Future Basketball Hall of Famer and current Cleveland Cavalier, Dwayne Wade has a full life. He's married to wife, Gabrielle Union, has three amazing sons, is in a good position to retire in a few years and seems to be enjoying life all around.
This blessed life could have almost never happened for Wade if it wasn't for his dad. Upon moving in and getting close with his father, literally changed the path of Dwayne's life.
“Early on in my life, I grew up with my mom,” Dwyane says. “My mom was on drugs and my family was in the gang environment, so it was a rough childhood.” Then, at age 9, life changed for Dwyane when he moved to a different Chicago-area neighborhood to live with his father.
“I got an opportunity to be a kid,” he says to the Huffington Post. “If I would have stayed [with my Mom]... I would have been next in line to sell drugs, to join the gang.”
Instead, Dwyane was set on a different course. “Moving in with my dad at the age of 9 was probably the most important part of my life,” the Miami Heat star says. “That was at the point and the age that I needed that male voice. I needed the discipline. I needed someone to look at and say, ‘I want to be like you.’”
Dwyane says that under his father’s watch, he got the discipline he needed — and discovered the love for basketball that would take him to the NBA. “[My father] was militant,” Dwyane says. “He kept us out of a lot of trouble because we respected his ‘nos’ and ‘don’ts... But he also put us in sports... It gave me dreams that I probably never had before that.”
But his cousin, Nykea Aldridge was not as fortunate. She gunned down in Chicago in 2016 leaving her four children, one only months old, without their mother.
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Wade wrote, "Another act of senseless gun violence. 4 kids lost their mom for NO REASON. Unreal. #EnoughIsEnough."
In another message, he wrote, "We need more help& more hands on deck. Not for me and my family but for the future of our world. The YOUTH!"
Police said that Nykea was caught in fatal crossfire Friday while pushing a stroller down a Chicago street, when several men allegedly started shooting at each other.
According to WGN News, Nykea had been on her way to register her three oldest children for elementary school. Her youngest child is just weeks old.
Then on the opposite side of the emotional scale, Wade and his wife Gabrielle Union are going to be coming up on their four year wedding anniversary this year.
Then the NBA all-star went on to write just how blessed he is to have such a wonderful wife in his life, saying that "Mrs. Independent. I got me one... Happy Anniversary baby!"
The cute couple even made this little video just one week before their anniversary as a part of the "So Gone Challenge" on social media.
Now, dealing with a new team but back with his brother from another mother, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dwayne Wade takes everything in stride. Just as he likes to say about his life, "this is much more than basketball."
The talented baller is still planning on doing some events to combat the violence in his hometown and making sure his three sons are safe as well.
