'Yo, you are a lottery pick': The oral history of Dwyane Wade's playing career at Marquette

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'Yo, you are a lottery pick': The oral history of Dwyane Wade's playing career at Marquette

Ben Steele, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel · Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Thu, Aug 3, 2023 ·

14 min read

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Third in a four-part series on former Marquette star and NBA great Dwyane Wade as he prepares to be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Aug. 12.

After sitting out his first season at Marquette as a partial academic qualifier, Dwyane Wade was itching to get on the floor for the 2001-02 season.

Stories about Wade's development and exploits during practice began to leak out, so there was buzz already starting to build. Wade's personal life also had changed, with marriage and the birth of his son Zaire.

Wade was a star from the start, but he then got to levels no one expected.

MU coaches and teammates recall their favorite stories from Wade's playing career at the school.

Great Alaska Shootout was Dwyane Wade's coming-out party

Wade scored 22 points against Loyola (Illinois) in his MU debut at the Bradley Center. But he first caught the attention of the nation at the Great Alaska Shootout, where the Golden Eagles won the title by beating Tennessee , Indiana and Gonzaga.

Darrin Horn (MU assistant, 1999-2003):"Back then, you only watched what they put on and there wasn't a game every night. And so the Great Alaska Shootout was a huge deal because it was kind of the first big basketball TV college event of the year as football wound down. And as all eyes are on college basketball, we've got a guy that we think is going to be pretty good and it's not even close, he's the best player in the tournament. And we knew we had something special."

Cordell Henry (MU guard, 1998-2002):"They had like a dinner the first night. All these teams. You see Tennessee, all these big names, big coaches. You see Rick Barnes. You see ( Texas ') T.J. Ford. You see all these top players and they're looking at us like, what are y'all doing here? It was the looks and stares, like, what are y'all about to do here? We win the first game against Tennessee and Vincent Yarbrough and Ron Slay. D-Wade had like 30 points. So he's, like, I just had 30 points on the big stage. I'm like, yeah, you did. We're ready to ball."

Travis Diener (MU guard, 2001-05):"To go up there and win that tournament kind of put Marquette back on the national radar and obviously it was Dwyane's coming-out party. He dominated. Especially the game against Indiana, I remember that specifically, he carried us. And that was an Indiana team that lost in the national championship game that year. We knew how good Dwyane was but I don't think even Marquette fans and nationally people understood just how good this guy was going to be."

Tod Kowalczyk (MU assistant coach, 2000-02):"We had to help him find a place to live off campus where he could live with his wife and his child. There was a lot of things going on in his life. And then the Great Alaska Shootout opened him up to a national stage and what happened since then was unbelievable."

Tom Crean (MU head coach, 1999-2008):"The Tennessee game is right there with me with the game at Louisville the next season and the Kentucky game (in the 2003 Elite Eight). There's no question. Because they all led to something. It's never the moment that is crystallized for everybody to see. It's always the things that come before that. And there were a lot of games like that for him. But the Tennessee game was really big because we were down at half. Certainly I don't think very many people thought we were going to win that game."

Wade was certified star by junior season

Wade averaged 17.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 3.4 assists as a sophomore and then 21.5, 6.3 and 5.4 as a consensus first-team All-American as a junior . He also led MU back to the Final Four for the first time since 1977.

Diener:"Dwyane's kind of got an old-school game. He's got great footwork. He's got floaters, jump shots, uses the backboard extremely well. Obviously he's really long plus a 7-foot wingspan for a guy that is probably 6-3. Very crafty. Super unselfish. Quietly really competitive. I've said this before, he wasn't the most vocal guy."

Henry:"Him and I, anytime we played against DePaul, our eyes lit up. We're from Chicago. Odartey Blankson, Ron Howard. Our eyes just lit up, it's like, OK, we're going home. I remember it was a play that we had: he was supposed to fake, we had a 1-4 high and he's supposed to act like he's coming to the ball. He went back door (on Jan. 19, 2002, at Allstate Arena) and I threw a lob from literally like half-court. And he caught it and Quemont Greer, I still remember it to this day, he jumped and Dwyane Wade did, I don't know what it was, he turned in the air and Quemont was all on his back and it was an and-one. I said, OK, this guy! I told him after the game, 'Yo, you are a lottery pick. What you did right there.' "

Scott Merritt (MU forward, 2000-04):"He was always a confident guy, but he had the toughness and the competitiveness to go with that combined with his skill set. There was certain attributes he had that made him D-Wade and a lot of those things came out early. And like Crean says all the time, he's the most unselfish superstar. He was always a willing passer. He was a great defender. Those sorts of things. A lot of superstars don't do those sorts of things."

Crean:"I think one of the greatest qualities is people root for him to be successful. Because there is a humility and a humbleness that has turned into a great confidence that he has now. But he's always had an awareness of others, and I think that's one of the reasons he is such a great passer. He's got such great vision. He's a very spatial player. Because he not only has awareness in a physical way of how he plays the game, but he's always had awareness for other people."

Todd Townsend (MU forward, 2001-05):"We're playing against Villanova (to open the 2002-03 season), my sophomore year and technically his third year in college. We're in (Madison Square) Garden, Dwyane is driving from the right wing to the left, like to the middle, and I am on the left wing. I'm like "D! D! D!' And he's still dribbling and he said 'T, I see you' but he didn't pass it yet. In my head, it's going really slow now. He does the math, draw two defenders and now it's three on four offensive players. The math ... only elite players can do it. And so he passes it and says 'There you go, T, you're welcome!' While he's throwing it! And, for me, I'm like 'OK, thank you!' And I hit the three. You got to hit it! But I don't make that three any other circumstance if he's not slowing the game down for me. Once he leaves, I don't get those shots."

Karon Bradley (MU guard, 2002-04):"The first time I played against him in pickup that first night (Bradley was on campus). I just knew for me as a freshman, I knew then that there were levels. I just remember telling myself I have never seen anybody like this in my life. I played with the Houston Hoops (in AAU), I played in the Peach Jam, I played against a lot of different players and I thought I had saw every level of basketball. But when I saw him, I thought, man, this is going to be a long freshman year for me. This is a different breed of person and I've never seen anything like that before."

Jeff Strohm (MU assistant, 2002-05):"He was one of the greatest bank-shot shooters I've ever seen in the game. And that's one of the things we worked on a lot. Coach (Rick) Majerus had taught me (at Utah) that to help guys grow in confidence. But whatever you asked him to do, he'd do. And that was fun to coach."

Dwyane Wade sat out his first season at Marquette, but developed into an All-American in his junior season.

Steve Novak (MU forward, 2002-06):"What stood out to me was the realization that you're playing with a guy who could make a play on both ends of the floor that could absolutely change and dominate any game. Whether it was a game against Tulane where we are down 15 and he goes off for 35 points and getting steals and dunks and making bank jump shots. Or it's like a 3-on-3 box out drill in practice. He was the guy that if you got put on his team for 3-on-3, 4-on-4, 5-on-5, you were pretty confident you were going to win whatever drill that was. That was what stood out to me about D is just he's just a different talent and if you could ride that wave with him, we could really go places with this guy."

Bradley:"There were times where Coach Crean tried to push me a little bit and I remember there were a couple times where he was, like, in order for you to get out of this drill, you had to get three stops against D-Wade. And I just remember thinking to myself, I got to get three stops in a row against him ? So he clears out the whole practice and go until I got three stops. And that's like impossible. He probably just misses a shot or whatever."

Horn:"My favorite Dwyane memory is a failure and how he handled it. I've told it probably every year I have been a coach since. I don't even know if he'd remember this. But we played Louisville in a monster game in the Bradley Center (on Feb 15, 2003). ABC. National TV. Place was going nuts. To this day, in terms of intensity and just sheer raw energy and effort, the most intense game I have ever been a part of. Louisville had Rick Pitino and (Francisco) Garcia and they were flying around. And Dwyane didn't play great and we lost.

"We're sitting around as a staff and it's late. I don't want to fabricate and say it's 3 in the morning, but it isn't 9 p.m. either. Coach Crean's phone rings and it's Dwyane and he basically says 'I didn't play like I'm capable of today. I let the team down. That's not going to happen again. That's on me.' And I just think his ability to be so humble and honest with himself in an effort to be his best, to me, is what's made him great. Because when you start talking about the level that he's at and the reason we're talking, talent is a prerequisite. You don't outgrind your way to being a hall of famer. If you don't have special talent, it ain't happening. But I think what makes him great is that and he seemed to never lose that."

Dwayne "D.J." Stephens (MU assistant, 1999-2003):"There was a game, we were at Louisville (on Feb. 27, 2003) and Louisville is up on us by like 20 points in the first half. Dwyane is not playing really well and it comes to a timeout and Travis Diener lays into Dwyane Wade like I have never seen. And D-Wade, he's got a couple tears come down. You know Travis, he's a fiery dude and he does not like losing. So we come out of the timeout and Dwyane Wade and the rest of our team, but especially Dwyane, because he's playing bad, proceed to do one of the most impressive things that I have ever seen and we come back and end up beating them at Freedom Hall."

Diener:"I was a pretty animated player. I wasn't afraid to confront my teammates. I think the expectation that we all had in each other is why we were good. We weren't afraid to hold each other accountable. And Dwyane would go through moments, I think, just like any other player where he maybe was struggling or wasn't bringing the energy I think was necessary for us to win big games. He was always receptive and he wasn't afraid to go at me or anybody else."

Dwyane Wade became lottery pick after Final Four

There was some chatter that Wade might test the NBA draft after his first season, but he announced he would return for his junior season. That decision paid off with the Golden Eagles' run to the Final Four. After that, he was a surefire lottery pick, and the Miami Heat selected him at No. 5 in the 2003 draft.

Diener:"He had a great first year playing but I think there was so much room for him to grow. And then we got upset in the first round of the tournament (against Tulsa). Obviously if you make a deep run in the tournament, your stock can go up. And ironically enough, it happened the next year when we went to the Final Four. His stock continued to rise as we kept winning games. People kept seeing how special he was."

Novak:"Even in the Elite Eight when we smacked Kentucky and he goes off for a triple-double, at that point, we're not trained eyes. We haven't been through that kind of thing yet. Now I've played 11 years (in the NBA) and I've been around NBA guys, studied the game, you know what things look like and what they end up becoming. And, at the time, even when he had the triple-double, of course we knew he was special and he was going to go on to do all the things we dreamed of doing, but I still had no idea – and I don't think even he did – that he was going to be a lottery pick."

Diener:"I thought he was really mature about it. I think that was a product of he had a son at the time. He had to grow up quicker than I think most kids had to grow up with his circumstances and situation. I don't think he had any ego about it while he was playing. I don't think he fully understood how much his life would change in such a short period of time."

Chris Grimm (MU forward, 2002-06):"We were on our way down to Indianapolis in the first round (of the 2003 NCAA tournament) and the guys were having a rap battle in the back. A lot of it was the boisterous '8 Mile' stuff. And it was a moment for me, I saw him just like pour his heart out about what he was going through. I was an 18-year-old kid and I was, like, 'Wow, that's kind of deep for the rap battle we were going to have.' That was one of the moments that sticks out to me with him being one of the guys but also becoming a superstar at the time. He was going against Rob Jackson or Terry Sanders and if you know Rob and you know Terry, they were probably hilarious and Dwyane was like very introspective. Like what he was going through with the kid, getting ready to be who he is. I remember being like, wow, that is deep."

Diener: "When you're around really good players, great players and then special players, it just doesn't happen like people think. Yeah, he's extremely talented. But everybody knows he wasn't highly recruited. He worked his ass off to get to where he was. And he had a lot to prove when he got to Marquette. He had to sit out that year and not a lot of schools recruited him. He always had a chip on his shoulder like a lot of our guys did. You could see it in his work. He came to work every day. There was very little distraction to what he wanted to accomplish and in a short period of time, he made himself into a top-five pick."

Up next in the oral history:Off-the-court memories with Dwyane Wade.

Part 1: Wade was an overlooked gem in high school

Part 2: The sit-out season was key in Wade's development

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Dwyane Wade became consensus All-American at Marquette as junior

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