As Dwyane Wade prepares to come home to play for the team he grew up watching, home began preparing for his return.
Upon hearing the news Wednesday that Wade had agreed to sign a two-year deal with the Bulls, Daisauni Doty figured it was time for a wardrobe addition.
The 13-year-old budding point guard, whose father was a classmate of Wade’s at Kolmar School in Midlothian and who met Wade and his father, Dwyane Sr., years ago at a local basketball camp, said she intends to add to her collection of “five or six” Wade jerseys with a Bulls version when they hit the market.
Doty, like many residents of the south suburban community of Robbins, where Wade cut his teeth on the courts against much older and larger men, has been steeped in the lore surrounding her hometown’s favorite son for as long as she can remember.
“I’ve heard many stories about (how) Dwyane Wade would always beat my dad in basketball,” said the eighth-grader, who has preserved the custom-made Wade T-shirt her mother outfitted her in as an infant.
As Robbins Mayor Tyrone Ward said, “Everyone (in Robbins) says they have a connection to Dwyane,” who was born in Chicago on Jan. 17, 1982, to Dwyane Wade Sr. and Jolinda Wade.
His parents separated when Wade was four months old and eventually divorced.
Wade lived with his mother and sisters Tragil Wade and Deanna Wade on the South Side until he was 8, when he moved in with his father. A year later they moved to Robbins, a time Wade called “the most important part of my life” in a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
“My mom was on drugs and my family was in the gang environment, so it was a rough childhood,” Wade said then. “If I would have stayed (with my mom) … I would have been next in line to sell drugs, to join the gang.”
Jolinda, who had problems with substance abuse, was in and out of prison until 2003. Wade recalled during an interview with ESPN how he saw his mother shoot up heroin and how police raided the family’s residence when he was 6.
Jolinda, who didn’t return a telephone message left by the Tribune on Thursday afternoon, is now a pastor at a church Wade bought for her in Chicago called The Temple of Praise.
“Everybody thinks I’m the miraculous story in the family. I think she is,” Wade told the Associated Press in 2008. “I think what I’ve done means I’ve been very blessed, but she’s been more than blessed. She’s been anointed.”
By living with his father, whom Wade called “militant,” Wade said he “got an opportunity to be a kid.”
Wade Sr. coached his son’s summer league games in Blue Island and was known to show up at practices at Richards High School wanting to play himself.
Dwyane Sr.’s marriage to Bessie McDaniel helped shape Wade, who quickly bonded over athletics with stepbrothers Demetris, Darnell and Kodhmus McDaniel.
“He wanted to play sports all day like me. He was a good kid, a very curious kid,” Demetris McDaniel said. “We got a little more stable when my mom and his dad got married.”
The family moved into a house and the boys went on to attend Richards High School.
“We all just fell in line, and we started playing basketball and it went from there,” Demetris said.
Garry Moore, 49, said he met Wade at the town’s community center when Wade was 10. At first he was skeptical about the boy’s ability to compete against men more than twice his age and size.
That quickly changed, though, after Moore said Wade shot his “lights out” and “destroyed” him on the court.
Moore remembered seeing a shirtless, 13-year-old Wade “jogging like a track star … for miles” through the streets of Robbins in 90-degree heat, trailing behind a group of teens on bicycles.
“All day long,” Moore said. “I think that was probably the most memorable thing about him in Robbins was just seeing him train and train and train.
“Nobody was telling him to. Nobody was forcing him to. This kid was just that kid, where he knew he had that ‘it’ factor of being physical and athletic, and he let it show.”
Before Wade reached Richards, Demetris already was a standout there. Wade attended practices and games, catching the eye of John Chappetto, one of the school’s coaches who now helps run Wade’s basketball camp each summer in the Chicago area.
Chappetto, who later became head coach at Richards before stepping down in 2014, said he “always felt like there was something special about the kid” and described Wade as “respectful of adults … quiet and observant.”
He also was small.
Chappetto remembers watching Wade play a pickup game against his brothers when he was in seventh grade.
“He and his two brothers really used to go at each other,” Chappetto said. “The first time I saw him play, I thought, ‘Wow, he’s pretty good for a little guy.’ Then he grew and grew and kept getting bigger and stronger.”
Wade didn’t become a regular in the varsity lineup until he was a junior, after he sprouted three inches during the summer. Suddenly, the 6-foot point guard was a 6-foot-3 power forward. But he still was eager to absorb all he could from his older teammates.
“I thought he should play, but we had a great team,” said McDaniel, two years Wade’s senior. “Every position was filled, so it was kind of hard to get him a lot of minutes. I kept telling Coach, ‘My brother is going to be good.'”
McDaniel was right.
Wade cracked then-coach Jack Fitzgerald’s starting lineup as a junior and averaged 20.7 points and 7.6 rebounds. He raised those numbers to 27 and 11 his senior season.
“He watched and he knew how to mimic certain things, and he fell in love with the game and became a very good high school player,” McDaniel said.
While he made it look easy on the court, Wade struggled in the classroom. As a result, Wade wasn’t heavily recruited by colleges. He sat out his freshman season at Marquette after falling short of the NCAA’s Proposition 48 standards.
Wade played two seasons at Marquette, during which he averaged 19.7 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 2.3 steals and 1.2 blocks per game. He led the Golden Eagles to the Final Four in 2003 before the Miami Heat selected him fifth overall in the 2003 NBA draft.
Wade helped lead the Heat to three championships — one with Shaquille O’Neal and two with LeBron James — and was selected as an All-Star 12 times during his 13 seasons there. He’s averaged 23.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, 5.8 assists and 1.7 steals per game during his career.
Back in Robbins, a town of 5,400, Wade’s story serves as an inspiration to residents young and old.
“He gave them the encouragement and the light to know that there’s something else out there,” said Lita Henry, a community center volunteer whose younger brothers and cousins grew up playing with Wade. “Just because we came from this small community (doesn’t) mean we have to stay in this small community. You can do better.”
Ward, the Robbins mayor, echoed Henry’s sentiments.
“He provides hope for all of us,” Ward said. “It sends a message to kids saying, listen, if you work hard, do what you’re supposed to do, do the right things in life, and if you give it 110 percent, then you can do it.
“It says that if this individual can come from Robbins and do what he did, then so can you.”
Now 34, Wade has made his way back home a three-time champion, an Olympic gold medalist, a husband and father of three. He will wear a Bulls jersey again, just like he did when he was a kid honing his skills in his family’s driveway.
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