Speaker 1: One of your classmates teammates contemplating retire Lebron Lebron.
Speaker 2: You want to you want to get you get your doll,
Speaker 2: get your let me get.
Speaker 3: Your Yeah, go there, go ahead, give me that, Give
Speaker 3: me that all my life.
Speaker 4: Grinding all my life, sacrifice, hustle peg Price won, Slice,
Speaker 4: got the brow all my life.
Speaker 2: I'd be grinding all my life.
Speaker 4: All my life, the grinning, all my life, sacrifice, hustle
Speaker 4: Peg Pryce one Slice got the Brons sat all my life,
Speaker 4: I'd be grinding all my life.
Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to another edition of Club Shaha. I am
Speaker 1: your whole, shining sharp. I'm also the propriet of Club Shah.
Speaker 1: And the guy that's stopping by for a conversation and
Speaker 1: the drink today is an NBA All time great.
Speaker 2: He's a three time NBA champ.
Speaker 1: He's a Finals MVP, a thirteen time NBA All Star
Speaker 1: All Star Game MVP, eight time member of an All
Speaker 1: NBA team, three time member of the All Defensive Team,
Speaker 1: member of the seventy fifth Anniversary Team, two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine scoring champ, Olympic gold medal medalist. He's the Miami
Speaker 1: Heat leader in points, games, assists, still shot made shots taken.
Speaker 1: His number three is retired by Miami Heat and Marquette.
Speaker 1: He's an Emmy Woman, New York Times bestselling author, executive businessman,
Speaker 1: host of the game show The Cube on TBS, A
Speaker 1: model once voted NBA's best dressed player. Father, philanthropist, husband
Speaker 1: d Wade Did I get it all in? Bro?
Speaker 3: I was looking he was a gonna come through the door.
Speaker 1: I ended up going. I was like, who walking through.
Speaker 2: The whole card? Relieve anything, y'all? D Wade? How you doing?
Speaker 1: Brother?
Speaker 2: Thanks for stopping by.
Speaker 3: Now, thank you for allowing me to come here.
Speaker 1: Man, this has been a year to make it. I
Speaker 1: saw I DM you a couple of years ago. You say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to you, and I'm gonna get to you.
Speaker 1: And then I saw you at the premier of Redeemed Team.
Speaker 1: I said, Bro, did you forget about me?
Speaker 2: Said?
Speaker 1: I forget about your A. I got some things going on,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna get to you. And then you hear,
Speaker 1: let's do this time. So I appreciate it. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you getting it man.
Speaker 3: I'm great. That's that's the easy thing. That's easy thing, right,
Speaker 3: I'm great. And then everything else after that.
Speaker 5: But uh man, I've just been living life and I've
Speaker 5: been I've been learning how to live life differently than
Speaker 5: the bubble of the NBA, which we all know is
Speaker 5: you know when you know when you play sports, you
Speaker 5: know you in this bubble.
Speaker 3: It's a great bubble.
Speaker 5: And so the bubble got popped a little bit four
Speaker 5: years ago, and so just sudjusting to life.
Speaker 1: Before we get started, Let's have a toast. This is
Speaker 1: my Kanyac Laportier. Lest toast your career, Hall of Fame, career,
Speaker 1: one hall of Famer to another. And my Kanyac, you
Speaker 1: have a wine a wine seller.
Speaker 3: All the best, bro, thank you, and he sent me.
Speaker 5: You send me this to my house, got this beautiful
Speaker 5: glass and everything. So everybody out there when you send gifts.
Speaker 3: M hmm. Okay. I was going with my new rags.
Speaker 3: I took it off in the car, really take it
Speaker 3: might still got the lines on it. I was like,
Speaker 3: I ain't even I ain't gonna do that. I ain't
Speaker 3: gonna do that.
Speaker 1: You were a first ballot, unanimous hall of Famer. What
Speaker 1: does the Hall of Fame mean to Dwayne Wade?
Speaker 5: So I've been thinking about this because you know, we
Speaker 5: all have dreams of places we want to be. And
Speaker 5: even in the midst of those dreams, I can't say
Speaker 5: you don't believe it more you do? You just you
Speaker 5: put a plan together, you and you go attack tack it.
Speaker 5: And so once I got the call from Jerry Colangelo
Speaker 5: and said you are in the Hall of Fame, Like
Speaker 5: I got that call, right, like, I just took a
Speaker 5: moment just to like to myself, Man, I just was like,
Speaker 5: in a way.
Speaker 3: Right, like I know who I am, Like I've.
Speaker 5: Been living with myself for forty one years, right, I remember,
Speaker 5: you know how I grew up. I remember my dreams
Speaker 5: and my hosts and sent them out loud, and how
Speaker 5: many people told laughed them you or told me that
Speaker 5: wasn't And so to be able to be like man,
Speaker 5: forty one years old, I've accomplished everything in a game
Speaker 5: of basketball that I could ever dream of. And to
Speaker 5: be able to kind of top it off the way
Speaker 5: the way that I'm able to when my kids, being older,
Speaker 5: understand a little bit.
Speaker 1: Hall of fame is the ultimate validation.
Speaker 5: It's the validation of it because it's the it's the
Speaker 5: entire it's the entire body, your entire body of right
Speaker 5: right right, and they say when you get done your
Speaker 5: entire body of work, that you deserve to be with
Speaker 5: the best. And so before it was the top seventy five,
Speaker 5: before I knew that was possible, which is incredible. The
Speaker 5: Hall of Fame was like, all right, when I get
Speaker 5: done with this career, I need to be I.
Speaker 3: Need to be in that.
Speaker 5: I want to be that first ballot right now. I
Speaker 5: want to be that first battle ballot. Y. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that about second, third, fourth, because you
Speaker 5: know we all have our own route. But for me,
Speaker 5: I was like, I want to be that first back.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, when.
Speaker 1: When you were a kid and you're growing up in Chicago,
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, with the NBA at the forefront, did
Speaker 1: you say, you know, I just want to do something
Speaker 1: to take care of my mom.
Speaker 2: Was the NBA always at the front.
Speaker 1: Of your mind?
Speaker 3: The NBA was the only front.
Speaker 5: Like I played football, I may have played around with, hey,
Speaker 5: I want to be a I thought I wanted to
Speaker 5: be a cop, but I really didn't. I was scut
Speaker 5: of police and so I was like, oh, but I
Speaker 5: like the I like the badge, I like the outfit.
Speaker 5: When I was a kid, I might have told my
Speaker 5: mom I wanted to be a doctor, in a in
Speaker 5: a cop just because I thought those were the things
Speaker 5: that she was going to support me in me telling
Speaker 5: my mom as a five six seven year old kid,
Speaker 5: Hey mom, I'm gonna be the next Michael Jordan. I
Speaker 5: want to go play for Chicago Buys. That's not realistic
Speaker 5: in my community. Being a cop is realistic, right, And so,
Speaker 5: but I always wanted to play an NBA because I
Speaker 5: grew up at the perfect time with basketball and the
Speaker 5: team that the city that I grew up in, Chicago,
Speaker 5: Jordan was that the It was.
Speaker 3: The hype, Eric Jordan Scottie.
Speaker 2: Did anything else matter?
Speaker 1: No, Like I.
Speaker 5: Feel so lucky now, Like when when when the documentary
Speaker 5: The Last Dance came out, I just feel so lucky
Speaker 5: to like I was a kid in Chicago that knew
Speaker 5: about all these stories that everyone knew about, right, and
Speaker 5: so I was going back on my mind, like I
Speaker 5: grew up on these stories before it was the social
Speaker 5: media or things went viral. Dennis Ramin was down in
Speaker 5: Chicago going viral right downtime, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And so Chicago Boys was everything my dad put the
Speaker 5: ball on me in my stepbrother's hands when we were
Speaker 5: young and basketball became everything.
Speaker 1: Right, You're going in with Dirk no Whisky, Tony Parker,
Speaker 1: Greg Papa. You had great matchups against Dirk. You played
Speaker 1: against Tony Parker NBA Finals, beating one. You grew against
Speaker 1: Pap a lot. What does it mean to go with
Speaker 1: like like, man, dirt. Everybody knows that dirt brought in
Speaker 1: the stretch. When you see that one legged step back
Speaker 1: is him. You see Tony Parker, the guy that can
Speaker 1: penetrate and use the float game to the excellent Greg
Speaker 1: Papovich ain't nothing needs to be said about him.
Speaker 2: Do you do you think.
Speaker 1: About like, man, hey, I got I got a pretty
Speaker 1: I got a pretty nice class.
Speaker 5: I'm going there with Oh well yeah yeah, I forgot
Speaker 5: about power for everybody else that's not Paul.
Speaker 3: I told Pa said, black community is Paul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is power. Yeah yeah, you just dropped it.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah the way you.
Speaker 5: Paul Gasol, Pow, Becky Hammon, so many others, and so
Speaker 5: if you know anything about my career, Shannon, the individual
Speaker 5: is great. Right individually, I have to work for everything
Speaker 5: that I that I wanted and I got but the
Speaker 5: team is where I succeeded, right, right, that's what my
Speaker 5: career when you look at it everything, it's like he
Speaker 5: was on these great teams right where it's the Olympic team,
Speaker 5: where it's the team of Shaq Well Lebron with all
Speaker 5: these guys and so to be on to be able
Speaker 5: to retire and then to be able to go into
Speaker 5: my next team or my next family would be the
Speaker 5: Hall of Fame team, Right, I mean, I'm looking like, Yo,
Speaker 5: what other Hall of Fame crew that looked like this?
Speaker 1: That's that's that's I remember telling the guy, this is
Speaker 1: the Hall of Fame is the ultimate fraternity. It's so
Speaker 1: it's so select. If you if you a capita, not
Speaker 1: to disrect them. They got ten twenty thousand members. If
Speaker 1: you are to make a side five you're a cute dog,
Speaker 1: you got twenty five thirty thousand. If you an althle
Speaker 1: sigma you aka.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Think about how many men have played and how few
Speaker 1: have that jacket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're very elite.
Speaker 1: Now there's eight billion, there's seven billion, eight billion people
Speaker 1: in the world. It's only about five or six hundred
Speaker 1: they got a jacket like yours.
Speaker 3: So I'm ready to play, and I ain't. I don't
Speaker 3: even know what sport I'm ready to play.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm getting warm up here. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's about it's fighting. You see. You don't got me
Speaker 1: high up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: What would it be?
Speaker 1: You see a lot of a lot of organizations with
Speaker 1: their great players. It's not just enough for them to
Speaker 1: hang their jersey in the arena, to put its statues outside.
Speaker 1: You see, Dirk just got a statue. The Lakers are
Speaker 1: with Kobe and Shock and all those greats. What would
Speaker 1: it mean for d Wade to have a statue outside
Speaker 1: the Miami Arena.
Speaker 3: That's a tough question for me, man one, because.
Speaker 5: Yes, when you get downe playing your game, when you
Speaker 5: get done playing this game, you you're hopefully the goal
Speaker 5: is to become a statue, right right, Like you want
Speaker 5: to play and become a statue right right, because the
Speaker 5: greats have a statue. Michael Jordan's had a statue, and
Speaker 5: so yes, I want I want those accolades because I
Speaker 5: saw others have them, right, But it's also a part
Speaker 5: of me too, that's like, that's that's man given. It
Speaker 5: could be taken away by man. I don't like getting
Speaker 5: things that can be taken away by man, and so
Speaker 5: I don't celebrate those and I don't look for those
Speaker 5: because it's temporary, right. But you know, so if it's
Speaker 5: given to me, I know I earned everything that is
Speaker 5: giving that is to.
Speaker 3: Come, right, I've earned it already, and.
Speaker 5: So if they decide to give that to me, I mean,
Speaker 5: it would be amazing place where people can come to
Speaker 5: the arena to Miami and see it and see it.
Speaker 2: It's all something about being the first.
Speaker 5: It will and being the first will open up the
Speaker 5: floodgates for your d statue, right Lebron statue, Chris Boss.
Speaker 3: Statue, a Lines of Morning statue. You start building this legacy.
Speaker 1: Getting no statue. I don't know, Pat Radigo, did that happen?
Speaker 2: But we talked about that, which so.
Speaker 1: When I was reading that you purchased a minority share
Speaker 1: in the Utah Jazz and I'm like, why he Miami
Speaker 1: Heat great? Why didn't he apports us sharing that? Why
Speaker 1: go way out there? How did how did d Wade
Speaker 1: Wade County Heat legend go across country and purchase a share.
Speaker 5: In a franchise relationships business opportunity? You know, at the
Speaker 5: right time, for me, you know, Miami and I sometimes
Speaker 5: you got.
Speaker 3: To step away from you know, the.
Speaker 5: Career, right too close to the career, too close to
Speaker 5: not getting some of the things that I wanted, not
Speaker 5: getting some of the things they wanted. And for me,
Speaker 5: I wanted to step away and be able to build
Speaker 5: and work on our relationship, which I think we've continue
Speaker 5: to do. I wanted to be able to to support
Speaker 5: the Heat without feeling that anything, without without feeling the
Speaker 5: obligation when I'm feeling this whatever I felt in the
Speaker 5: midst of the business of the game, and I needed
Speaker 5: to get rid of that. And so I would have
Speaker 5: jumped right back in it if I would have came
Speaker 5: back into the fold, because I would have been once
Speaker 5: again that same mindset, what I'm not doing, what I'm
Speaker 5: not getting, what conversations I'm not a part of it.
Speaker 3: I want to root for my team.
Speaker 5: I want to support Jimmy, I want to support you
Speaker 5: d I want to support Spot without feeling any way
Speaker 5: that I felt before. And so for me when it
Speaker 5: came to basketball, when it came to like getting the
Speaker 5: opportunity to learn what that side is like, I felt
Speaker 5: it was better for me to learn with someone that
Speaker 5: was that I built a relationship with it.
Speaker 3: I'm closer with from a business standpoint.
Speaker 5: Because this is business now. This ain't bas this is
Speaker 5: now business. And so I don't have a business relationship
Speaker 5: in Miami with the ownership making not a business relationship.
Speaker 5: I have a business relationship with Ryan Smith and what
Speaker 5: we're doing, you know what we've been able to do
Speaker 5: in this small period of time.
Speaker 2: I could be wrong, Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Does d Wade feel he gets the respect and the
Speaker 1: appreciation that he deserves from the Miami Heat?
Speaker 3: What do you mean from who in the Miami Heat?
Speaker 1: Heat is a brand? He really is two peoples in
Speaker 1: pat Rock, Okay, because you didn't leave temporary. Normally, the
Speaker 1: historically great players don't leave vir free.
Speaker 2: I mean something happens, and I.
Speaker 3: Think something happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, check me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: I'm looking.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting back having been a next professional athlete, and
Speaker 1: I'm saying, man, this man he took less money to
Speaker 1: get Lebron. He's taking less money and less money, and
Speaker 1: you're telling him take less money and we're gonna go
Speaker 1: get KD. Take less money. We're gonna go get X
Speaker 1: Y M C. Take less money. Okay, I done take
Speaker 1: less money. You didn't get any of those guys.
Speaker 2: What you boy? What you got for your boy? Now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I had that mentality at one point. I'm
Speaker 5: grown now though, that's his business. It's a cold world, right,
Speaker 5: and so a lot. Did it make you feel at
Speaker 5: the time, Oh, it sucked.
Speaker 1: I left.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I went through championships Wade County and and I
Speaker 5: left right, and I left for you know, obviously a
Speaker 5: few different reasons. But it hurt, yeah, And so I
Speaker 5: believed I drunk the kool aid. Like most of the
Speaker 5: young players come in. They drafted me. This is family.
Speaker 1: He coach my city. It ain't yours. It's not yours.
Speaker 5: And when it's time to make a decision, the business
Speaker 5: had to make a decision. And unfortunately for me, the
Speaker 5: decision that I wanted them to make at the time
Speaker 5: I wanted them to make it, they didn't make. And
Speaker 5: so it affected how I felt about everything that I
Speaker 5: put into what I was told I came in. I'm
Speaker 5: a grown man now, I understand this is business, and
Speaker 5: so I don't feel a way. I will not allow
Speaker 5: that to I cannot allow that to stay on my shoulders.
Speaker 5: Let me carry it like a backpack because I learned
Speaker 5: so much in Miami, so I can't just leave with
Speaker 5: the negatives because the positive ill way the negatives. Even
Speaker 5: though the negatives you know, yeah, I mean stafle in
Speaker 5: my bank account, man, it's definitely my BANGK account. But
Speaker 5: like it's still things in a sense. But the sting
Speaker 5: is helping me in business, it's helping me in life.
Speaker 5: So as much as I like the positive that I
Speaker 5: learned in Miami and all the things that helped me
Speaker 5: become a man, and all, I got to take the other.
Speaker 3: Things that come along. I heard a little bit too
Speaker 3: to come along.
Speaker 5: With it because these things as well, it's helping me
Speaker 5: become a better businessman. It's helping me ask different questions,
Speaker 5: it's helping me go into things.
Speaker 3: A certain way.
Speaker 5: And so it's a lesson out there for everybody, right,
Speaker 5: and it was a lesson in it for me. And
Speaker 5: so I have no ill attend. I come in that
Speaker 5: arena and I'm who I am when I'm the same
Speaker 5: person I am outside arenas who I am inside with everybody,
Speaker 5: because I appreciate my time there.
Speaker 1: How I have organizations been able to convince the fans
Speaker 1: that whatever they do is business. Whatever the player does
Speaker 1: is out of greed, selfish motivator.
Speaker 5: I don't understand that at the PR for the organization,
Speaker 5: they got the best PR.
Speaker 1: You lead you being greedy, they do it. They did
Speaker 1: what was best for the team. What about my team?
Speaker 1: What about the way team?
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I have no idea how that's like, that
Speaker 5: doesn't make sense, right, Like you can get traded, no
Speaker 5: phone call, no nothing. You find out on social media
Speaker 5: and you're gonna get your video and everybody gonna stand
Speaker 5: up in chair. Right, but let you leave in free agency,
Speaker 5: and wat's what happened when you come back right from
Speaker 5: most guys.
Speaker 3: You're gonna get boomed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we talked about and so it's just a PR.
Speaker 5: It's just it's the way it's spent. It's the way
Speaker 5: it is, right, and it's we can come out and
Speaker 5: we can cry about as much as we want, right,
Speaker 5: but that's just the way it is. And so now
Speaker 5: the players got controlled in the way that we have,
Speaker 5: the way that the players have control because it's still
Speaker 5: ran the owners still, yeah, we know what it is.
Speaker 5: The players have more control now, right, and now you
Speaker 5: see the one likes the way the players are so
Speaker 5: ain't no win, Ain't no win from either side?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: When you get in the business, how do you approach
Speaker 1: the business? You mentioned Ryan Smith, you're in business with him.
Speaker 1: How do you approach the business aspect like you do?
Speaker 1: Do you approach it like you did the basketball asp
Speaker 1: you put that kind of time, that kind of effort,
Speaker 1: that kind of energy, because I'm sure you to be great,
Speaker 1: d way, you know this. You gotta eat sleep, breed basketball.
Speaker 1: So now do you eat, sleep, breathe business?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 5: I don't play basketball no more so my life, besides
Speaker 5: being a parent and a son, and a father and
Speaker 5: a husband and all these things, business is my life, right.
Speaker 5: And so, as I like to tell people, is I've
Speaker 5: been spending so much of my time trying to become
Speaker 5: a Hall of fame athlete. And in the midst of that,
Speaker 5: you have so many people that are put in place
Speaker 5: to help you alone, and there's so many things that
Speaker 5: you don't learn and you don't know. And so when
Speaker 5: I retired, I didn't know much about business, right. I
Speaker 5: didn't know much about all these things that I'm a
Speaker 5: part of in business. So I took some time and say,
Speaker 5: all right, well, let me start learning, and so I
Speaker 5: need to learn how to invest.
Speaker 3: You'll invest just because it sounds good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's your man.
Speaker 5: And so when it comes to business, when it comes
Speaker 5: to a Riot Smith and these certain individuals you tried
Speaker 5: to link yourself with, I want to link myself with
Speaker 5: people who want to want to teach me, right, Like
Speaker 5: who's thirsty? Who understands that I want to learn and
Speaker 5: you're willing to teach me. You're right to say, come
Speaker 5: on in this right, open this.
Speaker 3: Book up and let me show you.
Speaker 5: And so those are the partners that I look for
Speaker 5: that I look that I look at because I know
Speaker 5: I don't know everything. I ain't been to school in
Speaker 5: twenty years, right, I ain't been in school in twenty years.
Speaker 1: But when you were there, it was like it wasn't
Speaker 1: like you were going to get a fire.
Speaker 3: I agree the way i'd be like broadcasting a journalists.
Speaker 1: But you're right, but you haven't been to school in
Speaker 1: a while, so you really haven't had to apply yourself
Speaker 1: like you're having to apply yourself now.
Speaker 5: Right, And so I yes, now I know that I
Speaker 5: can take the things that I learned in sports and
Speaker 5: I can use those same tools apply them to how
Speaker 5: I wake up in the morning, how I work out
Speaker 5: in the morning, how like all the steps that it takes,
Speaker 5: because I had those same steps to try to be
Speaker 5: great basketball. And the hard part is we want to
Speaker 5: now you want to, like I want to be I
Speaker 5: want to I see magic, I see I won't.
Speaker 1: See I want to see it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, Kevin, just soda is coming for a
Speaker 3: hundred man. Oh this like and and not like in
Speaker 3: the hate like, oh, like that could be me, because.
Speaker 1: That's how I look at it. Any time I see
Speaker 1: somebody do something like, man, that could be me. I
Speaker 1: wonder how you let me ask you this? This is
Speaker 1: what I really want to know in business? Are people
Speaker 1: willing to help you in business? Because like in basketball,
Speaker 1: were guys willing to give you information that could help
Speaker 1: d Wade become a better player. So are people in
Speaker 1: business willing to give you information like guys on the court,
Speaker 1: like guys in the NBA.
Speaker 5: Yeah, once they realized that I was a player, so
Speaker 5: once they took me serious, Okay, business the same thing,
Speaker 5: once they realize that you're serious about this, right, and
Speaker 5: it's not.
Speaker 2: Just something right, like.
Speaker 5: Like people that have way more money than you and
Speaker 5: I that's not sitting here. They don't have a lot
Speaker 5: of time. You get a meeting with somebody, you get
Speaker 5: fifteen to thirty minutes. You don't get three out of
Speaker 5: the time is money today time is money, and so
Speaker 5: they need to know that you're serious. It's like the
Speaker 5: same thing when it came to sport, right, and so
Speaker 5: I try to be I try to be serious. I
Speaker 5: try to walk in with the knowledge and the information
Speaker 5: and questions and questions and questions and questions because I
Speaker 5: know I don't know everything.
Speaker 1: Right, you're the host. You were talking about camera. You're
Speaker 1: like never the million years that I think I was
Speaker 1: going to be, No, but here we are.
Speaker 2: What was it like? What made you have? What?
Speaker 1: How did you come up with the idea and say,
Speaker 1: you know what game show? That's what I'm gonna be.
Speaker 3: Definitely not like that. No, it happened like this. Okay,
Speaker 3: it was doing COVID. We on the Zoom. When I retired,
Speaker 3: I got into TV. I did T and T for
Speaker 3: three years.
Speaker 5: I had a production company, fifty Knife in Prairie that
Speaker 5: I started with Wonder Media, and so they came to me,
Speaker 5: We're on the Zoom with the whole team and they're like, hey,
Speaker 5: we got this amazing concept of the show called The
Speaker 5: Cube that's been feminine the UK. I believe at that
Speaker 5: time it was ten eleven years and so we.
Speaker 3: Talked about the show.
Speaker 5: I got a chance to look at the thak, I
Speaker 5: got a chance to go look at all the youtubes
Speaker 5: and I was like, man, I love this show.
Speaker 3: I want to be a executive producer. This is great.
Speaker 5: So we shook hands on EP before we got off
Speaker 5: the call. Eventually they said, oh, and we would love
Speaker 5: if you can host, and I was like me, I
Speaker 5: started sweating up.
Speaker 1: Executive producers like you know.
Speaker 3: And and then I So I took a few days.
Speaker 5: And how it works is this if I'm scared to
Speaker 5: do something, I ain't talking about like bungee jumping scared.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about something that's attainable or something that I
Speaker 5: want to do, Like I like, I actually want to
Speaker 5: challenge myself. But when I retired, the first thing I
Speaker 5: did was I took I took a voice lessons right
Speaker 5: because I knew. I was like, man, one day, I
Speaker 5: may I may have this, I may be in front
Speaker 5: of the camera. I will have a microphone in my face.
Speaker 5: Let me learn how to project my voice. Let me
Speaker 5: let me, let me take this uh, this Chicago tongue
Speaker 5: that I have, let me learn how to get through
Speaker 5: my words right. And so I was already prepared and
Speaker 5: preparing myself for an opportunity.
Speaker 3: But when it came, I was scared.
Speaker 5: And then it took me a couple of days long,
Speaker 5: as like, you can't be scared, and so I said,
Speaker 5: I'll do it.
Speaker 2: As if everything you thought it would be.
Speaker 3: More, I actually didn't think.
Speaker 5: I like it as much. I enjoy getting an opportunity.
Speaker 5: I spent about three hours per episode with each contestant,
Speaker 5: each family, and I get a chance to sit there
Speaker 5: for three hours on it, and one get to know
Speaker 5: individuals that I will.
Speaker 3: Never get to know, right.
Speaker 5: Two I get to you know, to be able to
Speaker 5: help people get over this this fear. I see fear
Speaker 5: when they in Q, I see nervousness. And so this
Speaker 5: is a time whereas a leader, I get to step in.
Speaker 5: I get to lead. So it's so many different things
Speaker 5: that you take from sport or you take from your
Speaker 5: life and in the show, and that three hours that
Speaker 5: I'm sitting in front of them, I'm trying to help
Speaker 5: them accomplish something that that I know is way harder
Speaker 5: than they think it is, right, they don't know what
Speaker 5: the game is really like. And also too, it's gonna
Speaker 5: change communities, it's gonna change their lives, right, And so
Speaker 5: I have an opportunity to to be a host of
Speaker 5: a game show that you're gonna see is gonna change
Speaker 5: people's experiences, but it also has the opportunity to change
Speaker 5: your life. Ten thirty fifty thousand dollars change people's lives.
Speaker 5: And so for me, man, it was like, I want
Speaker 5: to bring joy to families. I want to bring joy
Speaker 5: to you know, to living rooms when this pandemic ends.
Speaker 5: And that's why I jumped into the Cube. And I'm
Speaker 5: lucky that we on our second season. TV has brought
Speaker 5: us back and hopefully we keep going.
Speaker 1: For those that haven't watched the Queue, what's the concept
Speaker 1: behind it?
Speaker 5: So the concept is you have probably sixty seventy games
Speaker 5: or versions of and they all and they all can
Speaker 5: take place inside of this queube. Right, It's a plexiglass.
Speaker 5: It's this big plexiglass that looks a little different than
Speaker 5: this and inside this queue, which brings its own like
Speaker 5: once you go in that door closed. It brings its
Speaker 5: own level of like, okay, everything got small right, right, right,
Speaker 5: cloth now I make clothing. Now my breathing is a
Speaker 5: little different, right, And so it just brings its own
Speaker 5: different challenges of all these different games, right, it's individual games.
Speaker 5: It's games where you you tag your teammate in, y'all
Speaker 5: got to come in, y'all got to do it together, right.
Speaker 5: And the hard part about it is it may be
Speaker 5: a game, and I just explained it like this. It
Speaker 5: may be a game where you sit up here and
Speaker 5: you got a ball, a piece of paper up and
Speaker 5: let's say you got to throw it in the garbage camp.
Speaker 3: You say, I can do that the way. That's not
Speaker 3: hard shot?
Speaker 5: How many how many lives are gonna take you to
Speaker 5: do that? How many times are you gonna try to throw.
Speaker 3: It and make it?
Speaker 5: It may take you four Right now, you've lost four lives,
Speaker 5: and so to be able to play this game, you
Speaker 5: get nine lives, but you want to got you got
Speaker 5: seven games?
Speaker 3: Seven games? Not as I could do it.
Speaker 5: You may spend four lives on one game on a
Speaker 5: thousand dollars. And so the precision that you gotta have
Speaker 5: the ability to be able to have no ego, because
Speaker 5: it's some games when you come in at queue that
Speaker 5: you are not good for, which your partners may be.
Speaker 5: It's certain games that I know that you gotta that
Speaker 5: you got a blind phone, you gotta walk through these
Speaker 5: standing cone your shoulders too wide, you can't do.
Speaker 3: You got to type in somebody else. So man, I
Speaker 3: just I love it.
Speaker 5: I love being able to sit across from individuals that
Speaker 5: I never met, and by the end of that three
Speaker 5: hours like we've connected and hopefully I've done my job
Speaker 5: as a host to help them reach their goal.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at some of your hosts in the second season,
Speaker 1: your wife Gabrielle, you and your La La Shaq, mind shopper.
Speaker 2: What what is the guest? What?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: What? What was Shaq like? Because you know Shack think
Speaker 2: he could do everything.
Speaker 5: Shaq bust the cube open, he fell through the back
Speaker 5: of the cube.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know you can do that.
Speaker 1: I know you can go through the cube.
Speaker 5: That's what that was Shack. We had him, there was
Speaker 5: his birthday. He didn't know what Shock din't know what
Speaker 5: was going on.
Speaker 1: He showed up.
Speaker 3: He's like, man, flash what I'm doing.
Speaker 5: I'm like, just enjoyed and then like he didn't want
Speaker 5: to he want to stop, right, he we kept, he
Speaker 5: kept asking for more tries and more tries, and like, Shock,
Speaker 5: you can't keep git more.
Speaker 3: Tries because I need another life. I'll buy another life.
Speaker 3: So Shaq was shocked. Man, he brought.
Speaker 5: He brought a lot of excitement to it. He broke
Speaker 5: a lot of our games. So like really he was like,
Speaker 5: it's one of them. You will see on the commercial
Speaker 5: where he's getting these balls out. He broke the sides.
Speaker 1: Shock didn't realize that.
Speaker 3: You don't know, but.
Speaker 5: Man, I you know, like this was the first year
Speaker 5: we tried like adding Celeri because we had a lot
Speaker 5: of people will call and hitting us. Sam, we can
Speaker 5: do that, that's easy, and so he's like, all right,
Speaker 5: so come on to the show. So we had a
Speaker 5: few come and try and it wasn't ez easy as
Speaker 5: they thought.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Melow Carmelo, Anthony just retired. What advice
Speaker 1: would you give him about retiring? About retirement, what can
Speaker 1: he expect?
Speaker 5: He can expect it to be different, he can expect
Speaker 5: it to be on him. You know, I know you
Speaker 5: think basketball is on you, but you got a team,
Speaker 5: you got a lot of teammates, you got coaching staff,
Speaker 5: you got trainers, you got everybody to get you to
Speaker 5: the gym right every day.
Speaker 3: You don't have nobody like that in retirement.
Speaker 5: You know, you still have your team, you see all
Speaker 5: the people that love you, but like it ain't the same,
Speaker 5: and so every day you gotta them feet, got to
Speaker 5: hit that ground right.
Speaker 3: And what you want a commissing that day has to
Speaker 3: be on you and it has to be set by you.
Speaker 5: That's that's the one thing I learned, Like when I play,
Speaker 5: we got reake up calls on the road.
Speaker 3: I don't get a wake up.
Speaker 5: Call, nobody telling me to get up and work out,
Speaker 5: to eat healthy, to do all these things.
Speaker 3: That's this basic that is without the work.
Speaker 5: This is just how how I'm gonna how I'm gonna
Speaker 5: maintain my body after retirement. On No one's telling you that, right,
Speaker 5: And so you got to realize that it's on you,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Like when I played with
Speaker 5: the team, I went and got my chest scans and.
Speaker 3: My EKG because it was scheduled right now. I got
Speaker 3: a schedule, you know.
Speaker 1: What I mean.
Speaker 5: So once you realize, like I woke up and there
Speaker 5: I said, oh, so this is all on me, all right?
Speaker 3: This familiar for me then, and so he got it.
Speaker 1: Do you think the white Howard should have been on
Speaker 1: the He only got seventy five slotes, maybe what five
Speaker 1: thousand guys that played in the NBA, maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit more, I said to say, But I don't know
Speaker 1: how it got.
Speaker 2: He was a dominant big.
Speaker 1: In multiple years, like three time Defensive Player of the Year.
Speaker 3: But not just like he got.
Speaker 2: Right, he was a dominant. He was dominant.
Speaker 3: I really don't understand.
Speaker 5: Like I know a lot of people have a lot
Speaker 5: of things to say about Dwight Howard as his personality
Speaker 5: or whatever. Everybody would like to take a shot the right,
Speaker 5: I mean, we all out here, everybody can take a
Speaker 5: shot at whatever they want.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to that man actual work, that's
Speaker 3: body of.
Speaker 1: What life and dislike. He got the backpack on. He
Speaker 1: tried hoop shots. But when the game, when they when
Speaker 1: they jumped the.
Speaker 5: Ball is undeniable. He took that team to the finals dead.
Speaker 5: This is I mean, and I'm not I'm like, I
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying that about. You can pick a
Speaker 5: lot of guys to be on this team.
Speaker 3: It's all.
Speaker 5: It's all subjective, right, depending on who's picking. But when
Speaker 5: you're talking about this, this generation, his last twenty five years, right,
Speaker 5: how many names can you think of? What the White
Speaker 5: Howard name is not in there? And I know T
Speaker 5: Max should be in there and other great players, but
Speaker 5: that was the White how one for me was tough.
Speaker 1: How difficult is it for you you have a son?
Speaker 1: Lebron has a son, now mellow Lebron has two sons.
Speaker 1: You have son, we're gonna talk about the later, have
Speaker 1: a son play. How difficult is it for your child
Speaker 1: that bears your last name to play the sport.
Speaker 2: That you played.
Speaker 1: Gotta be tough because you know you're getting Your dad
Speaker 1: would have made that. Your dad would have done this.
Speaker 1: Your dad would have did that.
Speaker 3: Man, I didn't have that pressure. Did you have the
Speaker 3: pressure you had it from your brother? I never had
Speaker 3: that pressure like I had an older brother. It was good,
Speaker 3: but he wasn't Hall of Fame. He wasn't at a
Speaker 3: level of the Sharks. He wasn't at that level.
Speaker 5: And so I have no idea what Zaire is experiencing
Speaker 5: from that standpoint, right, And I can't act like act
Speaker 5: like I know. But for me, and to me, like,
Speaker 5: none of that really matters when you're in between those lines, right,
Speaker 5: And so having a dad with this name or in
Speaker 5: this sport can get you in the door, can get
Speaker 5: you looks, and also can get people to talk about you.
Speaker 1: Yes, it worked.
Speaker 5: So for me, it's about what you do when you
Speaker 5: get between the lines. That's what all determines if you
Speaker 5: shut people up or you keep them talking, or you
Speaker 5: keep them talking. And so as I don't understand my
Speaker 5: son's journey, and that sympathized with, you know, I go
Speaker 5: and I look at my let me see what kind
Speaker 5: of hate he getting, right, I sympathize with this young
Speaker 5: man who gets hate for nothing.
Speaker 3: No one knows me. He's on his own journey in life.
Speaker 5: And he's been you know, whether it's me, whether it's Brownie,
Speaker 5: whether it's this player, this player, he's getting compared to them,
Speaker 5: and I'm just that's life at the same time, Right,
Speaker 5: You're going to be compared to a lot of different
Speaker 5: people if you if you want to do something great.
Speaker 1: I had had Ken Griffy or one time, and he
Speaker 1: said he kind of he always saw his go see
Speaker 1: his son's play, he said, but it was tough on him,
Speaker 1: he said, because if his son made a mistake and
Speaker 1: he struck out, the people in the stand will say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not your dad. And Griffy one day said, he said,
Speaker 1: well name five players who are so let me put
Speaker 1: that in my nose. We get that to my son. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, well name five players who are. But d
Speaker 1: just imagine, how do you think your life would do?
Speaker 1: How different would your life have been like today's kid
Speaker 1: with the social media aspect high school, college. You did
Speaker 1: have some social media later in your NBA, but I
Speaker 1: don't think you started with it.
Speaker 2: How different would your life have been?
Speaker 3: It's too much access. I got four kids now, it's
Speaker 3: too much access.
Speaker 1: You better have too much access.
Speaker 3: You can get to anybody because you got everybody number.
Speaker 2: You know what It was the.
Speaker 1: Way back when you and I was growing up in
Speaker 1: high school and in college. If you saw a beautiful
Speaker 1: girl in Miami, you don't know if she was from
Speaker 1: Miami or where she was from. You might not ever
Speaker 1: see again. Now you just go on social media. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh she and I can get there or I.
Speaker 2: Can get it here.
Speaker 3: That's listen.
Speaker 5: I'm glad social media walning around as I was a
Speaker 5: young boy trying to focus on accomplishing something that only
Speaker 5: a few can accomplish. You know how focused and locked
Speaker 5: you can't have distraction.
Speaker 1: You can't the media like a Lebron like like Mahomes
Speaker 1: or Tom Brady or you talked to d Wade is different.
Speaker 5: I give these kids a lot of credit to be
Speaker 5: able to juggle both. Like I understand the great, the
Speaker 5: great things about social media. Yeah we get the benefits, yes,
Speaker 5: But on the on the other end, if you're trying
Speaker 5: to accomplish what I know a lot of these young
Speaker 5: men say or what they're trying, and they get up
Speaker 5: every day to work their ass off and accomplished this distraction,
Speaker 5: it's going to get in the way at some point
Speaker 5: when you're trying to go to that when you're trying
Speaker 5: to reach that penthouse level in your sport right.
Speaker 1: Right, like you can get you can get to the
Speaker 1: first level.
Speaker 5: You get in the lobby, Yeah, you're the hotel, but
Speaker 5: there's a special key card that goes to the penthouse,
Speaker 5: right And it's a lot of sacrifice that you got
Speaker 5: to have to get to that penthouse level. And a
Speaker 5: lot of guys won't get there because of certain things.
Speaker 5: That's a distraction, and social media is a big distraction
Speaker 5: for the for the generation.
Speaker 1: How how many did you have to leave a whole
Speaker 1: lot of homeboys? Because everybody, you know, people say they sacrifice,
Speaker 1: and you sacrifice a lot, Like as far as your time,
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't go to you missed a lot
Speaker 1: of your kids things, recitals and piano lessons or whatever
Speaker 1: the case may be. You sacrificed a lot of that.
Speaker 1: But sometimes I'm noticing guys won't sacrifice a homeboy. Man,
Speaker 1: he was there from the beginning. Man, I can't let
Speaker 1: my homeboy go pro. But he holding you back. He
Speaker 1: put you in a situation where you can't climb to
Speaker 1: the top because he's holding you back. Was it difficult
Speaker 1: for you to leave some of the homeboys even though
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, bro, we grew up together.
Speaker 2: But where I'm ascending to.
Speaker 3: It was, and it is right, especially when you're young.
Speaker 5: When you're young, man, you growing up and you growing
Speaker 5: up in an improvished community, all you got is your homeboy, right,
Speaker 5: your family right, And so y'all all have the same
Speaker 5: dream together to a point where your dream become everybody right,
Speaker 5: right when you're the one who's and so man, when
Speaker 5: I made it, Man, my whole everybody was we made it,
Speaker 5: we in here, and so you carry that, You carry
Speaker 5: that mentality like, yo, we all here, we all made it,
Speaker 5: and you try to allow access for everybody, because if
Speaker 5: you're that person, you try to allow access to bring
Speaker 5: everybody with you. But we all know how that's gonna work.
Speaker 5: It's only gonna be. Man, if you lucky, you'll find
Speaker 5: a maver Carter in a bunch. If you lucky, if
Speaker 5: you're lucky, you'll find someone who wants more than what
Speaker 5: just they're giving. Because everybody, when you get into the league,
Speaker 5: you get in that situation, everybody loves what. They love,
Speaker 5: the sneakers, they they love, the outfits they get. How
Speaker 5: many people you're gonna find is gonna out go and
Speaker 5: be like, yo, thank you for getting us here. Now
Speaker 5: I gotta go get mine right away. I ain't talking
Speaker 5: about once is over and it doesn't happen often. And
Speaker 5: a lot of it too, is you are not in
Speaker 5: a position where you come from enough to tell these individuals,
Speaker 5: hey man, I might be able to value a gift
Speaker 5: to say, you know, thanks for being my homeboy. You
Speaker 5: gonna watch you go even a car because we got
Speaker 5: it like that. But I can't take care of your
Speaker 5: entire life. That is that is for your entire life.
Speaker 5: And so that's a hard conversation to have when y'all
Speaker 5: all have a dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we all grew up. Man, I knew you were
Speaker 1: you to have anything. Man, you at my house. You
Speaker 1: sleep on my couch?
Speaker 5: Yeah, cause you feel like man, yeah, and if you
Speaker 5: don't got to. Most most times people get rid of
Speaker 5: stuff like this when they got a woman to come
Speaker 5: in and she'd be like, yo, he can't be sleeping
Speaker 5: on the couch your homeboy can't have to keep that
Speaker 5: because that's how it is, right. And it came it
Speaker 5: took my wife to come in and be like she
Speaker 5: was older woman that came in, like, what's going on
Speaker 5: in this frat house?
Speaker 1: Y'all got going on? What's something is doing room?
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. And I kind of have
Speaker 3: to like, oh, you're right, I'm with a grown woman.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 5: I had to clear shop a little bit. And so
Speaker 5: sometimes it takes certain people to come in to show
Speaker 5: you like yo, like what are you doing right? And
Speaker 5: you know, hopefully it's not something that happens that's in
Speaker 5: a negative form to make you be like, oh, I
Speaker 5: got to get rid of. And it's not about getting
Speaker 5: rid of, it's like, hey, like I got here because X,
Speaker 5: Y and Z we all hear. Hey, you want to
Speaker 5: go to school, You want to do something for yourself,
Speaker 5: You want to do something for your family, for your kids.
Speaker 5: One day you're gonna have a daughter, Like and I
Speaker 5: just talked to my brother, say, you got a little girl.
Speaker 5: What you're gonna show her? She looking at you to
Speaker 5: see how it is that what man she wants? So
Speaker 5: what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3: You don't want to. You don't want her to be like,
Speaker 3: oh he get money from Uncle Dwayne. Where you need something?
Speaker 5: You want her to know that you get up every day,
Speaker 5: you go work and go grind and make sure she
Speaker 5: has what she needs. And that's what her man should do.
Speaker 5: Whatever it is, however, you want to raise your child.
Speaker 5: And so that's that's how I approached it eventually, right, you.
Speaker 1: Got no dog in the fight through the lot been
Speaker 1: going over the last three four months with Jah Moran.
Speaker 1: If you, as a player or a player, what advice
Speaker 1: could you what advice would you give him?
Speaker 2: And what advice would you give him. If you were
Speaker 2: his father, this was your place.
Speaker 1: Ja Morant's Dwayne Wade's son, what advice? What would you
Speaker 1: tell him?
Speaker 5: I mean, that's that's obviously a tough question. But you know,
Speaker 5: I what I try to do with my kids is
Speaker 5: like I don't like, I'm not trying to I'm not
Speaker 5: gonna act like life.
Speaker 3: Is not gonna happen, right, Okay, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna act like some mistakes are not gonna happen.
Speaker 5: Try to minimize them, but you try to, right, that's
Speaker 5: our job to try to minimize, but they're gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Actually, you need some of them to happen.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So I'm not gonna make this about shame on you. Okay.
Speaker 5: This is a part of this journey that we're on.
Speaker 5: This is this is something that we can use as
Speaker 5: a learning lesson and learning too. And my question to
Speaker 5: anybody is what do you want for your life? And
Speaker 5: so if you sit and tell me, because I know
Speaker 5: what y'all probably won't. He wants to be one of
Speaker 5: the greatest, correct Now, you want to be one of
Speaker 5: the greatest. Okay, Now, let me open up the books
Speaker 5: to show you what the greats do and how they
Speaker 5: go buy their business and how they separate this in
Speaker 5: it like you know what I'm saying, it's more so
Speaker 5: of Sean.
Speaker 3: All right, let me open up the book. Who your
Speaker 3: favorite players? Oh?
Speaker 5: I love Kobe, I love Lebron, I love MJ. Let
Speaker 5: me show you what the guys that have a statue,
Speaker 5: This is how they did it, and the look they
Speaker 5: went through stuff. Right, All these guys, all of us
Speaker 5: go through something, right, Look how they And so it's
Speaker 5: just about showing the man like he's job's twenty three
Speaker 5: years old. Three, he's a young man who's supposed to
Speaker 5: make mistakes. Now, do we want him to make the
Speaker 5: mistakes that he made? Of course we don't. But that's
Speaker 5: not our we don't get to determine that, right, And
Speaker 5: so it's a it's a mistake twice, No we don't.
Speaker 5: But if you make it twice, we don't want to
Speaker 5: make it three times. We don't get rid of you
Speaker 5: because you make it twice. That's not how this works
Speaker 5: like this, we can't do that. And if I'm your father,
Speaker 5: that's not that's not my ministry. I'm here, I'm here
Speaker 5: for the long haul. And so if I'm your father, Okay,
Speaker 5: you've made the same mistake twice. You know what, I've
Speaker 5: done the same thing. I've made the same mistake twice
Speaker 5: in other instance as well. It just wasn't in front
Speaker 5: of the whole world. And so that's how I go
Speaker 5: in and that's how our parent my kids. It's not
Speaker 5: I don't go in with shame with you, because I
Speaker 5: know that when you got to make certain decisions, you
Speaker 5: can have a lapse for one second.
Speaker 3: It ain't even got to be a whole twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: It could be one second.
Speaker 5: Lapse changes a lot, and I've had them right, and
Speaker 5: so you know, I just think like, like, I don't
Speaker 5: know j'all like that. So I wouldn't pick up the
Speaker 5: phone and be like, yo, young fell he not listening
Speaker 5: to me necessarily like that. That's not my ministry with him,
Speaker 5: but as someone who wants to see him go to
Speaker 5: the level that man. John Moran is my one of
Speaker 5: my favorite players to wise. If I'm gonna spend my cash,
Speaker 5: jians on my top three players that I'm gonna go
Speaker 5: spend my money on. And so you know, my conversation
Speaker 5: with him will be that what do you what do
Speaker 5: you want for your.
Speaker 1: Future one of your classmates teammates contemplating retire Lebron, Lebron,
Speaker 1: you want to.
Speaker 2: Know, you want to get your get let me get your.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, give me that, give me that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know you're talking about the man just had
Speaker 5: forty ten and nine on Yeah, you don't hate Okay, Okay,
Speaker 5: I was gonna make sure we're talking about the same.
Speaker 1: But he's But he said, you know, nobody get weary. Man.
Speaker 1: You know it's getting hard and hard for me to
Speaker 1: summon it up. You know, I'm playing on this t
Speaker 1: give you a little week. There is the getting harder and
Speaker 1: hard for him to summers it up. And you know
Speaker 1: I ain't getting no younger. I need a little help
Speaker 1: here and there. So you didn't buy the part that
Speaker 1: Lebron was thinking about.
Speaker 3: All my money still in my pocket, I ain't buy nothing.
Speaker 1: It's the moment after the game, man.
Speaker 5: It's a lot like that, you know, Like obviously they
Speaker 5: where they came back from shout out to the Lakers,
Speaker 5: from making the moves that they made to help them
Speaker 5: make that push, and so yeah, the conversation in the
Speaker 5: locker room may not be as funny no more, because
Speaker 5: you don't have a lot of comment with the next generation,
Speaker 5: right right, You get tired of the travel. The travel
Speaker 5: gets old because you ain't traveling around the world.
Speaker 3: You ain't going out to France.
Speaker 2: Yea a Sacramento, you know, go to Utah.
Speaker 5: Listen, it's only so many times that you want to
Speaker 5: keep doing that same route. So yes, when you look
Speaker 5: at all of that, it beats you down mentally. Physically,
Speaker 5: we know what it is. I mean, he's a physical specimen.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, physically it's gonna beat him down, right, Okay.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I ain't gonna ask him.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna say, bro, you for real that that's not
Speaker 5: about that's not my But like I looked at I
Speaker 5: was like.
Speaker 3: Okay, I ain't buying that. I know what I know.
Speaker 5: Where after the season right now, would they asking you
Speaker 5: this question in this more? But also know when he
Speaker 5: get away and he go ahead to Mexico, he go
Speaker 5: away to the south of France, he on his yacht
Speaker 5: for the summer. He gonna look around and be like, okay,
Speaker 5: the King coming, the King coming back.
Speaker 3: I'm getting ready.
Speaker 2: How many more years do you think Lebron can play
Speaker 2: at this level, it's.
Speaker 1: Greatly because we've never nobody has ever been in their peak,
Speaker 1: regardless of sport, as lonely as this man has been
Speaker 1: in been in.
Speaker 2: This is prime, so to speak.
Speaker 1: Nobody's had a twenty year peak's injury.
Speaker 3: If he doesn't get injured, he takes care of himself.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's a.
Speaker 1: Look at him.
Speaker 3: First of all, let's look at one of his legs
Speaker 3: is two of mine put together. He ain't built like
Speaker 3: a normal person.
Speaker 5: Okay, so that was God gave him that blessing. You
Speaker 5: built different, and so he has the mental to continue
Speaker 5: to keep the mental strong. That's one of the hardest parts.
Speaker 5: If you physically can play, mentally, you lose it quicker
Speaker 5: than even physical Sometime, like mentally I was done. I
Speaker 5: had I had two three more years at a certain level.
Speaker 5: I could ever about twelve to fifteen the game of
Speaker 5: the team off the bench. But mentally, because of the injuries,
Speaker 5: because of all the things that it beat me down
Speaker 5: where it wasn't I love the game, I can't wait
Speaker 5: to watch the game. But mentally, and so Lebron has
Speaker 5: been able to mentally tell himself.
Speaker 3: You're not tired, you're not injured.
Speaker 5: You're like he's been able to mentally do that, and
Speaker 5: now I've got a chance to watch it for four
Speaker 5: years like he would if he was hurt.
Speaker 3: He never would.
Speaker 5: He couldn't even talk that language in front of him,
Speaker 5: Like even if bro, you hurt, Now I'm not hurt.
Speaker 3: Your ankle hurt? No, not hurt.
Speaker 5: Because the mind is strong, right, his mind, and so
Speaker 5: that's why the strongest, that's one of the strongest twos
Speaker 5: is his mind. We know it from an IQ standpoint.
Speaker 5: You and I look at him like, oh man, he
Speaker 5: has a crazy IQ. No, he has an intelligent, strong mind.
Speaker 3: And so that allows him to keep going.
Speaker 5: And so long as his mind stay strong, which is
Speaker 5: obviously it gets hard and hard every year, right, and
Speaker 5: his body says strong. I mean he's he can average
Speaker 5: twenty plus for the next.
Speaker 2: Couple years of argument.
Speaker 1: He doesn't miss those games with the growing first year
Speaker 1: in LA, he doesn't hurt that ankle and missing Let's
Speaker 1: just say, for.
Speaker 5: You can't say that if I don't have three kne
Speaker 5: So we're doing ifs nown you the league, Yeah, I
Speaker 5: had one in college and two in the league.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're doing if. Now, Okay, because we're doing if
Speaker 1: then let's talk.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, how about this year.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna do our year here, Okay, if the
Speaker 1: ankle doesn't get hurt this year, the tendon this year.
Speaker 2: Do you think the outcome is different between them and Denver?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 5: I think the outcome is different between the Lakers. With
Speaker 5: him getting that time away. Actually, we got a chance
Speaker 5: to see them grow as a team outside of Lebron. Okay,
Speaker 5: we got to see a d grow at that level.
Speaker 5: Obviously when he's on the floor, we was like top
Speaker 5: five player in the league. Right, We got a chance
Speaker 5: to see what the d LO can bring and what
Speaker 5: all three can bring.
Speaker 1: He actually really grew. Ron's absence.
Speaker 5: The best thing that happened to the Lakers, right was
Speaker 5: Lebron's absence because it allowed him to not have to
Speaker 5: depend on him right, Right, Because when you got a
Speaker 5: great player, you depend on that great player, right, And
Speaker 5: so they had the rock and they had something to
Speaker 5: play for in the middle of that, and so I
Speaker 5: think it was great for the Lakers, and that allowed
Speaker 5: him to come back. And if you seen when he
Speaker 5: came out, he was a different player than it was
Speaker 5: where he went out. Even though his numbers were still big,
Speaker 5: he wasn't leading the charge as much. Right right, He
Speaker 5: was allowing Reeves, he was allowing a d and all
Speaker 5: these guys to do their thing, and he was just
Speaker 5: kind of a shadow box until he needed to be Lebron.
Speaker 3: And so it was beautiful to watch d Wade.
Speaker 2: I think you did something not a whole lot of
Speaker 2: guys could do.
Speaker 3: Sacrifice.
Speaker 1: You sacrifice. Now it's one thing to sacrifice if we
Speaker 1: come together. But I'm already established here. I've already won
Speaker 1: the finals MVP. I've already demand here. And you asking
Speaker 1: me to come, you coming in my house and asking
Speaker 1: you to share, You have me sharing. You want us
Speaker 1: hitt the head of the table when that's my head
Speaker 1: of the table. Now you want me to get out
Speaker 1: of my bed. You gonna get the big bed. How
Speaker 1: were you able to do? Everybody can't do that the
Speaker 1: way everybody say that now you know, everybody to get
Speaker 1: in front of the camera, it is, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I sacrifice all day, but you know deep down everybody
Speaker 1: can't do what you did. How and why?
Speaker 3: Well, why it's easy? I wanted to win.
Speaker 2: Everybody say they want to win.
Speaker 1: Well, they be.
Speaker 3: Lying, Okay, all right, we said, now what's the action?
Speaker 5: And so I wanted to win. And the reason I
Speaker 5: wanted to win because when I came in the game,
Speaker 5: this is what was said to be in this breath,
Speaker 5: in this conversation, you have to win championships. Every generation
Speaker 5: is different than the conversations surrounding guys is different. I
Speaker 5: didn't have the Steph Curry range. I didn't have the
Speaker 5: dame like I wasn't gonna put up thirty thousand points, right,
Speaker 5: so for me to put my name and sign my
Speaker 5: name in heaven, I wanted my game to be accumulation
Speaker 5: of it all. But it needs to be winning. It
Speaker 5: needs to be led by winning for me, right, And
Speaker 5: so that wasn't a facade. And when the opportunities came,
Speaker 5: I always put myself in a position to do that right.
Speaker 5: And so you can ask anybody who work with me,
Speaker 5: maybe most people who walk in the room with me
Speaker 5: in the meetings, and it could be a meaningful weight enterprises.
Speaker 5: I don't sit at the head of the table. I
Speaker 5: like to sit in the middle, like to sit in
Speaker 5: the seats in the middle. I like to be amongst everybody,
Speaker 5: to have conversations with everybody.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be at the head. It's lonely
Speaker 3: at the head of the table. And so when Lebron
Speaker 3: came and C became, I was like, Oh, you want
Speaker 3: to sit.
Speaker 1: At the head. Cool.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go where I'm comfortable. Because here's the thing.
Speaker 5: I haven't been a star of my whole life. I
Speaker 5: played so many roles my entire basketball career, and I
Speaker 5: think that's one of the reasons why I look at
Speaker 5: myself as one of the greatest players, because I didn't
Speaker 5: do it one way. I showed you how to be
Speaker 5: great in so many different ways and so many different times.
Speaker 5: My game change and evolved so much right and so
Speaker 5: to me, that's greatness as a basketball player. And I
Speaker 5: wonder challenge myself throughout my career to see if I
Speaker 5: could do stuff different, like, Okay, thirty points a game,
Speaker 5: the League one did that, What's next? Finals MVP got
Speaker 5: that did like I'm all about like what's next? And
Speaker 5: so when the opportunity came in twenty ten, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: this is another challenge for me to play with somebody
Speaker 5: I never thought i'd play with someone I admire so much,
Speaker 5: but how can I play with the guy that I
Speaker 5: know is ball dominant.
Speaker 3: When I become ball dominant, right, pick on my challenge.
Speaker 1: And so I just learned how to play off the ball.
Speaker 3: I learned, Well, you want you see the back cuts?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got a budget, you got a bunch of
Speaker 1: yeah game you like.
Speaker 2: You run an old Prinston.
Speaker 5: James mcga and you know what to go back real quick.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry because I didn't say this. We talk about
Speaker 5: the Hall of Fame when you talk about Dirk cast
Speaker 5: changed the game for his position, right like, right now,
Speaker 5: you got people the stretch, you got people in the gym,
Speaker 5: right now putting that try to get that one tight
Speaker 5: hit right Tony Parker, I felt like Tony Parker was
Speaker 5: amazing point guard, but he was like a he was
Speaker 5: like a big man because when he got in the post,
Speaker 5: his footwork was crazy. When he got in the paint,
Speaker 5: his footwork was crazy, like he got you up and
Speaker 5: numbers all there, right, and so just just amazing to
Speaker 5: see like a point guard, but when he got to
Speaker 5: the paint, he became one of the best big men
Speaker 5: in the game. A lot of people don't know that Powell.
Speaker 5: When I played with I played with Powell one time
Speaker 5: and we got invited to Barack's President Barack Obama's forty
Speaker 5: ninth birthday powder party at the White House, and I
Speaker 5: got a chance to play with Powell.
Speaker 3: Kobe was like, don't get used.
Speaker 2: To it.
Speaker 3: Was hitting me with I was like, oh, Kobe, this
Speaker 3: is easy. I gotta throw the shack. You actually getting
Speaker 3: it back. So I just wanted to throw that out
Speaker 3: about the Hall of Famers.
Speaker 5: Man just so honored to be in a class with
Speaker 5: guys who changed the games for their position.
Speaker 3: I think I was one of the guys who.
Speaker 5: Came in and evolved and evolved, evolved the game in
Speaker 5: my position and gave it just a little different.
Speaker 1: Look, where are you on this, because somehow it has
Speaker 1: gotten skewed over the years because they've taken away from it.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you don't have a ring, you can't
Speaker 1: be great, d Wade. I believe you could be a
Speaker 1: great player and not have a ring, because they are great.
Speaker 1: There are players that have multiple rings that aren't great players,
Speaker 1: and there are great players that don't have any ring.
Speaker 1: So when did this happen that if you don't have
Speaker 1: a ring you're not a great player. When did that happen?
Speaker 1: With it two thousand and five? When did this happen?
Speaker 5: I don't know when it happened. You know, man, a
Speaker 5: lot of people have what we have right here. A
Speaker 5: lot of people have a microphone, and their microphone is powerful.
Speaker 5: And so someone said this alone the way.
Speaker 2: And you said enough, people started believing, like, yeah.
Speaker 5: It makes no sense, Like here it is, okay. So
Speaker 5: I won a championship in the NBA, I didn't win
Speaker 5: in college. They went in high school, so far and
Speaker 5: so on. So does that make me greater than Carmelo?
Speaker 5: Because Carmelo wanted college. Cammello probably wanted a couple state championship, right,
Speaker 5: Like it's different times. We have an opportunity because of
Speaker 5: our talent, because our team, But that time is there
Speaker 5: for you, right and you try to strike that doesn't
Speaker 5: happen just because you're a great Playerization you gotta do
Speaker 5: they part right. You got to put the right team
Speaker 5: around you. You gotta put the right talent around Like if
Speaker 5: you look at Alan irvs in the Philadelphi's seventy six ers,
Speaker 5: they put the they structured the right team around him
Speaker 5: to give this many chance to be his to be
Speaker 5: his individual great self.
Speaker 2: Take the ball out and they did.
Speaker 3: They roll. Hey, you block shots at the rim? Yeah, yep,
Speaker 3: ex know, if he throw it.
Speaker 5: To you, you better shoot ten to fifteen feet only
Speaker 5: like they played their roles right and so but it
Speaker 5: took the organization, It took the gym and to everybody
Speaker 5: to make sure there was the right talent around Ai.
Speaker 5: So you're telling me Ai is not great if he
Speaker 5: don't make the finals run, or if they don't bring
Speaker 5: in my tumble, if they don't bring in these guys
Speaker 5: to open the floor for him to defend for him,
Speaker 5: all these things. And so the concept of a great
Speaker 5: player is not great because he didn't win a ring.
Speaker 3: Everybody can't win a ring. You'll have a different champion
Speaker 3: every year.
Speaker 1: And that's what it was, that defeat. Now, the rings
Speaker 1: would be meaningless if everybody won one. What's the value
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 3: There's no value in it.
Speaker 5: That's why it's such premium on it because everybody can't
Speaker 5: get one. It doesn't matter how great you are. You
Speaker 5: will not walk away with a ring just because you're great.
Speaker 5: It's players that are way greater than me, and they
Speaker 5: won't walk away with three rings. Right, That doesn't mean
Speaker 5: that I'm greater than that, I'm better than them because
Speaker 5: I have three rings, right, or because another player has
Speaker 5: one or two, because you got players that got rings
Speaker 5: that ain't even didn't do nothing to get those rings,
Speaker 5: so they make them.
Speaker 3: That's not how it goes. Now, I understand that.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you start talking about that pyramid, Okay, now
Speaker 1: it's third, second, third rings map.
Speaker 5: Well, because here we go, let's go back to the hotel.
Speaker 5: It's a different room, right, Like it's a hey, we
Speaker 5: all great, Yes, what you say one ring group is
Speaker 5: going over here? Okay, we'll just say that who got
Speaker 5: three rings?
Speaker 3: Going?
Speaker 1: You know how it go?
Speaker 5: And so I got a card for the three rings.
Speaker 5: I can have conversations with a couple of guys in there,
Speaker 5: but I can't go to the four or five. It's
Speaker 5: certain rooms I can't even go in, right, So it's okay,
Speaker 5: doesn't take away nothing from your greatness. We can all
Speaker 5: sit in the room of the top seventy five, top hundred,
Speaker 5: But then they gonna separate you from the rooms of champions, right,
Speaker 5: but your.
Speaker 3: Team's gonna be in that with you. They don't bring
Speaker 3: champions in.
Speaker 5: One person because it's not golf it's not tens and
Speaker 5: so far. So your team got to come into the
Speaker 5: two six Miami Heat. And so if they haven't put
Speaker 5: a team around you that allows you to be there,
Speaker 5: or if your time and hasn't hit, it's timing. Michael
Speaker 5: Jordan came around and messed everybody timing. Yes, Lebron James
Speaker 5: been in the finals ten to twelve years, how many
Speaker 5: opportunities do you get? Doesn't And so I hate that
Speaker 5: notion because that doesn't mean that Dame or and I'm
Speaker 5: not saying he won't get one, but right now that
Speaker 5: Dame is not.
Speaker 3: You can't tell me Dame.
Speaker 5: Is not one of the greatest players that we've seen
Speaker 5: play this game. If he walk away with no rings,
Speaker 5: does that take away where we've watching Dame? Not for me,
Speaker 5: not individually. It just means it doesn't. Now we know
Speaker 5: if he got the right team, he's not selfish. We
Speaker 5: know Dame gonna make sure other guys eat right. But
Speaker 5: he hasn't had the team that has allowed him at
Speaker 5: the right time to be better than the Lakers.
Speaker 1: Need to be more selfish. When he had that seventy one,
Speaker 1: I said, you need to be more selfish, you need
Speaker 1: to get eighty that night they started telling you like, nah,
Speaker 1: But let me ask you this. When you played with Lebron,
Speaker 1: you see him from a distance, Was he better up
Speaker 1: closed than you thought? Even you thought he was from
Speaker 1: a distance?
Speaker 3: One? He was better in practice and I thought he
Speaker 3: was in the games.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 5: I didn't get a chance to watch the other goats
Speaker 5: because it's multiple goals to pro in what era. But
Speaker 5: I did get a chance to watch this era. One
Speaker 5: of this era's goats, which is Lebron, Kobe's won and
Speaker 5: Lebron's one. And when I saw him in practice, it
Speaker 5: was a separator from.
Speaker 3: Me of good to great to goats.
Speaker 5: You cannot do the things that he did and how
Speaker 5: he did it.
Speaker 3: And so so we take it for granted. Of course,
Speaker 3: of course we do.
Speaker 5: And it's not that we won't have another great player
Speaker 5: to come along. We just will not have another n Right,
Speaker 5: we're still talking about Jordan all these years because we took.
Speaker 3: It for granted in the moment right now.
Speaker 5: It's like it's like when you watch when you watch
Speaker 5: the dunk contest with you there, sometimes you can't see
Speaker 5: what really happened, right, You got to look everybody looking
Speaker 5: for the instant replay slow motion, slow down, actually see
Speaker 5: what happened.
Speaker 3: That's what happened.
Speaker 1: When your career ends.
Speaker 5: As a Lebron career ends, we're gonna actually start looking
Speaker 5: at seeing what happened and what he actually did. Right
Speaker 5: and now we're gonna be like oh, because right now
Speaker 5: we're in it and we send it in fast motion
Speaker 5: and we can't really see everything that he's accomplishing.
Speaker 1: If they were to redraft the two thousand and and
Speaker 1: your class, the two thousand and three class, obviously, Lebron's
Speaker 1: gonna go number one?
Speaker 2: Where's d Wade going if they redrafted? So we had.
Speaker 1: Lebron one dark old Mellow cb U if they redraft,
Speaker 1: So we redrafted.
Speaker 5: Like redrafted after the career, like where we redraft? What
Speaker 5: point are we redrafted in? Like now was we sitting
Speaker 5: here or.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do I think even if we redrafted, Lebron's
Speaker 1: gonna go number one. We we agree with that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we go back.
Speaker 5: And look at everybody's career. Okay, where do you think
Speaker 5: you going? Where I should have went? Probably if you
Speaker 5: could do it to Denver?
Speaker 2: Denver, so you should have been a third pick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mellow should have been a second pick and not.
Speaker 3: And Chris Boss was a fourth pick.
Speaker 5: But you know, when it comes to bigs, is about
Speaker 5: what team needs that kind of big, right, So obviously
Speaker 5: Toronto needed them.
Speaker 3: Miami Heat needed a big.
Speaker 5: They would have drafted Chris Bosher Toronto and take them
Speaker 5: right right, I would have went to the Heat.
Speaker 3: So if you do it all over, I would probably
Speaker 3: go third to Denver.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, there's been a lot of speculation. I think
Speaker 1: Mellow brought it up. So don't get mad at me,
Speaker 1: Mello said. He said, don't get mad, Mello said.
Speaker 2: Bello said he should have been Rookie of the Year.
Speaker 3: He should have been rooky. I heard that you.
Speaker 2: So I ain't trying to start nothing, he said it.
Speaker 5: Well, he said, at least cold, it's an argument. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he had an argument then, and he has an argument now.
Speaker 5: Takes nothing away from Lebron and the regular year. But
Speaker 5: let's look at what Mellow did over there in the
Speaker 5: Western Conference.
Speaker 1: On the game, six rebounds the game, almost three assists,
Speaker 1: shot forty four percent from the floor, and his.
Speaker 3: Team made on the playoff team playoff team.
Speaker 2: Lebron was twenty one twenty one point.
Speaker 1: Nine five and a half rebounds six and sists, shot
Speaker 1: forty three percent from the floor. Team didn't make the
Speaker 1: playoff co work here of the year.
Speaker 2: It should have been.
Speaker 1: It should have been because they get it for Grant
Speaker 1: Hill and Jason Kidd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, y'all showed us that y'all can do it right.
Speaker 3: Co work here of the year.
Speaker 5: If we're going by the numbers and how everything is, like, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: Lebron had more assists. Yeah, but when you look at it,
Speaker 5: he's doing this on a ready.
Speaker 3: Made playoff team, which is harder.
Speaker 5: Right, Lebron's doing on an eighteen year old kid that's
Speaker 5: coming in to save a franchise.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: They both deserved it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mellow line, Yeah it could have been.
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, listen, Mellow ain't trying to take nothing away
Speaker 5: from Bron, right. Mellow is like, but I know I
Speaker 5: put the same effort level work in, but y'all didn't
Speaker 5: want to. They don't want to give it to him.
Speaker 5: He and he was warning to do rags they want.
Speaker 5: They won't mess with Mellow at that time. But I mean,
Speaker 5: if you look at it at that time, it's it's
Speaker 5: been a few times. What it's All Star games where
Speaker 5: a certain times you're like, oh, two people, should they
Speaker 5: deserve it and it's okay to code.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you think they'll be code m vps.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know that the games changes so much
Speaker 5: what they do one from the East versus and one
Speaker 5: from the West.
Speaker 1: No, why not? Well that I mean they don't. You
Speaker 1: don't know what baseball do. It happened like American League
Speaker 1: MVP and National League MVP. Football don't do it. You
Speaker 1: have one m v P. I don't think they'll do that.
Speaker 3: But it's not why not?
Speaker 5: It's not equal? You don't play every team equally. You
Speaker 5: don't like it's not so why are you giving out.
Speaker 2: You think the West plays different than the East.
Speaker 3: They play at a different time, for sure, No they do.
Speaker 3: It's different. Like why not have an East versus?
Speaker 5: Like I understand how it's been, But if we break
Speaker 5: this down right now and all these new awards that's
Speaker 5: coming up, why not reimagine this thing that ain't.
Speaker 1: Really got no new award They just gave him from names.
Speaker 1: You know, you got the labbird in the Magine doctor
Speaker 1: the ward you got.
Speaker 5: No, but you get MVPs for Eastern Commerce Finals. I
Speaker 5: didn't get an MVP for East Commerce finals. I just
Speaker 5: got it for the NBA fight. So like their new awards.
Speaker 5: Now at it, it's more you got more.
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, Lebron would showing up being none questions Lebron
Speaker 1: got you would have ten Eastern conferences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be a lot. Like you get some scoring Chameman.
Speaker 3: They given all these awards.
Speaker 1: They can clutch award how many times?
Speaker 3: And fourth quarter I was in there, I was the
Speaker 3: leading scorer. No, I mean awards I have.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: So if we're reimagining things, then let's reimagine it. Let's
Speaker 5: give an MVP off for the East and the MVP
Speaker 5: off for the West.
Speaker 1: Shock comes to Miami. You're already solidified as a player.
Speaker 1: How easy was it for you? How accepting were you
Speaker 1: of shock? Like man, and we're getting shot.
Speaker 3: It's shocked. I would be a fool.
Speaker 5: I would have been a fool, and I would still
Speaker 5: be a fool if I didn't come in all ear
Speaker 5: my ears opened, my eyes buck white and listening to everything.
Speaker 5: That one of the greatest players, I mean at that time,
Speaker 5: he already had three rings on the fifty Greatest Players
Speaker 5: of all time so far and so on. So I
Speaker 5: was like this, yes, yes, hey, that's why I went
Speaker 5: the ball right. Oh yeah, listen, he let Shaq is
Speaker 5: a very honest man to me, and our relationship is
Speaker 5: a one two punch. He came in, he sat down
Speaker 5: just like this. We sat down and it was very candid.
Speaker 5: It was very short. He was like, listen, Flashes, is
Speaker 5: your team? Wait one flashit. He eventually got to that,
Speaker 5: I'm going to help you become one of the greatest
Speaker 5: to play this game. I'm going to help you be
Speaker 5: a superstar. When I asked for the ball, throw it.
Speaker 3: To his hand, it was we had a real easy relationship.
Speaker 3: If Shaq did like this to that right hand, turn five,
Speaker 3: get shocked the ball? What you want? You want a lie,
Speaker 3: big fellow, I have nothing to like. Shaq helped me
Speaker 3: and sold me, like my confidences. I walked out on
Speaker 3: that court.
Speaker 5: It's, you know, like when I got the NBA the
Speaker 5: Miami Heat that we want nothing.
Speaker 3: Nobody was checking for us.
Speaker 5: When I walked out there my second year and Shaq
Speaker 5: was walking out there, my shoulders got a little bag
Speaker 5: of test my big you see my big brother, right,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean? And so he helped me
Speaker 5: so much. He took my career that was probably gonna
Speaker 5: go like this.
Speaker 3: Right away.
Speaker 5: And it was the confidence that he gave me. Think
Speaker 5: about him, man, one of the greatest evers say is
Speaker 5: your show.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna back you up. I got you and everything.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm looking at you.
Speaker 1: In your third season, you lead the Heat to the
Speaker 1: to the championship, You're the finals, MVP, and y'all went
Speaker 1: four straight. You go forty two, thirty six, forty three,
Speaker 1: thirty six.
Speaker 3: It's a bad boy.
Speaker 1: Forty forty two, thirty six, forty two in game three,
Speaker 1: thirty six, in game four, forty three, in game five,
Speaker 1: thirty six.
Speaker 5: In game six, the haters gonna say, I shot twenty
Speaker 5: three throws.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big points.
Speaker 1: You were you were you were attacking, you attacking the back,
Speaker 1: you and you are attacking food back.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to jump shooting fool.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you that I was gonna get in one
Speaker 5: way or the other.
Speaker 2: So what's going through your mind?
Speaker 1: Because that one game, I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: Game three or Game three, you guys were down, and
Speaker 1: I remember you saying like, Man, I ain't.
Speaker 2: Going out like that.
Speaker 1: I ain't gonna like I ain't going No, that ain't
Speaker 1: about to happen.
Speaker 5: No, First of all, you want you one thing we
Speaker 5: all want where we come from.
Speaker 3: We want some stripes in the hood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Back at the crib, I need my stripes.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there and I'm like, we ain't getting we
Speaker 3: ain't about to get beat like this.
Speaker 5: I know everybody back in Chicago, but I know they
Speaker 5: watching this game, right, And I just through that time,
Speaker 5: I was just thinking of everything. I'm like, nah, I
Speaker 5: ain't going out like this. If I'm gonna go out,
Speaker 5: I'm about to go out letting these things fly. This
Speaker 5: ball about to go up, baby, I'm gonna tell you that.
Speaker 5: And then they start going in. But just the mentality
Speaker 5: to say, you know what we hear. I don't know
Speaker 5: because I'm young, so I don't I don't know if
Speaker 5: this is gonna happen again, I'm not even thinking that way.
Speaker 5: But what I do know is if we go down three, oh,
Speaker 5: it's probably it's probably over. And so we get so
Speaker 5: when we came out of that huddle down thirteen at
Speaker 5: the crib, I was like, well, our young fella, all
Speaker 5: the things you told yourself if you get this opportunity, yeah,
Speaker 5: flash all these cool nicknames it's time to do it.
Speaker 1: Did you know you were gonna have that type of
Speaker 1: night going into the game, because sometimes you can tell,
Speaker 1: like man the way to shoot around and warm up.
Speaker 1: I felt really good, so you kind of get a
Speaker 1: feeling that something special might happen.
Speaker 5: Well, so a lot of people, I mean doesn't make
Speaker 5: it like it doesn't make me a hero or hit
Speaker 5: work at all. But I was sick when I was
Speaker 5: sick in the round before, and so once we got
Speaker 5: to the first two games versus Dallas, I was still sick.
Speaker 3: We got a butt beat.
Speaker 5: But if you watch my numbers, I had like twenty
Speaker 5: five twenty nine, Like I was in that range. Maybe
Speaker 5: not high percentage, but I was in that range, and
Speaker 5: I was I was like out there figuring things out right.
Speaker 5: I was like, Okay, this is where I can tag,
Speaker 5: this where I can get my spot, so far and
Speaker 5: so on. So by the time we got to game three,
Speaker 5: now we're home, confidence is a little bit more. I'm
Speaker 5: feeling better physically, and so once I got to that
Speaker 5: that moment, like I was able to kind of pick
Speaker 5: the game apart because I've already had a doses of
Speaker 5: two other games of how y'all guarded me in the
Speaker 5: fourth and so now it was about me. Just changed
Speaker 5: my mindset of not doing the same thing, and so
Speaker 5: maybe I attacked a little different, Maybe I attacked a
Speaker 5: little sooner. All these things started changing as the series
Speaker 5: went on, and so it really is a boxing match,
Speaker 5: and they did us like this. The first two games
Speaker 5: they kept us at like this, and then a game
Speaker 5: three they were they were hitting us right, and so
Speaker 5: I had to kind of change my disposition. Had the
Speaker 5: Floyd Mayweather on them, I had to go a different
Speaker 5: show with the b and kind of change up, trying
Speaker 5: to change it up. And then we got a couple
Speaker 5: of calls, We got a couple.
Speaker 3: Of shots to fall change the entire series.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised that the Lakers traded Shot to the Mami?
Speaker 5: Uh? Yeah, because I didn't really like it was at
Speaker 5: social media. I didn't really know about the beef, the
Speaker 5: internal beef that people talk about. I still don't know
Speaker 5: Shot and I didn't talk a lot of that wasn't
Speaker 5: our relationship, and so so he didn't.
Speaker 1: So when you when he got there, he like Lakers there,
Speaker 1: he wanted he wanted to do another.
Speaker 2: Ring, but he wanted to be first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was not. It wasn't no secret Kobe can't
Speaker 3: get a ring before me. It wasn't no secret.
Speaker 5: In Miami, we all knew, Like I remember it was
Speaker 5: we were, uh we were sixteen games into the first
Speaker 5: season Miami. He ten and six Los Angeles Lakers maybe
Speaker 5: either tennt six or nine to seven.
Speaker 3: Check fact check me. We had a meeting led Bashack.
Speaker 5: He went the fuck off because we had the same
Speaker 5: record as the Lakers at that time.
Speaker 3: You know what we did. We're on the twelve game
Speaker 3: winn the Street, lost one or two.
Speaker 5: We went on a ten game win the Street, and
Speaker 5: we end up having the best record in the league
Speaker 5: for a long time.
Speaker 3: But like, he didn't want to be at the same
Speaker 3: pace as the Lakers.
Speaker 5: He didn't come here to be average, right, and so
Speaker 5: like he demanded something out of us that allowed obviously
Speaker 5: that pushed us to help us win that championship.
Speaker 2: So how excited was he to get that ring before Kobe?
Speaker 3: You heard his dis track they have with this record
Speaker 3: that came out he did, So there you go. Let's
Speaker 3: go back and look at the lyrics of the distrack you.
Speaker 1: Got compared with, because when he came there, they're like
Speaker 1: d Wade about to be the next Kobe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I ain't like that.
Speaker 2: You ain't like that.
Speaker 3: Oh why would I like that? I don't want that.
Speaker 2: You don't want you don't want that pressure. You want that.
Speaker 1: I ain't want that. That smoke.
Speaker 3: Kobe got three rings at this time.
Speaker 1: He's twenty twenty four years old.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he got three rings, Like I played the way
Speaker 5: I played because I.
Speaker 3: Watched Jordan Iverson and Kobe.
Speaker 5: Right now, you're talking about IM, like, don't put me
Speaker 5: there yet, I'm two years in the league, right, And
Speaker 5: so they did, and it become like like I'm still
Speaker 5: a kid who was like, I sickly still want Kobe's.
Speaker 1: Autographic, Yeah, asking for the shoes at the back of you.
Speaker 3: I'm secretly like I don't even want to push up
Speaker 3: on him too much.
Speaker 1: Yet I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 5: And so as I was trying to find my foot
Speaker 5: in the league, I said, going to lead they Now
Speaker 5: they're now pinning me with one of my favorite players,
Speaker 5: I guy that I only played once the year before
Speaker 5: because he was injured the second time.
Speaker 3: And so now it's this inner beef.
Speaker 5: That we don't even that I don't even know that's
Speaker 5: there that I didn't calls that the media has called.
Speaker 1: And so now we ain't talking each other.
Speaker 3: He come.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not.
Speaker 5: Saying he wasn't, but it's gonna be a little extra
Speaker 5: because y'all say that he next, I'm gonna show y'all's
Speaker 5: that's Kobe. And so what it did do is it
Speaker 5: fast checked me. It brought out a little bit in
Speaker 5: me because like I knew that my goal. I was like,
Speaker 5: all right, right, he got he has to look at
Speaker 5: me as an equal, not saying that that he thinks
Speaker 5: I'm on his level, but he has to get some
Speaker 5: sleep the night before he plays me. He has to
Speaker 5: guard me. You got to pick me up ninety four
Speaker 5: feet whatever it is. I need to respect from him.
Speaker 5: And so that's that's how I took it. I didn't
Speaker 5: take it as oh, yeah, I am the next code.
Speaker 3: I'm in this role.
Speaker 5: No, I ain't young had that that's Kobe.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 5: And so I think I built my own sidekick role,
Speaker 5: like to call you a sidekick.
Speaker 3: I think I build my own lane of how right?
Speaker 3: How my signe kicked ten year.
Speaker 1: Was I'm looking at your season in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine you became the only player to
Speaker 1: score two thousand points, five hundred six, one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty steels, one hundred blocks.
Speaker 2: You won't the scoring title. Do you feel you should
Speaker 2: have won the MVP that season?
Speaker 3: Of course? But also understand why Lebron won it.
Speaker 5: I think they won sixty seven games, sixty two games,
Speaker 5: and the evers roughly the same, Like I understand it,
Speaker 5: but like as an individual, brother, Yeah, that was my opinion.
Speaker 1: How different would Dwayne, how different would your basketball life
Speaker 1: be if you had a regular season NV peeling would
Speaker 1: you would you look at your career any different?
Speaker 3: No, I've just been in a few more conversations hearing it.
Speaker 1: Well, right now, they got you as the third bread
Speaker 1: shooting guard behind Jordan and Kobe.
Speaker 2: Would you agree with that?
Speaker 5: I don't care, Like until the next person come along,
Speaker 5: they make me the fourth for the fifth, it doesn't
Speaker 5: matter like I Yeah, we're talking in the barbershopping, were
Speaker 5: talking about rankings. Yeah, I want my name to be
Speaker 5: mentioned with great So if you tell me I'm third,
Speaker 5: I'm not first, so I'm mad about that.
Speaker 3: But if you tell me i'm third, I can respect
Speaker 3: the top two that's in front of me.
Speaker 5: Right, but also too, I understand it's all subjective as well,
Speaker 5: is it? West was Iris in the Two Guard? Do
Speaker 5: you love James Harden's style?
Speaker 1: Do you love this? Like?
Speaker 3: I mean what we're doing here?
Speaker 5: So for me, like to be mentioned with the greats
Speaker 5: is all I ever wanted to put a number on it.
Speaker 5: The number moves right. Maybe I know we're thinking right
Speaker 5: now that that Jordan and Kobe when it's in its
Speaker 5: in stone.
Speaker 1: But like these, nobody pass Jordan Kobe. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think nobody. I don't think they're gonna let
Speaker 1: anybody pass Jordan. We not.
Speaker 3: I know one thing about us. Our generation ain't gonna
Speaker 3: let it.
Speaker 5: We ain't gonna let this nobody come along, because we're
Speaker 5: gonna fight and defeend Jordan Kobe forever forever.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So for me, man, it's like in my position, like.
Speaker 5: And I'm very honest, I was a very great player
Speaker 5: from from my abilities. I maximize all my abilities, That's
Speaker 5: all you can ask, right, I maximize it. Because of injury,
Speaker 5: I didn't I wasn't able to get to the level
Speaker 5: that I knew I could get to. Right my mind,
Speaker 5: I'm in goat level of my mentality and my talent.
Speaker 1: Wade doesn't have. D Way doesn't tear his knee injury,
Speaker 1: doesn't tears me in college. D Wade doesn't have the
Speaker 1: two knee surgeries in the NBA, and he played sixteen seasons.
Speaker 2: What's d Waighte numbers you?
Speaker 5: You're doing your goat conversation with me, You're doing what's
Speaker 5: your bad?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, so I'd have had a gold Bans on
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, d Waighte.
Speaker 5: Well, maybe, like I said, we're talking about if you
Speaker 5: take away the injuries away, I'm still playing basketball right
Speaker 5: now if I want to wow, right, because it's the
Speaker 5: injuries and everything in the mental right, But if i'm
Speaker 5: if I'm healthy enough, like I could, I know, I
Speaker 5: just like you understand some about my game multiple ways,
Speaker 5: right right, I played the game ault away, so even
Speaker 5: right now when I got older, I went to it,
Speaker 5: I had another game and still was effective as an
Speaker 5: old player.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, you motherfucking right, I was one
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 5: Do like you couldn't tell me in six seven o
Speaker 5: eight that I wasn't going to where I wanted to go,
Speaker 5: right right?
Speaker 1: Like why why not?
Speaker 3: I'm ten?
Speaker 5: Like the league is not it's not hard for me.
Speaker 5: I'm averaging thirty a game in the NBA, right and
Speaker 5: so far and so on. I'm you know, and I
Speaker 5: already wanted I already want to find his MVP. I
Speaker 5: already won a championship in my third year.
Speaker 3: I did that.
Speaker 5: So in my mind, I'm very confident and quietly cocky
Speaker 5: about where I'm going.
Speaker 3: Right, and then injury started boom boom boom, right, and
Speaker 3: that it humbled me real quick.
Speaker 2: When did you realize?
Speaker 1: When did you realize that you, possibly because of the injuries,
Speaker 1: wasn't going to reach the ultimate player that you wanted
Speaker 1: to become, that you was gonna have to Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a great player, but I know I had so
Speaker 1: much more in me if I didn't have this injury.
Speaker 3: I mean, as you get older, so somewhere in that Big.
Speaker 1: Three era where you didn't look the same that twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen that lad Lebron.
Speaker 5: I wasn't the same. Ain't no, look I was. I
Speaker 5: was getting shots all before all the game really, oh man,
Speaker 5: So we'll do documentary later, okay, like all the all
Speaker 5: the knee injections and the shots and all that stuff.
Speaker 5: Man to get out there and perform like I did
Speaker 5: a lot of those things to be able to get
Speaker 5: out there. My body had felt like it got I
Speaker 5: got by mac Truck, and that's how I was playing
Speaker 5: right now. I was doing everything to medicate myself to
Speaker 5: be out there. And so yeah, I realized that at
Speaker 5: a point, man, I think it was one time, like
Speaker 5: you just over the years, like when I used to
Speaker 5: get past somebody, one step, I'm at the rim and body,
Speaker 5: I'm putting you in the rim. Right then it became
Speaker 5: one step, I don't even get to this floater.
Speaker 1: One step, let me.
Speaker 2: Get to the side.
Speaker 1: Step I can't even get back.
Speaker 3: It's the same. So like you, you know these things.
Speaker 5: If you're a person who get out the shower in
Speaker 5: the morning, you actually look in the mirror at yourself,
Speaker 5: you know who you are, you talk to yourself in
Speaker 5: the mirror like I do. So I knew over the time,
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, I'm losing a little of these steps.
Speaker 3: I'm not as explosive, I'm.
Speaker 5: Not as this, And that doesn't mean I can't still
Speaker 5: be great and I can't play this game. But I
Speaker 5: started to see it, and so it for me once
Speaker 5: I started doing it, I'm like Okay, like, who's up next, Lebron?
Speaker 3: You do more? I do a little because you know
Speaker 3: that you can't. You can't carry that same load no more.
Speaker 3: It ain't the same.
Speaker 5: I can't get to that rim point two second nine
Speaker 5: is zero point four point five. It's a little different.
Speaker 5: They can close in on me. I can't be as great.
Speaker 5: And so like all these little things, I started to understand,
Speaker 5: and I started to like, Okay, calculate, take a step back,
Speaker 5: move your game this way, go to the post, go
Speaker 5: to mid range on like all these things right, and
Speaker 5: so like, you gotta be You gotta be mentally sharp
Speaker 5: in this game if you want to stay a long time.
Speaker 3: It can't just be about the physical as you know.
Speaker 1: How did how did you recruit Lebron to get him?
Speaker 1: To convince him? I ain't.
Speaker 3: More of this.
Speaker 1: I ain't recruit Lebron. I don't.
Speaker 3: I didn't recruit Lebron. What do you mean?
Speaker 2: I mean? So, how'd you give you to Miami? Could
Speaker 2: I know Pam Riley recruited?
Speaker 3: No? Well, god recruit.
Speaker 1: I was just I was just what did.
Speaker 2: You What did you tell him? What did you tell Lebron?
Speaker 1: What did you tell you?
Speaker 2: You told you made some promise and something no I
Speaker 2: didn't like.
Speaker 3: I don't think no one would ever believe how all
Speaker 3: this happened.
Speaker 5: Well, it's gonna be hard because it's gonna take multiple
Speaker 5: people to tell you.
Speaker 3: Because I have a perspective. Lebron has a perspective.
Speaker 1: We'll give you since you here, I have you would
Speaker 1: I get you perspective, but you give us, you give us.
Speaker 2: How it played out to you.
Speaker 5: How it played out to me was once again as
Speaker 5: I started off, as we're as stars in this league.
Speaker 5: You're determined and you're you're picked on or you're lifted
Speaker 5: up by the championships you win.
Speaker 3: And so you got a young player like Lebron who
Speaker 3: he knows what.
Speaker 5: He needs to do to be at the level that
Speaker 5: he is today, and so he knew at that time
Speaker 5: that he couldn't probably do it there right at that moment,
Speaker 5: and so enter, what can I do with that?
Speaker 3: Who can I do it with? Previous years before that, we.
Speaker 5: All signed the same contract, so we can give ourselves flexibility,
Speaker 5: not saying hey, we're gonna play together in three years,
Speaker 5: but let's give ourself flexibility. And so that flexibility was like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, you wade a free agent. Oh, Chris Boss.
Speaker 5: So we everyone started thinking different around that time, and
Speaker 5: for me, it wasn't like it wasn't real until the
Speaker 5: Miami to got a call from my agent got a
Speaker 5: call from the Miami Heat, and they let us know
Speaker 5: that they actually put money aside or they can figure
Speaker 5: out a way to get three max players.
Speaker 3: Because at first it was just two Max players.
Speaker 5: So the conversation changed when the Miami he made that
Speaker 5: call to say we can get.
Speaker 3: Three max players. And then Lebron and I got on
Speaker 3: the phone and I just leave it at that. It's
Speaker 3: a lot of things that.
Speaker 1: Happened that Oh okay.
Speaker 5: And so then we got on the phone and we
Speaker 5: got on the phone because Lebron called and said, hey,
Speaker 5: let's get on the phone, just like we did three
Speaker 5: years ago prior to that. Lebron, my agent, Henry Thomas,
Speaker 5: his agent, the ty Leon Rose.
Speaker 3: We got on the phone.
Speaker 5: We talked about the contract situation, We talked about the
Speaker 5: five year deal versus a three year deal, the benefits.
Speaker 5: At that time, we were working together because we were
Speaker 5: all new at this.
Speaker 3: Right we're young dudes who friends.
Speaker 5: Wow, So we were working together and like, yo, you're
Speaker 5: twenty you're this age, you'll be this age when that
Speaker 5: deal is up. You older, you needed short, shorter deals,
Speaker 5: you can get more money like this.
Speaker 1: Time we were talking.
Speaker 5: We were young guys, but we had a different view
Speaker 5: on things, and so we kept talking throughout the process
Speaker 5: and when free agency came, another conversation, and a conversation
Speaker 5: led to huh.
Speaker 3: We could do what we could play together? And they
Speaker 3: just went from there.
Speaker 1: Do you even though they say we got a deal
Speaker 1: for three match contracts, did you think this was like?
Speaker 1: Could this be a reality? Could this be realistic? No?
Speaker 5: We didn't see it at that time, right, We didn't
Speaker 5: see especially players, free agents, guys, three guys, a.
Speaker 3: Good team, who they want? Where were they doing that at?
Speaker 5: A team had to go get an older agent, superstar
Speaker 5: or someone else and package them together.
Speaker 1: And that's what we did with the Celtics when they
Speaker 1: got Guard that.
Speaker 3: You got lucky, You drafted some guys and some guys,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: You get a Kareem, You get Kareem the magic Magic.
Speaker 1: Kareem's there, he win the final when the irregular season MVP,
Speaker 1: they drafted Magic and then two years later that Daves
Speaker 1: worded with the first you go, how that happened?
Speaker 2: How he how you win the finals?
Speaker 5: And did you get you know what I'm saying different
Speaker 5: time back then, as we stayed on winter time, they
Speaker 5: were doing corn flips and all in the back like
Speaker 5: it was so like.
Speaker 3: I never first of.
Speaker 5: All, I never imagined and I don't know if people
Speaker 5: believe me. I never thought Lebron and I would play together.
Speaker 5: I had a meeting with the Miami Heat about this before,
Speaker 5: two years before we ever played together. Was do you
Speaker 5: think And I was like, zero points zero zero zero zero,
Speaker 5: zero point one percent chance that would ever play together, right, right,
Speaker 5: And because there was a lot of conversations out there,
Speaker 5: and I never I never thought it was until I
Speaker 5: sat with him face to face and I see that
Speaker 5: it wasn't about scoring titles no more.
Speaker 1: For him.
Speaker 5: It wasn't about all the things that you know, the
Speaker 5: commercials and MVP's and all the things he had. He
Speaker 5: had that, but he was still empty inside and he
Speaker 5: wanted and needed something else for his career. And me
Speaker 5: being one of his good friends, me be one of
Speaker 5: the best players in the league, me being a free
Speaker 5: agent at the same time, me being in a nice
Speaker 5: city at the same time, it was attractive and it
Speaker 5: was sexy, and so we had an opportunity to sit
Speaker 5: down and talk about it.
Speaker 1: What did you think when you heard Lebron say not one,
Speaker 1: not two, not three, not four, not five, not six,
Speaker 1: not seven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't take it seriously. Anybody out there who took
Speaker 3: that serious? Like, come on, guys, like we were having.
Speaker 2: A parade, right you paid, there's a media you dot.
Speaker 1: You know, we in that with our fans, like we're
Speaker 1: in that talking that one. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: When that we jacket we're doing we do when the crib.
Speaker 1: With our homies. You know, you put a little sauce
Speaker 1: on yourself.
Speaker 3: You had a little too.
Speaker 1: That's what he did. He had a little sauce, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And then that sauce became Oh, we're gonna hold him
Speaker 5: to it, that's all. Like we never we never say
Speaker 5: were about to win seventh straight, but we knew he
Speaker 5: was gonna be a problem.
Speaker 1: The Big three, the hate and the vitry all you got.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was nasty.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen anything like it before or since?
Speaker 1: Not in that way.
Speaker 5: I never actually never seen hate. I heard about hate,
Speaker 5: heard about it from my ancestors. You know stories about
Speaker 5: my ancestors. I heard about it from my mom and
Speaker 5: my uncles. Never seen hate until Lebron decided to come
Speaker 5: to Miami. Then I started seeing hate up close. And
Speaker 5: hate is an ugly thing. And so it was a
Speaker 5: like for us man like, I think a part of
Speaker 5: us didn't understand, like, we're still young young men who.
Speaker 3: Are playing this game of basketball.
Speaker 5: We're boys, were traveling playing together, our kids get to
Speaker 5: grow up together, like we're excited about this, and then
Speaker 5: on the outside, everybody in the world is calling us
Speaker 5: all these things. And so it wasn't a joyous year
Speaker 5: to play basketball at all. And I think that was
Speaker 5: the one thing coming out of that year, even though
Speaker 5: we lost in it. And I always say, one of
Speaker 5: the best things that happened to us is that we
Speaker 5: lost in the finals. That well, one of the best
Speaker 5: things that happened to us media wise is that we
Speaker 5: lost in the finals. Because if we're the one in
Speaker 5: the finals in twenty ten, we was gonna be jacket.
Speaker 3: It was nothing.
Speaker 5: No one was gonna be able to say to us,
Speaker 5: we were going to be two, and so it humbled us.
Speaker 5: It put us at our level and allowed us to
Speaker 5: focus on what was real.
Speaker 1: And while we got together, it was reported that you
Speaker 1: guys all went went away. You you you. I think mellow.
Speaker 1: I think Chris, Paul and Lebron and all your families
Speaker 1: went away and you had a conversation with Lebron about
Speaker 1: it's okay, Bro.
Speaker 3: It's okay.
Speaker 2: I need you to be I need you to be you.
Speaker 5: No, I mean, that's not how it happened. Well, first
Speaker 5: of all, it wasn't a CPA, it wasn't mellow. It
Speaker 5: was the trip that everyone's talking about was just my wife, I, Savannah, Lebron,
Speaker 5: and a couple other friends of ours. Okay, And that
Speaker 5: was the trip where we started having different conversation.
Speaker 3: That was right after we lost.
Speaker 5: We had a couple of weeks away, and then we
Speaker 5: had this trip plane and we start having different conversations
Speaker 5: about while we lost, how we lost.
Speaker 2: And I just was.
Speaker 5: Sitting there as I always do, I sitting there listen,
Speaker 5: and I listened to I heard Lebron talk and everything
Speaker 5: that I was getting from.
Speaker 3: Lebron and that year, even though he had a great year,
Speaker 3: and even in that.
Speaker 5: Moment, was still hesitation, and so I for me, I
Speaker 5: was like, Okay, if we're going to reach the level
Speaker 5: that we're going to reach, and how I can help
Speaker 5: us it is to take that that hesitation out of
Speaker 5: one of the game's greatest players, because I watched him
Speaker 5: play and I know what he plays, how he plays
Speaker 5: when he has no.
Speaker 3: I shot two in a row. D Wade ain't the way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean, Like, it's it's
Speaker 5: human nature, a d waiting how to bucket in a while.
Speaker 5: Let me, no bro, press on you that dude, Go
Speaker 5: be that dude. We're gonna do what we gotta do
Speaker 5: to make sure that you good and we good. Because
Speaker 5: this is ultimately about what we all sat down and
Speaker 5: said we want to do.
Speaker 3: We said we want to win rings.
Speaker 5: No one said that when I need an extra endorsement
Speaker 5: or you needed extraly this.
Speaker 3: We wanted to win rings.
Speaker 5: So for us to win rings in this day of age,
Speaker 5: you have to be who you are.
Speaker 3: And that's besides Kobe.
Speaker 5: It's the game's greatest player, right And so I can't
Speaker 5: stand in the way of that. I can't let my
Speaker 5: ego and my price center with it. And I said
Speaker 5: I was doing it in the beginning, but it was
Speaker 5: always like, hey, first year, I think we both ours
Speaker 5: twenty five a game. It was kind of even same shots,
Speaker 5: this same this, same possessions, coach, don't need to worry
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 3: You don't need to worry about that.
Speaker 5: I've always played around multiple players, I figured out.
Speaker 3: And that was our conversation.
Speaker 5: It happened after the trip that happened in the actual
Speaker 5: in the gym one day. It was Lebron coach Fizdale
Speaker 5: and myself and I told him right there I was,
Speaker 5: and I just remember the look on his face. He
Speaker 5: was kind of like puzzled looking at me, like you
Speaker 5: for real? And I was and so but at that point,
Speaker 5: I'm saying like it had to be bigger than me,
Speaker 5: which was hard to do because we all come in
Speaker 5: like check the name on the back. But I just
Speaker 5: had to look at myself in the mirror and say,
Speaker 5: this is not why you playing with Lebron, James and
Speaker 5: Chris Bosh. You're not playing with them to check the
Speaker 5: name on the back. You play with them to check
Speaker 5: the rings on your fingers.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: And so let's get to that.
Speaker 1: What happened in the math series, y'all better.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, we got.
Speaker 2: You look at that a little bit.
Speaker 5: I mean the honest We got all aiden, got all coached,
Speaker 5: and if you go back and asks the players, you
Speaker 5: go back and the expo he got. The coaching staff
Speaker 5: got all coach and the players got all played. When
Speaker 5: it came down to winning. We didn't close our games, right.
Speaker 5: We had game you had a sixty boy lead Game.
Speaker 1: Two at home.
Speaker 3: We're fifteen.
Speaker 5: You don't lose that. We don't close our games. But
Speaker 5: that's bad. That's players and that's coaches.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And so we got all coached by Rick Carlile and
Speaker 3: his staff, and.
Speaker 5: We got all played by uh Dirk and Jason Terry
Speaker 5: and JT J.
Speaker 2: Kid.
Speaker 1: But that little J. J.
Speaker 3: Barreer, Nobody give him credit. JJ Barreer was the one
Speaker 3: who changed.
Speaker 5: We didn't have no answer for him. We okay, Dirk,
Speaker 5: you know what you're gonna do. Let's just u d
Speaker 5: make his shots tough, make it hard on him. He
Speaker 5: try to make him not shoot fifty percent, make him
Speaker 5: have an off night, but he's still gonna get twenty.
Speaker 5: Jason Terry going right, you can't stop them, right. We
Speaker 5: knew all these things, but no one playing for little
Speaker 5: JJR to come off the bench. And do what he
Speaker 5: did right. And I look at him, I say, from
Speaker 5: a not from an MVP as an award, but from
Speaker 5: as a player who really helped push that series over.
Speaker 3: I give it to JJ because we didn't have no
Speaker 3: answer for him.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: And so we as a team, like obviously Lebron struggled.
Speaker 5: We talked about the everge seventeen points a game, players
Speaker 5: struggled and what sucked about it is because of everything
Speaker 5: that was talked about and all this, But at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, me as a leader, spoil as
Speaker 5: a head coach, we got to do a better.
Speaker 3: Job to make sure that he's not struggling.
Speaker 5: How are we getting him the ball in certain places
Speaker 5: to make it easier for him, because you know, as
Speaker 5: a player, all you need is one thing to go
Speaker 5: your way and to turn everything around.
Speaker 3: We didn't do enough of that for a guy who
Speaker 3: was struggling. For whatever the.
Speaker 5: Reason is, we all have had our struggles, and so
Speaker 5: as a leader I looked at him myself, I was like,
Speaker 5: you didn't do enough.
Speaker 3: D like and you will see a clip.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm cursing brown out, I'm in his ear, I'm
Speaker 5: talking to him, but that probably won't the way I
Speaker 5: should have done it. Maybe I should have done something
Speaker 5: else right, And so we were more talented, but they
Speaker 5: were a better team.
Speaker 2: Pat. I saw Pat Riley say so.
Speaker 1: Think that players came in his office and the manner
Speaker 1: that they fired that he fired the coach. It would
Speaker 1: reported you and yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you didn't do that.
Speaker 3: I don't remember doing it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I didn't, but I don't remember doing that.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 5: I mean I knew coach Bowl at that time two
Speaker 5: years in. The one thing is is when when Lebron
Speaker 5: decides to talk about everything on his documentaries or whatever
Speaker 5: he decided to do, he would talk about what we
Speaker 5: talked about Riley as a coach versus Spore as a coach.
Speaker 5: And I'm meeting before we even played together. And one
Speaker 5: thing I told him, you don't want Riley to coach
Speaker 5: his team.
Speaker 3: Ain't got nothing to do with Pat love them. You
Speaker 3: don't want Ridley to coach his team.
Speaker 2: Bro.
Speaker 5: And even though was not experienced, and we needed a
Speaker 5: coach that was experienced so we can win championship right away.
Speaker 5: We're ready, We're gonna deal, We're gonna We're gonna help
Speaker 5: him grow.
Speaker 3: Now you don't want Godfather to come down.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 3: He did it in two thousand and six. I experienced it.
Speaker 2: And you ready for him to go back? Yeah, what
Speaker 2: did you think that? What do you think past saw
Speaker 2: and Eric to say, you know what, No, this is
Speaker 2: the guy. He can get it done.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: He's turned himself into one of the best coaches in
Speaker 2: the NBA.
Speaker 5: Well if you see, that's once again why you don't
Speaker 5: listen to players at times, because if you listen to me.
Speaker 3: When they first hired Spae, I was like, what are
Speaker 3: you doing? This is the this is the wrong decision, right.
Speaker 5: I remember when Mickey and and Nick Harrison set me
Speaker 5: down and said, hey, we're we're bringing up up Spoe
Speaker 5: from them like spose in the video room and then
Speaker 5: he sat behind a bench and they was like, hey,
Speaker 5: we're gonna hire from within and and it's gonna be
Speaker 5: er exposure.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I'm looking for a big name coach,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm a star.
Speaker 1: I'm like, who we're gonna get Dog? And I knew I.
Speaker 5: Had a great relationship with because Will worked me out.
Speaker 5: He was my workout guy, right, So I liked Spo,
Speaker 5: but I didn't know as a coach, and so when
Speaker 5: he first got there, he was a terrible coach, but
Speaker 5: he was a great guy to prepare you. He was
Speaker 5: gonna work his ass off. No one was gonna outwork him,
Speaker 5: no one was gonna be more prepared to him.
Speaker 3: He just had to learn when the called timeouts, what
Speaker 3: plays to run out of timeouts, what league game like,
Speaker 3: all these things.
Speaker 5: That you got to learn as a coach. As a
Speaker 5: star player, I had to go to with coach. And
Speaker 5: that's why our relationship is what it is today because
Speaker 5: we went through this right, We went through thank you, this,
Speaker 5: and we went through all of it because the journey
Speaker 5: right of a young coach, and so.
Speaker 3: The whole we walked in and try to get him fired.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I was in that meeting.
Speaker 3: But maybe I was. I don't know. I don't remember that.
Speaker 3: I don't remember trying to get him fired.
Speaker 1: Lebron leaving Miami. Did you guys have a conversation? Did
Speaker 1: you know he was thinking about leaving Miami? And did
Speaker 1: you think he'd go back to Cleveland.
Speaker 5: I didn't know he was thinking about it right away. Man,
Speaker 5: we just had a four year run. That was not
Speaker 5: what I was thinking about I didn't think Cleveland was
Speaker 5: on the on the docket at all. Right, Once that
Speaker 5: letter came out four years probably, I was like, well,
Speaker 5: it's over for them.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And so I was when we went into
Speaker 5: free agency that summer.
Speaker 3: I didn't think that we were we wasn't coming back, right.
Speaker 5: I thought we was going to retool, right, this is
Speaker 5: what teams do, they retool. And so once I started
Speaker 5: hearing the noise on the outside and I started hearing Cleveland,
Speaker 5: I started seeing things, I was like, oh, it's some
Speaker 5: true to the noise, some truth tot And I didn't
Speaker 5: even know it was a thing because we never talked
Speaker 5: about Hey, that was never our conversation. And so when
Speaker 5: I did get the information from him that he was
Speaker 5: headed back to Cleveland, I mean I took it like
Speaker 5: I'll take everything else. I took it on the chain
Speaker 5: because I'm not a selfish guy.
Speaker 3: I mean I do.
Speaker 5: I have selfish acts and selfish moments, but my whole
Speaker 5: being is not selfish. And so that's what that man
Speaker 5: want to do for his life. Like I support him
Speaker 5: doing it. I just got to now figure out my
Speaker 5: life because I had a whole different plan for how
Speaker 5: I wanted mind to go.
Speaker 3: And you know.
Speaker 5: One thing I told him in that moment we were
Speaker 5: sitting outside the plane. I think even the Cara crew
Speaker 5: might have got us talking because we had just flew
Speaker 5: back in from Vegas before the announcement was made the
Speaker 5: next day and we're sitting out there and I told him,
Speaker 5: I said, man, listen, everybody's gonna win no matter what
Speaker 5: do you do. If you stay here, we all win.
Speaker 5: Lebron James stays in Miami and we win. You go
Speaker 5: to Cleveland, Cleveland's gonna win. Ultimately. You gotta do what's
Speaker 5: best for Lebron right. And so if this is what's
Speaker 5: best for Lebron, James, Savannah, James, Bryce and Brownie and
Speaker 5: Missouri wasn't at that stage. If this was better for
Speaker 5: your family, you got my If you're looking for blessing
Speaker 5: for me, you got my blessing.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm not gonna hold you back.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: I gotta go deal with my side because I had
Speaker 5: a whole different mentality.
Speaker 3: I opted out of my deal. I did all these
Speaker 3: things because.
Speaker 5: I'm like, hey, we retooling, right, And so a lot
Speaker 5: of people like to say, like, was it a part
Speaker 5: of me. That was a little pissed. Yeah, I'm human.
Speaker 5: I don't want to lose the best player in the game.
Speaker 1: What do we do? Why did we lose him? Right?
Speaker 5: And also too now I got to figure out my future,
Speaker 5: right because I've given up a lot of my stardom
Speaker 5: and not giving up my place for you to for
Speaker 5: you step in and have lead us.
Speaker 3: And so it took me a while.
Speaker 5: And Brian and I had a conversation later once before
Speaker 5: I got to Cleveland about that moment and how I
Speaker 5: felt right like and how he felt. We sat down
Speaker 5: his man and we talked about that moment and we
Speaker 5: moved on from it.
Speaker 1: That was a difficult time for you because you gave
Speaker 1: up twenty million dollars that wasn't repaid to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you don't get money back. Hey, money don't come back.
Speaker 1: People. You can make more, but you ain't getting that.
Speaker 1: You ain't gonna get I don't care.
Speaker 3: Nobody tell y'all you can't recruit that money.
Speaker 1: No, the current.
Speaker 2: Miami heat, I've never seen it, d Wade. I'm a
Speaker 2: little older you.
Speaker 1: I'm a lot older to you, and I followed the
Speaker 1: game probably longer than you've been alive. I've never seen
Speaker 1: anybody like Jimmy Butler. I've never seen a guy play
Speaker 1: one way in the regular season and then play another
Speaker 1: way in the playoffs.
Speaker 2: I've never seen it.
Speaker 3: Need not at the levels he No.
Speaker 1: Yes, how does a guy that's you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a good player, don't get me wrong, But if
Speaker 1: you look at a playoff you're talking about history. He's
Speaker 1: he has historically great playoff game.
Speaker 3: How does he do that?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean I don't know how he doesn't. But
Speaker 5: what I would say, what I learned you guys are
Speaker 5: welcome for me going to Chicago. By the way, what
Speaker 5: I say what I learned about Jimmy when I got
Speaker 5: a chance to be around him in Chicago for the
Speaker 5: season is some players lead with their IQ. Lebron will
Speaker 5: break down a whole fourth quarter few every play in
Speaker 5: the press conference, and you're like, oh, man, he's the
Speaker 5: smartest basketball player because he has a high IQ. Jimmy
Speaker 5: Butler don't lead with his IQ. Jimmy Butler leads with
Speaker 5: his toughness. Jimmy Butler is one of the smartest basketball
Speaker 5: players that I've ever been around. Right, It's just it's
Speaker 5: just how you decide to look at it. So when
Speaker 5: the playoffs come, everything slows down, right, you get to
Speaker 5: learn everyone Tennessee and all this, so you ain't got
Speaker 5: to be traveling playing a different one opponent. This is
Speaker 5: one of the smartest players that I've ever been around.
Speaker 5: Also too, in the midst of being a smart player,
Speaker 5: some players have that switch that they can turn on.
Speaker 5: Everyone doesn't have it, but certain players have it. Jimmy
Speaker 5: Butler has shown us over his career, and you go
Speaker 5: back in all the playoffs, You're like, oh, damn, Jimmy
Speaker 5: was in that Eastern Conference final. Jimmy was and that
Speaker 5: Jimmy wasn't that He's been a part of teams, he
Speaker 5: saw players he likes.
Speaker 3: He's a student. He watched Derick Rose.
Speaker 5: He watched me when I came into Chicago, like he
Speaker 5: was everywhere I was at. Jimmy was at because he
Speaker 5: wanted that knowledge, right, and so you put his work ethics.
Speaker 3: That he has that is second or nine.
Speaker 5: You put the confidence that Miami give them to say, hey,
Speaker 5: you the guy right, like, think about it. All we
Speaker 5: want sometime is to be seen. Yes, Miami was like, yo, Jimmy,
Speaker 5: you watched this off. Oh I see you you.
Speaker 3: Crazy, all right, you go crazy, match at crazy, Let's
Speaker 3: go do this.
Speaker 5: You give him that confidence. And also too, you give
Speaker 5: someone who's smart. And also and Jimmy's like Jordan in
Speaker 5: the sense in this way, he's always looking for something
Speaker 5: to piss him off.
Speaker 3: So in the New York Serious I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: he had Tis. He's all about Tis.
Speaker 5: He then made some stuff up about what Tim did
Speaker 5: him when Timson did.
Speaker 3: Everything for him.
Speaker 5: He made something Tims pissed him off in practice of Minnesota,
Speaker 5: and he was like, it was ain't about the Knicks,
Speaker 5: It's about Tibbs. So he has that he can go
Speaker 5: to that level where he can zone out and focus
Speaker 5: on one thing or somebody, and so he just it's
Speaker 5: everyone can't.
Speaker 3: Do that, right, He has a switch.
Speaker 1: Right. They say he's a tough teammate. To have coaches
Speaker 1: saying he's a tough player to coach, why.
Speaker 5: Because he gonna do it his way, you know, to
Speaker 5: be coaching, we got to do what the coach say.
Speaker 1: That ain't Jimmy don I'm not saying he's.
Speaker 5: A bad player, like a bad teammate or a bad person.
Speaker 5: Jimmy knows the game. Jimmy knows the work he puts
Speaker 5: in the game, right, he's very committed to that.
Speaker 3: No one is going to work me.
Speaker 5: No one is gonna know this better than me, not
Speaker 5: even you, coach, So you can't just throw something out
Speaker 5: there at Jimmy.
Speaker 3: He's going to.
Speaker 5: Challenge you on He asked you why we do it
Speaker 5: that it gonna challenge you, right? And you you want
Speaker 5: your you want your best players to challenge you. That's
Speaker 5: how it makes your better coach. But when you get
Speaker 5: a reputation in a space that they don't want you
Speaker 5: to challenge right.
Speaker 3: Now, you're a problem, your bad. Yeah, you go into
Speaker 3: a situation where they're like, oh, you're challenging me, let
Speaker 3: me challenge you back. Okay, that was a good challenge.
Speaker 3: Tap it up, let's go. And that's what he found.
Speaker 5: So he found a home in a place that they
Speaker 5: both got a little. Miami ain't for everybody, and Jimmy
Speaker 5: Butler is not for everybody, and so Minnesota, Philly, Chicago
Speaker 5: they experienced Jimmy is not for everyone because Jimmy is
Speaker 5: going to challenge you.
Speaker 3: He's going to challenge your organization.
Speaker 5: And now I said, he's gonna walk in and say
Speaker 5: demand players he's going to challenge you to play at
Speaker 5: his level.
Speaker 3: He's going to challenge you to be where he is.
Speaker 5: And work how he works and all these things, and
Speaker 5: so no one likes to be challenged.
Speaker 3: You a problem if you challenge me.
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier that you were very, very surprised that
Speaker 1: Lebron went back to Cleveland, given that the letter that
Speaker 1: Dan Gibber, the owner who had worked so closely with
Speaker 1: Lebron James, with the things that he said, because now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's not about basketball, you've made
Speaker 1: it personal. How is Lebron Lebron is a very forgiving
Speaker 1: person because there are guys that's taking shots at it
Speaker 1: that he's willing to embrace again like, oh now we
Speaker 1: may we cool later for that.
Speaker 2: How is he able to forget because you know we don't.
Speaker 2: We're not. Most people aren't.
Speaker 1: As forgiving or as forgetful as he is, especially when
Speaker 1: you say, look, if you say something to me in private,
Speaker 1: just me, and you know, okay, cool, like I don't
Speaker 1: rock with you.
Speaker 2: No more but cool.
Speaker 1: But when you put it out there for twenty five
Speaker 1: one hundred million people to read, nah, I can't rock
Speaker 1: with you on that level.
Speaker 3: No, more Bron, Yeah, bigger man than me?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: How do he?
Speaker 1: I'm penny, Yeah, how did he set that aside?
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't know, like, And that's why I never thought
Speaker 5: Cleveland was in play, right, you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Not saying that I never thought he was gonna be
Speaker 5: a Miami forever like you want thinking that way, But
Speaker 5: I never thought Cleveland was in play because I'm and
Speaker 5: so if I was going off for how I would
Speaker 5: have done it.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not coming back to you. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, man Lebron has a journey and it's.
Speaker 5: Bigger than a letter that Dan Gilbert could put out.
Speaker 5: It's bigger than what someone's sitting across the table from.
Speaker 5: You may say it's bigger than because when you like,
Speaker 5: he's been King James since he was twelve years old.
Speaker 3: He has had a vision for how he wants this
Speaker 3: to go.
Speaker 5: And if you allow all these individuals to get in
Speaker 5: the way of your vision, then it becomes theirs. What
Speaker 5: they want for your career, that's what he wants for
Speaker 5: his right And so I looked at that move going
Speaker 5: back to Cleveland. Is this man, first of all, bigger
Speaker 5: man than me in that moment to go back. But
Speaker 5: it wasn't about Dan Gilbert. It wasn't about the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Speaker 5: It's about Lebron James and his family and what he
Speaker 5: wanted to accomplish and how he see his career going
Speaker 5: and so to be able to fly higher than most people,
Speaker 5: right like Lebron playing has been at forty thousand since
Speaker 5: he took off, right like mine, here's some turbleines we landed.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I landed my play.
Speaker 5: Back at twenty nineteen. He's been at forty thousand and
Speaker 5: higher since he started. And so to be at that
Speaker 5: level you have to look above, and he looked above
Speaker 5: and got what he needed for his career, right yeah.
Speaker 5: I think the most interesting thing that you I'm sorry
Speaker 5: in his community because that was important. I promise, yeah,
Speaker 5: and I say that and I'm sorry interrupt, but I
Speaker 5: say that to say when he went back, he implemented
Speaker 5: something that was bigger than basketball.
Speaker 3: That's when you was like, I see you.
Speaker 5: He implemented, I promise, he implemented the schools, which now
Speaker 5: has implemented the housing. And it was about the community
Speaker 5: of Cleveland that he wanted to He wanted them to
Speaker 5: feel like winners, right, And in the midst of it, yeah,
Speaker 5: we all have. I feel is about how and why
Speaker 5: because that's we're human. But if I'm looking at it
Speaker 5: from his standpoint, I'm like, oh, I see you, you.
Speaker 3: You up here. We all was like, we all was
Speaker 3: down here looking up like, Bro, you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Do that, right the Wade, I think you're a phenomenal
Speaker 1: basketball player. You've accomplished a lie, But I think your
Speaker 1: greatest accomplishment is the way you've embraced your child wanting
Speaker 1: to transition. That's not an easy thing to do, because
Speaker 1: we all have. If you have a daughter, you have
Speaker 1: an idea what you think your daughter was going to
Speaker 1: be or what you wanted to become. If you have
Speaker 1: a son, you have an idea of what you want,
Speaker 1: especially if you played sports. I want my son to
Speaker 1: play sports, either the doctor. If I'm a doctor, I
Speaker 1: want my son to be a doctor, lawyer, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: But for you to embrace Zaia, to embrace her journey,
Speaker 1: how did you come to because obviously you had to
Speaker 1: sit down and you had a conversation. She comes to
Speaker 1: you when she sits down and she says, Dad, this
Speaker 1: is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm thinking. And
Speaker 1: you say, what, well, it's not my journey.
Speaker 5: Like, I'm not that selfish. I can't make your journey
Speaker 5: in your life about me, right, Like, I just can't
Speaker 5: do that. Yes, And I was telling someone this the
Speaker 5: other day when Zaia was born. She was born May
Speaker 5: twenty ninth, which is Carmelo's birthday, right right, birthday to
Speaker 5: my brother. Toast to my brother on his retirement. By
Speaker 5: the way, told some this this right.
Speaker 3: Here, listen about this fire. So if y'all go look
Speaker 3: at it.
Speaker 5: I have Zion Lebron, has Bryce Mellow, has Kanye all
Speaker 5: within about a two three week span, all that kids
Speaker 5: on girl hooping together.
Speaker 1: Oh we we all, Well we're gonna have three we all.
Speaker 5: So yeah, like obviously I had a boy. I had
Speaker 5: another boy that was my second boy in the room.
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, this is what we do with hooping family,
Speaker 5: and see what happens when you start making plans for
Speaker 5: other people out right.
Speaker 2: That's her journey, that's her journey. But you played that,
Speaker 2: you played.
Speaker 3: Oh you couldn't tell me we were't gonna be on
Speaker 3: the circuit right now, babe. We were hooping, We got
Speaker 3: weaved in the bag, you got to wear waves on.
Speaker 3: We're doing it too.
Speaker 5: Then I got to meet my child, and a lot
Speaker 5: of people like to talk about Zia's transition. To me,
Speaker 5: Zaia hasn't transitioned into anything but a kid and now
Speaker 5: a young going into a young adult. I've watched her
Speaker 5: go through life. It hasn't been no transition for us.
Speaker 5: It's been a transition for the world. But for us,
Speaker 5: I see the same kid that I've seen since May
Speaker 5: twenty ninth, two thousand and what seven, nothing has changed.
Speaker 1: Did you know where their signs?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did she? Because you know, boy, if you play with trucks,
Speaker 1: girls play with dogs.
Speaker 2: You know, girls dress up, boys do this. So you
Speaker 2: saw signs at a very early age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that much.
Speaker 1: He's not like what I'm thinking a boy should be
Speaker 1: or what I was when I was that age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean think about this. I mean, you're in
Speaker 3: the locker room. I'm in the locker yea right, we
Speaker 3: don't we we we ignit. I'm say ignit.
Speaker 5: And so I come from a culture of men throwing
Speaker 5: around the F words, yes, yes, around the gay word, yes,
Speaker 5: just like it's high by right, just throwing it around. Right,
Speaker 5: And so I have a child at home that we're basketball, baseball,
Speaker 5: we're doing what you do, Hey, let's play this. I
Speaker 5: have a try to home. It's like I don't want that.
Speaker 5: I want to take I want to go that. I
Speaker 5: want to take dance lessons. Okay, well let's go to dance.
Speaker 5: I would try to home when I come home. She
Speaker 5: got the shirt wrapped around her head like it's like
Speaker 5: long hair. I gotta try at home that I'm watching,
Speaker 5: we're certain things that's different than what I would buy
Speaker 5: for my son, right, right. And so this is at
Speaker 5: three years old. So I'm in my home my wife,
Speaker 5: and now we have a conversation about it. And for me,
Speaker 5: instead of walking in and.
Speaker 1: Say hey, stop that ship.
Speaker 3: Cut that ship, like like people got to do that.
Speaker 5: I got to stop you when you're doing when you're
Speaker 5: doing something for you that they don't like.
Speaker 3: Right, So instead of.
Speaker 5: Me walking in the room and say you stop that ship,
Speaker 5: it was my job to sit back and say, okay,
Speaker 5: let's have a conversation.
Speaker 3: Was alight and let's see where this goes.
Speaker 5: And so my first conversation with her is about hey,
Speaker 5: understanding what you like to wear? And how you like
Speaker 5: to be in the house right outside of his house.
Speaker 5: They're not ready for that, right right. I don't even
Speaker 5: know if we were ready for that. And so we
Speaker 5: slowly just let her be who she wanted.
Speaker 3: To be in our home.
Speaker 2: Is that your first wife or this God?
Speaker 1: This is what God be?
Speaker 3: Who you want to be in our home? And we're
Speaker 3: gonna watch it.
Speaker 5: We're gonna learn alone this journey because at that moment,
Speaker 5: I think, you know. And the thing that's a blessing
Speaker 5: in my life is that I that I that I
Speaker 5: got with my wife at the time I got my wife, because.
Speaker 3: It exposed me to the world. It exposed me to
Speaker 3: friends I have.
Speaker 5: Some of my best friends are Jason and the There.
Speaker 5: Well everybody knows it's my style of Jason. His husband
Speaker 5: is a there. I got a chance to be exposed
Speaker 5: to them early. And we all have our thoughts about
Speaker 5: like how we perceive people who you know are gay, right,
Speaker 5: who are man and man?
Speaker 3: It was a woman and woman, we like that, but
Speaker 3: this man and man we have our perception, right.
Speaker 5: So I got a chance to spend time with him,
Speaker 5: being around them, a vacation with them, all this and that,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, what the perception that I had, It's
Speaker 5: not even a question in my mind.
Speaker 3: That was my friends. I don't look at them. I
Speaker 3: don't look at they're they're married, they love each other,
Speaker 3: they argue like we argue all the same nothing.
Speaker 1: So that's their life.
Speaker 5: I had experience. And so in the midst of that
Speaker 5: experience through the world because I was out of my community,
Speaker 5: I was out of what my uncles and my dad
Speaker 5: and everybody you told me, I'm now looking at the
Speaker 5: world and I'm looking at my child. And so I
Speaker 5: got a chance to watch my child nine years before
Speaker 5: the world even heard about Zia. So when everyone started
Speaker 5: telling me what my child is, I'm like, how you gonna.
Speaker 1: I've been with a whole while.
Speaker 3: And I talked to my child. Do you talk to
Speaker 3: my child? Because I do.
Speaker 5: And so I sat down and talked to my child
Speaker 5: about as she was growing up, about the things she wanted.
Speaker 5: And I tried to make sure that the things that
Speaker 5: she wanted, what she would work hard at, was presented
Speaker 5: to her, not what I wanted. And that's the problem
Speaker 5: with us is we're gonna and and and I would
Speaker 5: like to say this because of the NBA or because
Speaker 5: of my basketball talents, and because of all these things,
Speaker 5: I've been put in a position where I actually could
Speaker 5: wait and allow my kids to grow up and I
Speaker 5: don't have to say, hey, I need help with.
Speaker 3: These bills, Hey you gotta do this. You got to
Speaker 3: be that because.
Speaker 5: Some communities, some households, they have to do that because
Speaker 5: of their circumstances. We don't have time to figure out
Speaker 5: who you want to be and what you want to do.
Speaker 5: We had that figure out your time, right and then
Speaker 5: now you get you get kids who's later in their life.
Speaker 5: They didn't have their relationship with their parents early on
Speaker 5: because their parents had to make them whatever the culture was, whatever.
Speaker 3: The time was. Our time was different.
Speaker 5: So we had an opportunity to sit back and say,
Speaker 5: you know what, I don't want all.
Speaker 3: My kids to be exactly the same anyway. So you
Speaker 3: know what, my three year old son at this time, Zaia,
Speaker 3: let me live Zion, let me see what, let me
Speaker 3: see what Zion want to do.
Speaker 5: And slowly but surely Zaia started growing and we started
Speaker 5: watching ain't not a second of this is Zia like.
Speaker 3: That's why it's funny to me.
Speaker 5: I'm like in the world, I'm like everybody on the outside,
Speaker 5: I got something to say, And the inside.
Speaker 3: We're talking about school.
Speaker 5: We're talking about like like I sit down with my child,
Speaker 5: we talk about Hey, okay, so the doctor said this,
Speaker 5: what do we gotta do, Like, let's talk about your health,
Speaker 5: Let's talk about what the future looks like. I'm talking
Speaker 5: about real life things, right, because everybody on the outside
Speaker 5: got a pursu aout that gossip, because.
Speaker 3: The gossip is we all the same.
Speaker 5: Tell me, let's go into all these communities in LA
Speaker 5: and you're gonna see everybody's different, Everyone lives different, everyone
Speaker 5: is different, everyone loves different. So because I'm an athlete,
Speaker 5: and because you know I had a I have a
Speaker 5: boy at birth, y'all expect that this boy is supposed
Speaker 5: to do x y Z, just like Zaire had expectation.
Speaker 5: Y'all expect him to be the NBA superstar because I
Speaker 5: had him and blah blah blah. So everyone else on
Speaker 5: the outside have the expectations of my family and my key.
Speaker 5: How you're gonna have expectations of my feeling and my
Speaker 5: kids when I'm still learning and I'm still.
Speaker 1: Trying to still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to figure it out because I didn't grow
Speaker 5: up in this in this environment. So let me check myself,
Speaker 5: because if I make it about me, I'm gonna have
Speaker 5: a kid that's gonna go through life, that's gonna be miserable,
Speaker 5: there's gonna go through life. I think the statistics on kids,
Speaker 5: especially in the transgender community, when it comes to suicide,
Speaker 5: it's very high. Right when you don't be when you're
Speaker 5: not seen, when you're not seeing, just as a person
Speaker 5: who get up every day and work hard and grind,
Speaker 5: you got a problem with it, right, You got a
Speaker 5: problem when no one sees you. So I got a
Speaker 5: kid in my house that I can't see and I
Speaker 5: don't take time to look at and see, then this
Speaker 5: kid is gonna feel unloved and on wanting from from
Speaker 5: the father who's mother.
Speaker 3: You guys know my situation right. My ex wife is
Speaker 3: very public, very public.
Speaker 1: Very natural.
Speaker 3: I'm the parent in the house.
Speaker 5: I have to see you, I have to hear you,
Speaker 5: and so my child and I have a very open, honest,
Speaker 5: straight for right between the eyes relationship about the journey
Speaker 5: who you are, what you're experiencing, because I don't know,
Speaker 5: because I've never experienced that and it was never shown
Speaker 5: to me that it was Hey, it was never it
Speaker 5: was never presented to me.
Speaker 3: And so being in a position that.
Speaker 5: I'm in as a father, it's my job to understand,
Speaker 5: to be able to say, Okay, everybody, I don't want
Speaker 5: y'all commenting on my life. I don't want y'all comment
Speaker 5: on my daughter's gender, my daughter's sexuality.
Speaker 3: That's not what I want.
Speaker 5: But because we're public figures, and because I know it's
Speaker 5: other kids in the world like Zion, as other dads
Speaker 5: in the world like me, and it will be forever
Speaker 5: because we all are not the same, right, then I allowed,
Speaker 5: then I share a little bit of her journey, a
Speaker 5: little bit of our journey, because we're both going to
Speaker 5: the journey that native one of us knew we will
Speaker 5: be on, right like this, this entire journey, And so
Speaker 5: I don't think about I think about the safety of
Speaker 5: my kid.
Speaker 3: I think about the safety of other kids in the
Speaker 3: trans community.
Speaker 5: I think about, you know, how the world is trying
Speaker 5: to hush and and and exile entire community like you
Speaker 5: do not exist as black people.
Speaker 1: Do we know about that? We do?
Speaker 3: Damn right, we do. And we the main ones that
Speaker 3: are talking about the trans community.
Speaker 5: We the main ones that won't open and accept and
Speaker 5: we want the world accept us, like what are we doing?
Speaker 5: And so I'm playing a different plan field that most
Speaker 5: people who comment on my life because I understand the
Speaker 5: position that I'm in a lot of black families in
Speaker 5: the communities they don't see or hear, don't get a
Speaker 5: chance to hear these stories from us, don't get a
Speaker 5: chance to see these things from us. And so, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm sure to a lot of people, I look crazy.
Speaker 5: I don't care about looking crazy to y'all, I care
Speaker 5: about making sure that I'm there for my kids.
Speaker 1: How difficult is it not to have the support of
Speaker 1: the other parent with what Zaia is going through? And
Speaker 1: I think the thing is that that probably what Zaia
Speaker 1: wants most is for her parents to understand the journey
Speaker 1: that she's chose to embark upon and be accepting of
Speaker 1: that journey that she and barking a pun and you
Speaker 1: have accepted it, jumped on this thing with both feet.
Speaker 1: But it seems like he's getting some resistance from a mother.
Speaker 1: Is that difficult for you because you see it's hurting
Speaker 1: the child.
Speaker 3: It's difficult. It's difficult for me. So I can't even
Speaker 3: imagine what it's like for her.
Speaker 2: Did she talk to you about it? Does she have
Speaker 2: a relationship with her mom?
Speaker 5: She has whatever relationship that she wants to have. I
Speaker 5: assume she's sixteen years old. Yeah, you know she's getting older,
Speaker 5: and so you know the relationship is controlled by phones.
Speaker 5: Now she lived my mother doesn't live here, right, she
Speaker 5: lives in my home.
Speaker 2: But you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't force Zaia to pick up the phone and
Speaker 1: call her mom. You don't force the mom to like
Speaker 1: call cause you know sometimes you know kids like did
Speaker 1: you call you that? Ever, my daughter came to live
Speaker 1: with me, My oldest daughter came to stay with me,
Speaker 1: and her mom would get into it, you know how
Speaker 1: women get into it, and she'd go, day what I
Speaker 1: call her? I said, no, we're not gonna do that.
Speaker 1: Pick up the phone and call you whatever you got
Speaker 1: going on, no matter how you mad at her, she's
Speaker 1: mad at you. We're not gonna do that.
Speaker 2: You don't do that.
Speaker 3: They don't have that relationship. That's a different relationship. It
Speaker 3: got to be both ways.
Speaker 5: And you're talking about a kid like isaiahs. She's way advanced, way,
Speaker 5: she's way above everybody.
Speaker 3: Thinks she is.
Speaker 5: You're talking about a kid who has experienced something that
Speaker 5: I don't even know about when it comes to the
Speaker 5: relationship that she's.
Speaker 3: Had to try to have with a mother.
Speaker 5: She's been living with me since she was two and
Speaker 5: a half three years old, and as I said very openly,
Speaker 5: like my wife ain't any part of all this. And
Speaker 5: so what I will do is I will give credit
Speaker 5: to my wife who has stepped in and stepped out
Speaker 5: and become a figure, not a mother, that's not a mom,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I know it's titled step mom bonus moms.
Speaker 5: She's become a consistent figure in her life and as
Speaker 5: a woman who she they can have conversations and talk
Speaker 5: about things that I just can't help her with in
Speaker 5: the midst.
Speaker 3: Of all of what's going on.
Speaker 5: Like I only know what I know, and I only
Speaker 5: know what questions I can go out and ask, right,
Speaker 5: But they have different conversations that I can.
Speaker 3: It's different.
Speaker 5: Trust, So you know, for you know, I remember watching
Speaker 5: my dad step up and be a stepdad, and I
Speaker 5: didn't I just knew it was a lot of other
Speaker 5: kids around.
Speaker 3: I ain't know really what it meant, right, But to be.
Speaker 5: That's a heroic position to be to step in to
Speaker 5: someone else's child. Yeah, become an important figure in their lives.
Speaker 5: And she has been in this journey because I would
Speaker 5: be lost if it was just men ziay out here
Speaker 5: on this journey, right. And so to be able to
Speaker 5: have not only my wife, to be able to have
Speaker 5: our community, it allows us to be able to go
Speaker 5: through all this feeling like we have armor.
Speaker 1: You might be the biggest de sire in yourself, might
Speaker 1: be the biggest advocate for the trans community because who
Speaker 1: you are, and you can put someone famous because like
Speaker 1: you said, they'll hurry like man, nobody know who you
Speaker 1: guys are. Nobody even cares about you.
Speaker 2: But you give it a face, you give it a name.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this the wade I mean, because
Speaker 1: like you said, you had zias issues two and a
Speaker 1: half in zaire your oldest son. How was it being
Speaker 1: in the NBA and being a single path.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, first of all, I had, My community
Speaker 5: is large, it's not noning. Ever, like I didn't get
Speaker 5: divorced and.
Speaker 2: Like, yo, let me get them kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, let me get these get in
Speaker 3: these straights, getting these Miami Street.
Speaker 1: At getting these Miami be nice. I'm like that what
Speaker 1: I got? What the two kids at the crib?
Speaker 3: Yeah you said? It changed everything? And for me, man,
Speaker 3: I wrote a book about it.
Speaker 5: You know how my life became bigger than basketball because
Speaker 5: at that moment when I had to fight for custody,
Speaker 5: because it became I had to fight for crusty, because
Speaker 5: it wasn't just hey, joint cussy, let's raise these kids.
Speaker 5: It became for me it was like, Okay, what's the
Speaker 5: most important thing in your life? It's basketball more important
Speaker 5: than your kids.
Speaker 1: For you to get them the wade you played, You
Speaker 1: an NBA player, You're a professional athlete. For the judge
Speaker 1: just say nah the kids going with him?
Speaker 2: Do you know what that means?
Speaker 3: I know, I know. Yeah, I dealt with it all.
Speaker 2: I've dealt with y'all.
Speaker 1: Hey, for a father to get custody of the kids,
Speaker 1: it's not a it's not an easy task.
Speaker 5: It's not and I mean it's a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of things I could say about that, but
Speaker 5: I'm very thankful that I did get custody at the
Speaker 5: time I did, especially being Zia's father. There's been a
Speaker 5: way different journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bazire if because it seems like your your ex
Speaker 1: is not as accepting of her situation as you are.
Speaker 3: My age don't live in my world neither. She don't
Speaker 3: live in our world.
Speaker 1: Understand, But she doesn't understand. She's not she's not she's
Speaker 1: not exposed to, like you said, your stylists and her
Speaker 1: husband and his husband and some of the community that
Speaker 1: you've been exposed to since Iia has undertaken this, this
Speaker 1: this transition to try in the world.
Speaker 3: And I go everywhere, I go to communities all around
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 5: I see I see difference in everywhere and everybody see different.
Speaker 3: Ways that husband and wife live. It's so many different ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm fibe. I don't care what you do.
Speaker 1: I'm vibing you cool, husband, husband, you cool, We cool,
Speaker 1: and you you all some stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm some stuff too. I'm a vide right.
Speaker 5: So if she's not, she's not exposed to the life
Speaker 5: that I've been able to do. Well, it's a lot
Speaker 5: of people that I know that's not exposed. Now they
Speaker 5: become accepting of it because the love for me, my family, Zia,
Speaker 5: or just because they feel like they need to be
Speaker 5: just to stay in the fold. But when it comes
Speaker 5: to how I'm able to love and accept from what
Speaker 5: I learned growing up. It's because of my experiences and
Speaker 5: where I've been people that I've been able to.
Speaker 3: Get connected to you.
Speaker 5: If you haven't been able to do that, if your
Speaker 5: passport ain't stamped, if your relationships ain't larger than the
Speaker 5: ones you grew up with in your community, you're gonna
Speaker 5: stay at a certain level of thinking and how it
Speaker 5: should be. The world looks so different than it did
Speaker 5: when I grew up in Robins, Illinois, and so the
Speaker 5: world is colorful, man, it's beautiful, it's unique, and my
Speaker 5: daughter's a part of that colorful, beautiful, unique world, and
Speaker 5: so why not embrace her just like I want to
Speaker 5: be accepted. I want to be embraced, right like we
Speaker 5: all want to be embrace and accepted.
Speaker 3: For who we are.
Speaker 5: And so I don't When I look at my daughter,
Speaker 5: I look at someone just like me, that's trying to
Speaker 5: be accepted, that's trying to learn, that's trying to grow,
Speaker 5: that's trying to exist in this world. And I don't
Speaker 5: look at gender. I don't look at sexuality. I don't
Speaker 5: look at her choices and how she want to be
Speaker 5: when them doors closed.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know what you do. She don't
Speaker 1: want to know what we do.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? And so it's my job
Speaker 3: to make sure alone this journey she's growing up, that
Speaker 3: I sit with her.
Speaker 5: I have conversation with her doctor about Hey, how does
Speaker 5: this journey affect my daughter?
Speaker 3: How does it affect her her mind? How does it
Speaker 3: affect her physical? How does whatever it is? I need
Speaker 3: to learn this stuff of sitting there like, nah, nah,
Speaker 3: you ain't. You ain't do that? Why would I do that?
Speaker 1: Why would I?
Speaker 5: She gonna get to her life real soon, she'd be eighteen,
Speaker 5: it's happening. So why would I stunt your growth as
Speaker 5: a as a human being while youre living under my room?
Speaker 3: Before? I know one day you're gonna better do what
Speaker 3: you want to do. So this is, this is what
Speaker 3: you want to do. You wanna play sports, you want
Speaker 3: to dance, you want to do this.
Speaker 5: Let me help you do it because we have resources,
Speaker 5: we have people we can contact, We have people that
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, that could open up doors.
Speaker 5: And so for me, man, it's parenting is not making
Speaker 5: you in my likeness.
Speaker 3: You look like me, That's enough. It but you're not me,
Speaker 3: and so I gotta get to know you.
Speaker 5: And a lot of parents either don't want to do
Speaker 5: it because that's actually been a parent, can't do it
Speaker 5: because of circumstances, can't do it because once again circumstances
Speaker 5: of how community gonna look at you, how the man
Speaker 5: gonna look at.
Speaker 3: You at work?
Speaker 5: Like I understand the journey. I understand that everyone can't
Speaker 5: just be accepted and open arms about it.
Speaker 3: I get it. But also in the midst of just
Speaker 3: understand that you're stunning the growth of your kids.
Speaker 5: We have a small window when we have an impact
Speaker 5: on our kids' lives, right small, A small a small
Speaker 5: window that's ending in my life?
Speaker 3: Was I she turned sixteen? Yeah, as we go on,
Speaker 3: I'll still be but that impact and that voice that.
Speaker 2: I have fun of your Ruth, she'll be out on
Speaker 2: your own.
Speaker 5: And then so what am I teaching her? What lesson
Speaker 5: is I'm gonna teach her about the world that she's
Speaker 5: going out in. That the world only looks this way. No, baby,
Speaker 5: the world is unique. The world is colorful. So my
Speaker 5: daughter is gonna she's going on on this world and
Speaker 5: she's finding people that that looks like her that talks
Speaker 5: like her, that has the same dreams as her, the
Speaker 5: same thoughts as her. Just like I did the NBA,
Speaker 5: I found people that was connected with me and that
Speaker 5: was my community. And so we just got it's just
Speaker 5: a different community than me. And and that's just I
Speaker 5: just look at it different.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Man, you you still on there? I mean, you be
Speaker 2: blown up there the man, I'm I'm listening.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I'm always in pop culture.
Speaker 2: Man, you are you and Gabby my wife?
Speaker 1: Your wife? Because she made the comment about you and
Speaker 1: her split fifty to fifty you can you can.
Speaker 3: You get into that?
Speaker 2: Can you clarify what you mean? Come that's bad into
Speaker 2: that little that's that's very unique.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of a situation, especially a married couple.
Speaker 2: O can we daity?
Speaker 1: I think it might be you know, hey, I got
Speaker 1: the movie ticket, You get the popcord and the cabby.
Speaker 1: You know what, they take it out to dinner. You
Speaker 1: you leave the tip, you do the valet. But she's
Speaker 1: like fifty to fifty household, and I think she kind
Speaker 1: of explained it. But you gotta be y'all got you
Speaker 1: here so you get.
Speaker 3: You know what I was saying. I was like, you
Speaker 3: know what's crazy when you have it's think pieces that's
Speaker 3: going around the world about me and my wife.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: And I haven't said I haven't given no color to this, right,
Speaker 5: but it's think pieces going around about me as a man.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's make that man make his Wife's
Speaker 1: been fifty the man is there?
Speaker 2: So the same thing, too deep with that gonna lie?
Speaker 3: You saw the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you make up as I see how you
Speaker 1: gonna make that woman pay? He got all that cheese,
Speaker 1: he makingna pay fifty?
Speaker 3: All right, So let's talk about it. I'm talking about it.
Speaker 3: So the whole fifty to fifty concepts.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I understand what fifty to fifty means, right,
Speaker 5: Fifty to fifty means that everything in life. You got
Speaker 5: your half and I got my hat, and we're gonna
Speaker 5: put this shit together, try to make a hundred.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, we're bout to about with the groceres you
Speaker 1: put in the hood that I put it.
Speaker 3: That's how fifty fifty goes. That is not how our
Speaker 3: relationship works, all right. We don't see everybody think fifty fifty.
Speaker 3: They think, hey, if he getting a sign wich you
Speaker 3: got to put fifty percent on that. He got one hundred,
Speaker 3: two hundred. Whatever people think I got, that's not how
Speaker 3: it works. Fifty to fifty in our household is.
Speaker 5: First of all, let's say I have twenty to fifty
Speaker 5: responsibilities and my wife have twenty to fifty responsibilities.
Speaker 3: And when I say that, that means she has a mother, she.
Speaker 5: Has a sister's, she has her dad, she has her
Speaker 5: she has a lot of things that she's responsible for.
Speaker 3: Right, you know what she does, she pays one hundred
Speaker 3: percent of that.
Speaker 2: Right you know what I do.
Speaker 3: I pay one hundred percent of my life. When our
Speaker 3: life come together.
Speaker 5: My wife is a working actress who spends time away
Speaker 5: from the family to go work.
Speaker 3: Do our bild.
Speaker 5: We decided together because I think I said one time
Speaker 5: we was in Miami.
Speaker 3: I said something about it be in my house that
Speaker 3: I paid for.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 5: Wife looked at me. She was like, you will never
Speaker 5: say that to me again when it's something that we share.
Speaker 5: And so my wife was like that when we move
Speaker 5: to La I.
Speaker 3: Got half on it. You will never say my house again.
Speaker 5: Wow, she said, you can say that in arena, And
Speaker 5: so in our life at home, fifty to fifty. We
Speaker 5: purchased it together, right, our daughter. Anything that goes on
Speaker 5: our daughter, fifty to fifty, we share it together. Now
Speaker 5: it's some things I pick up or something she picked up.
Speaker 5: But she does something I does.
Speaker 3: I do something. Right, if we take a if we.
Speaker 5: Take a yacht trip, we could do it fifty to fifty,
Speaker 5: or I can do it myself. But my wife is
Speaker 5: a working woman, right, She's a boss and an independent
Speaker 5: woman her own life. She's like, I'm gonna put you
Speaker 5: know what, that little two hundred, that little two hundred
Speaker 5: that she was gonna spend on this, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 5: something else on that We're gonna go on a bigger trip.
Speaker 3: We gotta ball out, like this is my wife, right,
Speaker 3: Like I don't know about y'all, but I like having
Speaker 3: a wife. That's like, that's cool, you can do that.
Speaker 5: The house we live in, thank God, and hidding heels
Speaker 5: nice house, right whatever millions, we could have had a house,
Speaker 5: a nice house on my fifty percent too, right, it'd
Speaker 5: been nice. She was like, no, let me put something
Speaker 5: else on and let us live a little different.
Speaker 2: Oh, they got a little bigger.
Speaker 5: So we probably shared three things in our life that
Speaker 5: were fifty fifty on right. Everything else, I'm one thousand
Speaker 5: percent and she's one thousand percent right. And so we
Speaker 5: decided that certain pieces of our life we would share
Speaker 5: in it.
Speaker 1: But d Wade, that.
Speaker 2: Works for y'all.
Speaker 1: Why why does it matter if it's seventy five twenty five,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's eighty five fifteen.
Speaker 2: That's your life.
Speaker 1: Why everybody is so consumed what goes on in everybody
Speaker 1: else household when they household f up?
Speaker 3: Well, listen, that's a whole nother story. And that's just
Speaker 3: the word I go to sleep.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, man, you see that d Wade making
Speaker 2: his wife. I mean, I was just saying. I was
Speaker 2: just joking.
Speaker 3: I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish I could
Speaker 3: make my I don't make my wife do anything. First
Speaker 3: of all, if I could, we wouldn't been the headlines
Speaker 3: all the time. I'd be like, when you stopped talking,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, my wife is.
Speaker 2: She gonna respond?
Speaker 1: Now you say something, you say something, you get out
Speaker 1: of the pocket with us.
Speaker 3: Listen, if my wife had this microphone way before I did,
Speaker 3: y'all been watching Bring It On for a long.
Speaker 1: Time, right, She been bringing it on for a long time.
Speaker 5: So like when she say fifty fifty and people take
Speaker 5: a clip of it, yeah, I understand. Like I listen,
Speaker 5: I listened to all the things pieces I laugh. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: that's the point right there.
Speaker 1: I get that, but that ain't how we live.
Speaker 3: But I understand your point.
Speaker 2: They took it in this little interpretation that.
Speaker 3: You're fifty fifty everything. Now, it don't work like that.
Speaker 5: I do all right for myself, but in certain moments
Speaker 5: that we want to do better together, we do better together.
Speaker 3: And what And first of all, listen, I told my wife.
Speaker 3: I said, hey, baby, listen, you're not about to be
Speaker 3: taking all this time away from the family building your
Speaker 3: wealth while I'm spending all mine.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I don't know where they do that at.
Speaker 1: All I know is you know what I mean? She
Speaker 1: come home, be like baby, it was good. I'll move
Speaker 1: on from you.
Speaker 6: And I have spent all my cheese. Shene build all
Speaker 6: her You know what, I told us how many kids
Speaker 6: I have before we started? I asked wives, like all
Speaker 6: kind of stuff, right when cheese go all over the place.
Speaker 6: She's just building on her cheese and I'm spending on mine.
Speaker 6: Listen why they do that at you know what way talking?
Speaker 2: You know what in that bob?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Oh, now, I ain't do
Speaker 1: this by myself though, I been have a little wig.
Speaker 5: About So everybody think fifty to fifty means that, hey baby,
Speaker 5: I need Hey baby, I'm gonna go get this sandwich.
Speaker 3: You got, you got, you got ten dollars on it.
Speaker 5: Right, come on, y'all, y'all got y'all gotta y'all gotta
Speaker 5: be come on man like, y'all gotta stop this.
Speaker 3: You're gonna stop this small thinking man.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm glad you cleared that up. But she did.
Speaker 2: She's like, yeah, I signed the prenup because what are
Speaker 2: you have before he met me? Is what a you
Speaker 2: ha before he met me?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: What we accumulate together, that's what we got.
Speaker 3: But what we rock with? Yeah, yeah, and what she
Speaker 3: has like and that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Now I told her the same way.
Speaker 1: I'll signed a prenump too.
Speaker 3: Right. You a millionaire, you got money, you work hard
Speaker 3: for yourself. You should.
Speaker 2: I think everybody, I think everybody should have.
Speaker 3: A prenumb Why not you're getting assurance, don't you.
Speaker 1: Because your people? I mean, I ain't happy when I
Speaker 1: didn't have anything. I said, I'm gonna sign a prenup.
Speaker 1: They're like, Sean, why are you gonna sign a product?
Speaker 1: You ain't got nothing. I say, so, if I leave,
Speaker 1: I want one hundred percent of my nothing.
Speaker 2: I don't want fifty nothing nothing.
Speaker 3: I don't want nothing. I want all of But what
Speaker 3: I don't want to do is if she decided to
Speaker 3: move on from me, she got two hundred and I.
Speaker 2: Got ten, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: I've been spending all my money and all these dance recitals,
Speaker 3: all these games, all these trips, everything, and I just stable.
Speaker 3: Oh man, take care of everything I do. I take
Speaker 3: care of my mama. I take care of my daddy.
Speaker 3: I take care of boom boom boom boom boom.
Speaker 5: When it comes to me and my wife, I take
Speaker 5: care like this and another thing. We're go on trips,
Speaker 5: were on all this stuff, y'all see the big trips.
Speaker 5: Now my wife will put it on a big trip.
Speaker 5: It's a whole calendar year where I had to step
Speaker 5: in and I have to make sure that the relationship
Speaker 5: is spicy, that is sexy, and my credit card gets
Speaker 5: used through everything.
Speaker 1: You feel me? Yeah, so yeah, we fifty fifty and three.
Speaker 5: I got about fifty to one hundred things that I
Speaker 5: paid for that I'm responsible for everybody, So thank y'all
Speaker 5: for the thing piece.
Speaker 1: You have a Zobbie, your youngest daughter Kavea Cavia that
Speaker 1: you through surrogency, and you said that you and your
Speaker 1: wife had a lot, a lot of miscarriagters and you
Speaker 1: had a conversation with her. You sided that one night,
Speaker 1: say maybe come on that I can't keep putting you
Speaker 1: through this because you saw the pain and the anguish
Speaker 1: that it was causing her, and she's hurting. You're hurting
Speaker 1: even more because you know how bad she wants to
Speaker 1: be a mother. Yeah, being the step mother is fine,
Speaker 1: but there's something about your own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you saw the pain that it was causing her,
Speaker 2: and you said, baby, we ain't.
Speaker 1: Got to do this no more.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What was that?
Speaker 2: How?
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 2: What was that conversation?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: It was a tough conversation.
Speaker 5: As a man, you want to you want to stay
Speaker 5: out the way and get out the way when it
Speaker 5: comes to this whole birthday conversation about.
Speaker 3: Kids because you won't do much right a minute job.
Speaker 1: You don't do much, so you know.
Speaker 5: It took me a long time to even say that
Speaker 5: to my wife because I knew what was important for
Speaker 5: her and also knew what was important for us.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: She knew I wanted a daughter, she knew I wanted to,
Speaker 5: you know, to grow my family. She knew I wanted
Speaker 5: to grow our family. Once we start having conversations about right,
Speaker 5: a family, right, and to watch her go down the
Speaker 5: journey if anybody know the journey.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of shots. Yeah, it's a lot of
Speaker 3: doctor physics.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of things to make you feel like
Speaker 5: you're not like that, you're not a whole person, that
Speaker 5: you're empty, that you don't have this, that you don't
Speaker 5: have that.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of because did you feel less than
Speaker 1: a woman?
Speaker 2: Because you.
Speaker 5: But it's a lot of steps leading to that that
Speaker 5: make you feel less than right because it.
Speaker 3: Could take someone over here like this.
Speaker 1: You can have twelve kids.
Speaker 5: And so being there, all the conversations with the doctors,
Speaker 5: all the conversations with my wife, all the pain, all
Speaker 5: the helping her take shots, all of watching her take shots,
Speaker 5: all watch for five years. The miscarriage is that at
Speaker 5: the end of the day, for me, I was like
Speaker 5: baby like I married you. I want to go down
Speaker 5: this journey of life with you. We don't know how
Speaker 5: long this jurney gonna last.
Speaker 3: And so what is what this is doing is this
Speaker 3: is taken away from you. Is putting your.
Speaker 5: Health in harm's way. This picture don't work without you.
Speaker 5: So if it's no you, it ain't no expending this family.
Speaker 5: And so it became a point where it started becoming
Speaker 5: dangerous for her to continue to keep doing all the
Speaker 5: things she was doing.
Speaker 3: For all the years.
Speaker 5: And so that was a hard conversation for me to
Speaker 5: have because I'm not doing nothing. I'm just holding your hand,
Speaker 5: I'm just supporting, just listening. My body is physically not
Speaker 5: going through any of these things. And so I don't
Speaker 5: want to step in in the way of our dreams
Speaker 5: and your journey. But the end of the day, the journey,
Speaker 5: don't this picture. Don't this picture Now, we got to
Speaker 5: have a star in this movie, and you the star
Speaker 5: in this movie. And so she listened because that's what
Speaker 5: it was about.
Speaker 3: It was about getting to the ultimate goal of having
Speaker 3: you know, ourmericle chap, having our daughter right. And every
Speaker 3: day I look at my daughter, man, I smile at her.
Speaker 5: Because she don't even know how how much work went
Speaker 5: into getting her here, how much her mother wanted her,
Speaker 5: how much her her dad wanted her, and everybody around,
Speaker 5: the doctors and the surrogate mother and all the people
Speaker 5: that helped her, helped us get to this point where
Speaker 5: to every day wake up and hear daddy and hear mommy.
Speaker 3: From my daughter.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm gonna get you out of here on this one,
Speaker 1: d way, there was some infidelity in the relationship, or
Speaker 1: there's something that transpired, Was it harder for you to
Speaker 1: sit down and have a conversation and to tell her
Speaker 1: that something had happened outside the relationship? Or losing the finals.
Speaker 5: Way harder to have a conversation with my now wife right,
Speaker 5: who wasn't at the time, but my now wife about it, like,
Speaker 5: you try to.
Speaker 3: Think of everything possible.
Speaker 1: Because you think about what you're gonna say, and you're
Speaker 1: also thinking about how she's going to react.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you're thinking about it all. It's all scary.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 5: The whole situation is scary enough. Your public figure, that's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: but you you've heard you know that this is going
Speaker 5: to it's gonna hurt that you've been building a relationship
Speaker 5: with and a life with Right And no matter what
Speaker 5: people say on the outside or what people want, the
Speaker 5: thing this and that like ultimately, like you gotta sit
Speaker 5: with you, and you gotta sit with this person and
Speaker 5: this is who you're gonna be.
Speaker 2: With, right.
Speaker 5: And I had to had to sit with my wife
Speaker 5: about this, well my now wife about this, and had
Speaker 5: this conversation.
Speaker 1: You told her before it came became public. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah I did, because I don't know d way that
Speaker 1: she just stuck with you that thing to come public
Speaker 1: and you ain't have the conversation with her.
Speaker 5: Man, Listen, let me tell you, I couldn't. I couldn't
Speaker 5: have gotten through that moment without her sticking with me,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Like it was a weird
Speaker 5: in the playoffs, I think even in going into the
Speaker 5: finals at whatever you was, man.
Speaker 3: That was that was a rough time for me.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 2: So you got a lot on your mind.
Speaker 3: You got a lot on your mind. You're keeping you know,
Speaker 3: you're keeping something from people you love, right, And it's
Speaker 3: heavy at night when it get quiet, yeah us just
Speaker 3: you and your thoughts. Yeah, them thoughts is loud and
Speaker 3: you and it gets it gets loud up here.
Speaker 1: In his mind.
Speaker 3: And so it came to a point where yeah, way
Speaker 3: before you know, and I tried to pussy foot around it.
Speaker 5: I tried to break up with her. Hey, you know
Speaker 5: things has been bad lately. Hey, we've been having a
Speaker 5: little this is relationship anyway, Like I tried to all that,
Speaker 5: she kept showing up. And so it hasn't been perfect.
Speaker 5: It would never be perfect. But that was nine years ago, right,
Speaker 5: and we're still we go to therapy. We've been to therapy, right,
Speaker 5: We've had shouts about it, We've had a regular conversations
Speaker 5: about it, and so it's been something that is going
Speaker 5: to continue to be something that I have to work
Speaker 5: at and work on. It doesn't go away because years
Speaker 5: come or because I say I'm sorry or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And so is that the hardest part of any way
Speaker 1: to know that you've done this, and it's probably always
Speaker 1: gonna be a source of contention, It's always gonna be
Speaker 1: something that to possibly be brought up.
Speaker 2: It might be ten years from now, it might be fifteen.
Speaker 1: You guys might be seventy five years old, and you still.
Speaker 5: Might have to well when it comes to my wife
Speaker 5: and I, Yeah, that's that's hard. We got to always
Speaker 5: it's always there. But when it comes to my son,
Speaker 5: that's hard for him. This is gonna always be there.
Speaker 5: He's done nothing, sustained as on him for no reason, right,
Speaker 5: And I think about that more than you know, Like
Speaker 5: we're dopts and we're gonna get.
Speaker 3: Through it, or we ain't gonna get through right, we're
Speaker 3: adults in this space.
Speaker 5: This is a young kid who has already got a
Speaker 5: negative impact next to his name, and he hasn't even
Speaker 5: had a chance to complish, right, And they already got
Speaker 5: a negative next to his name because of how he
Speaker 5: was brought into this world.
Speaker 3: And I think about that.
Speaker 5: I think about my you know, son that bears my name,
Speaker 5: and I think about my wife, like of course I
Speaker 5: think about I think about all my kids.
Speaker 3: I think about it all. But ultimately, what I do
Speaker 3: know is at the end of the day, this is
Speaker 3: my family. This is my story. We gonna get through this.
Speaker 5: How we gonna get through, But we're gonna get through it,
Speaker 5: you feel me? And so you know, I think you know, time, distance, space,
Speaker 5: it doesn't help it, but it makes it.
Speaker 1: It allows you to.
Speaker 3: See things differently when you have time away from it.
Speaker 5: And so my wife and I nine years later, are
Speaker 5: in a different space where we're able to have different
Speaker 5: conversations about that moment, about the future of my son,
Speaker 5: about how we want to incorporate, how we want to be,
Speaker 5: And that's just one aspect of this long journey, right
Speaker 5: But ultimately.
Speaker 3: For me, it's all about making her understand that.
Speaker 5: I'm continue to grow, continue to you know, to work
Speaker 5: on myself, not understand, but show her right, and she's
Speaker 5: showing me. It goes both ways. But in this instance
Speaker 5: but also too at the same time, love my kids.
Speaker 5: This is my story, and I didn't ask for it
Speaker 5: to all.
Speaker 3: Be this way.
Speaker 5: I don't know what's coming in the future, but right
Speaker 5: now this is all mine, and so as good as
Speaker 5: it looks or as bad as it seems, it is mine.
Speaker 3: And I'm thankful to even have the good in my life.
Speaker 5: And I'm also thankful to have the things that's little
Speaker 5: want comfortable to talk about and deal with an experience,
Speaker 5: because that makes you live a full life, right And
Speaker 5: so that's all I'm trying to do, is trying to
Speaker 5: figure out a way to live a full life together.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on the Hall of Fame and congratulations on the wine.
Speaker 1: Wine sellers, go ahead and get you a couple of bottles.
Speaker 1: D Wade appreciate you, brother.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: All my life, grinding all my life, sacrifice, hustle, bad
Speaker 4: the price, want to slice, got to brow the dice,
Speaker 4: swap all my life. I'll be grinding all my life. Yeah,
Speaker 4: all my life.
Speaker 1: Grinding all my.
Speaker 4: Life, sacrifice, hustle, bad to price, want slice, got to
Speaker 4: brow the dice, the swap all my life.
Speaker 1: I've been grinding all my life.