Dear Dwyane Wade, yours truly

Dear Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr.,

I know you’ve done amazing things. You’re an NBA champion, an Olympic champion, a World champion. You were a champion to begin with, a survivor. But then again, you already know that, you knew that when you wore a T-shirt that read “Any more doubters?” for weeks after winning the NBA championship. I can see why you have so many fans. But see, Dwyane, you’re a different kind of champion to me- you’re my hero.

I grew up watching cricket, the most popular sport in the country I was born in. You and I share nothing in common- I didn’t grow up idolizing you and copying your every mannerism like you did MJ’s. You’re my hero in a way that has everything and yet nothing to do with basketball. Basketball was just the beginning.

I had just stumbled upon the NBA when the 2003 draft happened. There was something about you, something so easy, so comfortable, as you walked onto that podium. Your hopelessly large suit seemed to swallow you completely and you looked so happy to just be there, on the stage of your dreams. I was 12 years old and as you looked into that camera, you seemed so human, like we were friends.

I started following your achievements on the Miami Heat, though I still hadn’t taken to following the NBA like I later would. You made the team yours almost immediately, and I could tell nobody had even realized. Suddenly, the Miami Heat were so much more fun to follow than the Lakers or the Spurs, to watch in the meager opportunities I would get and I knew it was all your doing, even if nobody else did.

When I watched a video of you hitting the game-winner against the Charlotte Hornets in the Playoffs, I didn’t know enough about the NBA to know just how amazing a feat that was. All I remember is feeling your excitement, watching you jump up and down like a matchstick that refused to go out. I took to reading about you any chance I got over the next two years.

By 2006, I knew more about you than I later would about most of my girlfriends. You were Dwyane Wade, not Dwayne, and you had the biggest heart of anyone I’d come across. By then, basketball was my favorite sport and I was a rabid Miami fan. I was an aberration- nobody around me could fathom any interest in any sport apart from cricket and any idol apart from Sachin Tendulkar.

I never had the same interest in playing basketball as I had in watching you and the Heat. By then I knew of your greatness on the basketball court. I had watched you develop a go-to fade-away jumper. When all your critics said you just couldn’t shoot, you hit that jumper off the dribble on Raja Bell to win a game, and I had read enough about Raja Bell to know he was as good a defender as they come. I watched you posterize player after player in the 2005 playoffs. By then, I also knew of the coldness in your eyes.

It was against Detroit in the regular season. You were down eight points with a few minutes left in the game, and the Heat had lost to Detroit the previous year in the Eastern Conference Finals because you weren’t there to lead them. You knew that. In a snap second, you became Dwyane Wade and I suddenly felt we were strangers. Your eyes turned cold and you were hunting to kill. The rest is a statistic- Dwyane Wade scored 17 unanswered points to lead the Heat to an improbable 4^th quarter comeback against the Detroit Pistons, hitting the game-winner with the clock running down to seal it. But it went beyond the statistic. Pat Riley had called the team out the day before and said the drive to win wasn’t there. I could tell that you had taken it personally. People have always expected you to fail, and you had a reason somewhere deep down not to, a reason that always kicked in when you were on the ropes. What was it?

2006 was the year that everything changed. What you did in those playoffs was incredible, and the fan in me exulted with every twisted lay-up, every monster game, but that wasn’t it. You became an NBA champion after the greatest individual Finals performance in NBA history, but that wasn’t it either. The way you threw that ball up, the joy, you holding that championship up brought tears to my eyes but those still weren’t it. I was a crazed Dwyane Wade fan, but that was all – you weren’t my hero yet.

It was the story of Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr., son of Jolinda Wade, brother of Tragil Wade, survivor. Sports Illustrated told me of the missing pieces of your life, the coldness I just couldn’t understand. I read of your growing up on the south side of Chicago, of growing up with a mother who was sometimes there but most times in a drug induced stupor. I cannot pretend to understand of growing up with your mother in jail throughout your adolescence, battling a drug addiction that even the strongest of people lose against.

I began to understand how you’d got from hardly playing in your first year of high school to somehow landing a college roster spot at Marquette. I began to understand how you’d got from not playing your freshman year to leading your team to the NCAA final four in your third. When I read of how your mother watched you play for just the third time in your life, the conference final at that, I began to understand then. When I read of how you’d told your mother that you would be an inspiration to her, show her that you could be extraordinary, I finally saw you as Dwyane Wade, the human being. When I read that you’d written to her telling her she was your hero, you became mine.

Nobody has ever taught me more about love than you did, that day. You have to understand, I was just 16 and I didn’t face any of the trials you did. My problems at home seemed so small in comparison. But I’d be lying if I told you that there weren’t days then when I wasn’t terribly confused, days when there were few things to look forward to, to wake up for. You taught me a lesson that nobody else could, that winning comes with selflessness and love. You made yourself that example: the guy who didn’t drink, smoke or do drugs, the pitfalls his parents faced. The rare NBA player who didn’t have a tattoo because he learnt the value of discipline early and never forgot it.

I knew when you went through those injuries that you would come back better than ever. I knew because people were writing you off again and you couldn’t take it. And you did come back, and how. People saw just the highlights; all those fifty point games, forty point games. They saw the statistic again, as we all tend to with NBA players; they saw that you were the first person in NBA history to put up 2000 points, 500 assists, 100 steals and 100 blocks in a single season. The Knicks learnt to never undermine who were, when you responded to Danilo Galinari’s bruising with 24 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Heat to a win. The press plastered you across the news when you stole the ball and hit the game-winner in that classic, classic game against the Bulls. But few people saw your heart at work again, always a fighter. But I had learnt never to underestimate the heart of a champion long before that, long before you refused to cave in to the Celtics in game 4 of the 2010 playoffs, outscoring the entire Celtics team 17-15 in the fourth quarter to avoid a sweep in the first round.

The world is back to questioning you now. It’s become fashionable to hate the Heat, but forgive those ignorant people. They don’t know who you are and it’s only time before you’ll show them, again. You tried as much as you could in the 2011 finals, I know. But you failed. You once told reporters that your father never congratulated you, even after 2006, because he knew you could do better. I know you can too. It’s time to bring out the coldness again.

I have never bothered to explain to people why it is that I love you the way I do. I do it now, because I’m old enough to find my way, to not need a hero anymore. Thank you, Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr. Because not matter what, I know I’ll always be able to turn on the TV and find my old friend, find him showing the world what exactly greatness means.

Sometimes, when I’m down, I watch that Converse commercial. Do you remember that one? The one where you enter an empty American Airlines Arena and pretend to shoot in front of an imaginary crowd before you walk up to the announcer’s box and call out:

From. Robbins, Illinois. Six foot four guard.

Dwyane. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADE.

Remember that?

Always,

Siddharth