there.

Later on, he admitted to feeling left out of some discussions about the direction of my life. In being honest, he did recall being confused about why my girlfriend’s mother would be more involved than him and my stepmom. But Dad did want the best for me and never said anything.

TRAGIL WAS EXCITED ABOUT MY CELEBRITY STATUS IN THIS last basketball season at Richards and had been to some games. The biggest excitement for her, though, was the fact that I was college-bound. Every bit of news was validating to her that her tag-along baby brother, the kid who used to trip over his own shoelaces, could be good enough at basketball to attend a private university as prestigious as Marquette.

Teasing, ’cause that’s how we are, T.J. would say, “You sure they didn’t make a mistake? I mean, you play good but . . .”

Come to think of it, she might not have been teasing! All I know is that the only person more concerned than me about my passing the ACT was my sister Tragil.

The true believers, not worried at all, were my same core group of guys: Marcus, Vinny, Wug, and my brothers, who came to most of our games, home as well as away, and became superstars as fans cheering up in the stands. Early PR!

Teachers and students I’d never met would pass me in the halls, high-fiving and congratulating me on the latest victory. Toward the end of the season, one of my teachers saw me to the door after class to tell me, “Dwyane, you’re going to make all of us here at Richards proud. You’re a shining example to other students.”

Maybe now, I thought to myself. But what if I bomb on the test? What if I’ve raised everybody’s hopes only to let them down?

Blocking out those pesky, defeating ideas, I thanked her and started to leave.

Then she added, “I know your parents must be so proud.”

Again, I thanked her and walked out down the hall by myself, letting myself feel just a twinge of regret that we didn’t have the kind of situation she must have been imagining. We weren’t the
Cosby Show
version of a family gathered around the dinner table, sifting through college pamphlets and recruitment offers. We didn’t have coaches coming or calling to talk to parents to persuade them why their team would be the best for their son.

We didn’t love each other any less than those families, however.

With all the issues going on with Dad, in fact, he came through for me a short time later, one freezing cold night in early 2000, by making sure that Mom was able to see one of my high school games.

The weird thing about my father was that he seldom came to high school games for Demetrius or me. We never knew why. Maybe he didn’t want to run the risk of trying to coach us from the stands.

Oh yeah, there were a lot of those dads out there. The bleachers at Harold L. Richards High School were full of them. I already had made a promise to myself never to become one of those fathers.

During this game, Dad and Bessie sat down near the front, both of them cheering loudly with the rest of the crowd at all the right moments. Mom wasn’t sitting with them, but from the instant the team and I entered the gym, dribbling onto the court, I could feel her presence.

She was way up in the back by herself, trying to look inconspicuous in her coat and hat. From down on the floor, I couldn’t see at first that this was the worst shape she’d ever been in. The fugitive life, on top of the drug use, was robbing what was left of her fight, her beauty, and spirit. My mother would recall this low point by saying, “I wasn’t me no more. Staying wherever I can stay, abandoned buildings, cheap rooming houses, all over the place. I was more disgusted with myself than those disgusting places.”

Seeing her set off in me a chain reaction of emotions: relief and gratitude at just being able to see her, worry that she was so far gone, fear that this wasn’t the worst and that she could decline more, joy that she could see me in my element.

Throughout the game, I’d sneak looks up at Mom to make sure she was still there and check out her reaction. She seemed incredulous in the beginning. Awestruck. And then her eyes had the light in them again and she was Jolinda Wade again, sitting there puffed up, her troubles gone, like she wanted to lean over to someone and say, “Wow, that’s my boy!”

Her memory of that night: “I couldn’t believe it. They right, you did show off when your momma was in the building. I looked at your dad and he looked up at me and we were both so proud! I was thankful. I was thankful your dad was your first coach and me your first cheerleader. And I was so proud that your dad was behind you. And I was looking up to God asking if there was any possibility that I hadn’t missed out on everything? I wanted the best for you so I let your father and stepmom and all of the other people who had a part in your life do for you what I couldn’t. Had I made the right decision? Only God could say. So I sat in the back and cheered on my own for my baby. You were on your way.”

FOCUS. OR LACK THEREOF. THAT WAS MY PROBLEM. WITH all my classes to prepare me for passing the test, I never felt confident when walking out of any of those sessions that my brain could retain everything we had just studied.

Another problem was that much of the ACT drew from knowledge retained over many years. Wait, geometry? I knew it but hadn’t retained all of it. Worse, nobody knew what exactly was going to be on the test. So how do you study for that? My test anxiety had improved during high school because I figured out that if you ask for help ahead of time, teachers will generally let you know what’s going to be on the test and how to focus on the important material. Since that was not possible with the ACT, the anxiety crept back in.

Even so, at the last sitting I went in with positive energy and support from everyone who was close to me and who had helped. I felt better than before on some of the subjects but not all. With the ability to take the top scores from each subject no matter which of the three tests, I was optimistic. Some of the questions were tough but maybe there I’d get lucky. Why not feel hopeful?