A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (34 page)

When we met at Perricone’s in Miami, I could tell Lisa was not just cool and someone who could clearly keep things on an even keel; she was also extremely smart, a strong woman like the kind I was raised by, tough, no-nonsense, and with a great heart. And important to me, she had an awesome sense of humor.

However, Lisa wasn’t sure that she wanted the position. Mulling it over with her friends and family, she famously insisted, “I’m not going to quit my day job over a rookie after nearly seven years with Alonzo’s foundation!”

Meanwhile, I went with my gut and told Hank to cancel the other appointments he had lined up. I knew she and I would click.

So Hank proposed to Lisa that she work for me part-time and continue her work for Alonzo. Lisa agreed and came aboard just in time to be part of an explosive season for me and the Heat. As my right-hand person, she helped coordinate my activities in the areas of business and philanthropy. Soon enough, her part-time job was more than full time, but because of her loyalty to Alonzo and her commitment to the important work of his youth center, she just kept juggling these different responsibilities—for another six years.

Lisa helped in ways that I couldn’t have imagined at the start. As my mouthpiece when dealing with everyone from the press to brand partners, she could be assertive when I needed to be relaxed. We had a kind of brother-sister relationship from the start, though in terms of handling logistics, you might call it good cop–bad cop. I could trust her to level with me, even when it meant taking me to task on something I could have handled better. That became a key to my staying grounded as the heady days approached.

Early on, Lisa took over my calendar and became the point of contact for anyone trying to get in touch with me. Siohvaughn saw many of the areas of responsibility she used to handle now go to someone else. At first, a problem arose, as my wife tried to persuade Hank that Lisa wasn’t needed.

In her professional way, Lisa was able to handle the fact that she was seen as a threat. At times, Von did value Lisa’s ability to get things done and would lean on her for advice on navigating all things Miami—what was then still a new world to us. But that was as close as they got.

The question of a financial adviser came up again and this time I insisted we bring someone in to review our accounts. Siohvaughn finally agreed but then when that particular adviser expressed concern about some numbers not being right, she insisted we fire him. Fine, I thought, we’d get someone new. But somehow nobody was good enough. I tended to see Von’s points when she brought them up. She could be very convincing.

Meanwhile, thanks to the vision and planning of Hank Thomas and the day-to-day handling of the details by Lisa Joseph, I could focus on the demands of the season in front of us. From the beginning, the chemistry of the team was unbelievable, not just between Shaq and myself, but with everyone playing well and with a confidence that energized me even more. After winning several games early in the season, we fell into the normal rhythm with highs and lows. Then something different began to happen right about December. It was like there was something in the water—or in our bottled sports beverages, to be more precise. During that month we scored fourteen consecutive victories, a Miami Heat record. That month I was named NBA Player of the Month and Stan Van Gundy was named Coach of the Month.

And from there we kept on soaring higher on into the new year. Everyone on the team, from players, coaching staff, to front office, to our fans, started to feel the ascent. Suddenly, the idea that we could win a championship sooner rather than later was looking doable. Why not? As in—when you’re hot you’re hot!

Besides the good news that after being traded to Toronto from the Nets, Alonzo Mourning was coming back to the Heat, I had also enjoyed the honor of being elected as an all-star, for the first time, and went to Denver for the All-Star Game, coming off the bench to help contribute to the East’s decisive 125–115 win over the West. Slowly the league was beginning to pay attention.

By April 2005, at the end of the regular season, the Miami Heat was not the same team we had been six months earlier. With 59 wins and 23 losses for the season, surpassed only once before by our franchise, we had the best record in the Eastern Conference. As the first seed, we could sense the basketball gods smiling down on us with a first-round matchup against the New Jersey Nets, which we felt played to our strengths.

But in taking a page out of lessons from the past, I remembered how Kentucky made their mistake in not taking Marquette seriously. That memory helped in game one of this first round when we allowed New Jersey to get ahead of us early in the game. We responded, went hard, took the lead, and never lost it. Before long, the shooting contest on the floor was taking place between me and my teammate, Damon Jones, who scored 30 to my 32, as both of us wound up with 67 percent shooting from the field.

In the second game of the series, the Nets’ plan to contain Shaq worked and he scored only 14 points. They didn’t plan for Zo, however, whose gifts, including nine rebounds, kept on giving—right along with his 21 points. We were now winning the first round of the series 2–0 but there was no doubt that New Jersey was poised to adapt with new firepower in the next game. Sure enough, Jason Kidd was in warrior mode and went on to record a triple double for the Nets. After not one but two overtimes, and final-stretch prowess from the Heat, including clutch plays from Udonis and Alonzo, we went home with the win.

The next game, obviously, had to be New Jersey’s fight for its life but ours to shut the series down and move up the mountain. Between my 34 points and 9 assists, Eddie Jones’s 21 points, and Shaq’s second-half dominance, along with every Heat baller, we got out the broom—winning the game by 13 points and sweeping the series four games to nuthin.’

We were hoopin’ now, on our way.

The next round of the playoffs pitted us against the Washington Wizards and threatened to be much tougher. Then again, the first game of the series gave us hope that the well-oiled machine that we had become could keep on chugging. After being knocked out in the second round the previous year by the Pacers, however, I refused to take anything for granted. Even when we won the first game by a lopsided 105–86 margin, I knew that, just like when scaling the heights in any treacherous climb, the weather can change drastically and quickly.

The fact is that when you’re playing at playoff ferocity, there’s an even greater potential for injuries that can stop even the best team. True to my fears, though we pulled off a win in the next game—which included great performances from Eddie Jones and Damon Jones, plus 31 points from me, as well as a postseason record of 15 assists—Shaq was injured with a deep thigh bruise that would prevent him from playing in game three. Worried as I was, we adapted successfully, with large credit going to Zo, who stepped in for Shaq, and to Udonis, who gave us 12 points and 12 rebounds.

So we were up 3–0 in the series and in game four, the Wizards were in do-or-die mode; we had the chance for a sweep again. At halftime, we were down by four points and had to make a familiar mental adjustment in the locker room about leaving everything we had on the line for the second half. With that thinking, I just went Flash, living up to my nickname and spurring the Heat to score 40 points in the third quarter alone, a record high for our franchise; 22 of those points were mine, also a Heat record. For the game, I delivered a postseason career high of 42 points. But if not for a three-pointer from Eddie Jones in the final seconds of the game and Zo’s block of what might have been a game-winning shot from the Wizards, we might have not left there as we did—victors and moving on to the Eastern Conference playoffs!

As I learned so well at this next stage of NBA championship playoffs, each of the four rounds that must be played to get to the top is a season unto itself. Until you’ve been there, there’s not much else that can really prepare you for the sheer physical and mental demands that invariably begin to weigh you down and wear you down. You live almost nonstop in the zone, from game to game, practice to practice, city to city. You sleep, you eat, you guard against any distractions, good or bad. It’s a crazy marathon made up of forty-eight-plus-minute out-of-body sprints along the way that can make or break you and your team. At every pinnacle, you literally can’t rest on any laurels or you will fall.

Everything that’s come before, once again, is only backstory.

Such was definitely the case for the opening of the 2005 Eastern Conference title series—the Miami Heat versus the Detroit Pistons, defending NBA champions. All bets were off. As a new team built to win, we had astonished everyone by coming this far in one season. Shaq never promised he’d bring home a championship as quickly as we were moving. But now we were here at this third round, coming into the playoffs as first seed and then sweeping not one but two earlier rounds, and we were feeling the mojo, amping up to go for it all. The major question for the skeptics was whether we really had what it would take to overcome that which we lacked: experience.

The veteran Detroit Pistons had proven to be a nemesis for many a franchise. They had been to the top before, including just the year before, with more or less the same lineup. How important was that experience? Well, judging by the first game, it was critical. In spite of the fact that Shaq was back and had a great game, I had one of my poorest showings to that time in the NBA, and as a team we fell badly behind in the last five minutes of the game.

Down 0–1 in the series, the wake-up call provided plenty of incentive to adjust in the next game. Earlier in the season, after a game against Seattle in which I clashed with Ray Allen and didn’t deliver for the team, Coach Van Gundy had some choice words for me the next day at practice. He began by drawing a star on the board and then pointed at me, saying, “So that’s our problem, you think you’re a fucking star now.”

He didn’t have to say anything else. I brought that memory into our second game against the Pistons and redeemed myself from the previous game’s performance with forty points. The Heat won the game, tying up the series 1–1. Buoyed by that success, we returned for the next game and hooped our way to victory with everyone contributing, as if we’d erased all memory of the first-game loss.

Up 2–1 for the series, we had to feel better than ever about the wave we were riding, although the game reflected the combined efforts of a Detroit team that was firing on all—well, you know the rest. And yep, the Pistons ruled, whuppin’ us by ten points.

On June 2, we played game five as the champions we believed we were—with everyone on the Heat cranking up the energy and delivering. The great news was that we won by a dozen points to lead the series 3–2. The terrible news for me was that with a little less than five minutes to go in the third quarter, I’d gone up for a jump shot and let go of the ball, nothing out of the ordinary, but to my horror suddenly felt a red-hot flame of pain sear across my rib area.

For a minute or so, I ignored the abdominal strain and soldiered on. Mind over muscle? Oh, yeah. That’s what you do up here in rarefied air. You keep going. That’s what I’d been doing so far, in fact, playing with sinusitis, flulike symptoms, and a knee strain. But as the pain began to intensify, radiating across my core and whole torso, I couldn’t just push on, because any effort at shooting the ball was going nowhere. With the crucial fourth quarter still to play, I was taken out of the game. The Heat forged on, led by Shaq, and we won.

Injuries, unfortunately, weren’t new for me. But this was the first time I’d ever faced the possibility of not playing in a playoff game—when we were so close to going to the fourth and final round—and I was sick over it. The team doctors and coaches went back and forth over my eligibility to play on June 4 in game six. Finally, the decision was made to sit me out and I watched from the bench feeling helpless as the Pistons defeated us 91–66.

So on June 6, with the series tied 3–3, and though I wasn’t back 100 percent, the doctors cleared me to play in game seven. During the first two quarters, we played come-from-behind basketball, closing the gap to within five points by the half. For the third quarter, I put on blinders, seeing the basket and the remaining minutes as the only obstacles standing between us and moving on to our final push for the championship. Even though I had helped us capture the lead going into the fourth quarter, much of my stock-in-trade—the ability to take over a game at crunch time—had been shut down, not by the Pistons, but by the injury. With three minutes to go in the game, our slight lead eroded and the clock, showing no mercy, ran out.

In the locker room after the game, Shaquille O’Neal spoke to reporters about the loss of the game and the series, mourning them like you would a death and talking about how the postseason had been allowed to slip through our fingers.

Of course, in the wake of a heartbreaker like that, you second-guess everything that happened, developing all kinds of questions about what you could have or should have done differently, revisiting decisions and asking how they might have played out if you did
x
or had tried
y
. For me there were echoes in this experience of getting stopped at the Final Four by Kansas. I tried to take away that same feeling of thinking that now that we knew the rigor of the heights, that knowledge could be power. In terms of conditioning and training, there was more work to be done.

The lesson was not easy to swallow. Nor was the other eye-opener from this season: that even when it seems that all the planets have aligned in your favor, and you are well on your way up the mountain, you are not assured of anything.

Hard as these truths were to accept, they were my answer to everyone who had predicted the outcome of this first attempt to go all the way. How so? Because I knew without question that we’d be coming back and going further. Soon.

AFTER SUCH AN EXPEDITION, YOU TEND TO RETURN TO CIVILIAN life, as you come to think of it, craving comfort and calm and no more pressure for a little while. All of that was there for me in the company of three-and-a-half-year-old Zaire Wade. The sun rose and set on that child for me. Everyone knew it. But because of the summer schedule, shortly after the season was over, Siohvaughn took him with her to Chicago to spend time with her family and friends.