Give It Up For D-Wade

Sports Illustrated, which by the way is still a relevant magazine, named Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade it's Sportsman of the Year this week. While I'll admit to some mild disappointment over the selection, considering Steelers Jerome Bettis and Bill Cowher were both mentioned among the nominees, overall I think it's a good choice. While the Bus's fairy tale ending makes me as misty as any self-respecting terrible towel waver, I think it would be hard to justify SI giving the honor to a back up running back who rushed for 368 yards and played in only 3/4 of his team's games. Anyway, I've always had a soft spot for Dwyane Wade, ever since he burst onto the national stage by single-handedly leading Marquette past my Pitt Panthers in the 2003 NCAA tournament. I'm usually a supreme bitch about guys eliminating my team from the playoffs (see Cabrera, Francisco), but something about Wade's performance was different.

Earlier this year I applied for a position as a basketball writer with about.com, and with my resume had to submit an original writing sample. I tried to craft a column about witnessing Wade come of age. It probably didn't work. I definitely didn't get the job. Yet rather than let the column rot away in perpetuity on the about.com email server, I'm offering it right now as a personal shout-out to SI's Sportsman of the Year.

The Revolution Was Not Televised

This is a story about the first time I saw Dwyane Wade play. Well, saw is actually the wrong word. This is a story about the first time I bore witness to Dwyane Wade’s game. I was reminded of this instance during game 3 of the NBA Finals, when Wade willed his team back from the brink of elimination and turned the tide in the series. I thought of it again on Wednesday night as I watched the NBA Draft and wondered if scouting combines, bench presses and vertical leaps be damned, sometimes with a player you just know.

In March of 2003, I was a sophomore at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. From this outpost on the Hudson, I did my best to follow my hometown University of Pittsburgh Panthers and their quest for the Final Four. That particular Pitt team was one of the best in school history. They went undefeated at home, won the Big East regular season and conference tournament titles, and were seeded #2 in the Midwest Regional. A few national publications even listed the Panthers as a strong dark horse candidate for the national championship.

Pitt seemed poised to meet expectations, storming through the first two rounds of the tournament by an average of 24 points. After dismantling 2002 national runner-up Indiana 74-52, Hoosiers coach Mike Davis stated emphatically "They are absolutely the best I've seen." It was on to the sweet sixteen for the Panthers, and a date with Marquette.

I almost closed the last paragraph with “and a date with Dwayne Wade and Marquette.” But the fact remains; Dwayne Wade wasn’t a pre-fix then, not at that point in his career, and certainly not to the average fan. Looking at his peers from the heralded 2003 NBA Draft class, Lebron James had already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated, while Carmelo Anthony was a shoo-in for national freshman of the year. Perhaps playing in a small market, mid-major conference school hurt Wade’s publicity. Perhaps his game had not fully blossomed to the point of rock-star status. At this point, both arguments are kind of irrelevant.

The Pitt-Marquette match-up was scheduled for slightly after nine o’clock on a Thursday night. I raced home from a lecture that ran long, hoping to catch the end of the first-half. Breathless, I flicked through the channels on my 1992 black and white Sony television. Finally, I got to CBS and….Kansas vs. Duke. Gahdammit. Of course Pitt wouldn’t be the regional broadcast in Poughkeepsie.

Dejected, I turned to my computer. After an eternity of Google searches and dead links, I finally stumbled on an internet streaming audio of the Pitt radio broadcast. I tossed off my sneakers and stretched out across my bed, hands behind my head, trying to visualize the action being described.

The second-half was just beginning as I settled in. From what I could gather, Pitt had jumped out to an early lead, but Marquette had rallied to tie the score. The teams essentially traded buckets since then. It wasn’t the blow-out and relaxing evening I had hoped for, but I took some solace in knowing the Panthers were a second-half team.

With 17 minutes left to play, and Marquette leading 40-39, Dwyane Wade drained a jump shot from the outside. Bill Hillgrove, Pitt’s play-by-play man pointed out that it was Wade’s first basket since early in the first half. I hadn’t noticed or cared. The Panthers missed their next two shots and in both instances Wade pushed the ball up-court and drove the lane for a basket. That gave him six straight points and put Marquette up by seven. Pitt called time-out. The radio broadcast broke for commercial.

My memory for specific details of the game cuts out after that. The box score shows that Dwyane Wade scored 22 points that night. Twenty of them came in the second half. The number still seems shockingly low. It’s a shame there’s not a statistic able to measure how many buckets Wade hit that curbed Pitt’s momentum; came at a point where the Panthers needed only a defensive stop to get back in the game. Time and time again he drove into the heart of the best defense in the Big East, emerging victorious over and over, his team still one step ahead of the opposition. Final score, Marquette 77, Pitt 74.

When Dwyane Wade cemented his status as NBA superstar this June, I was somewhat disappointed at my inability to recollect explicit moments or plays from that evening. All told, the loss one of the more painful moments in my time as a college basketball fan. Still, I wanted to have some images of what it looked like the night Wade served notice where his talent could take him. I wished I had some dazzling descriptions of the moves and shakes he used to break a fan’s heart--stories that would be my battle scar.

As hard as I could, all I could remember about the game were images of my sophomore room. There were sixteen cracks in the ceiling. I remember because I spent the last five minutes of the game counting them over and over again, hoping that ignoring the inevitable end result would make it go away. There were also the ceiling pipes that carried water to the bathroom next door; they seemed to whine and groan on cue every time Wade scored another back breaking basket. Even the feel of the battered wooden chair that sat at my computer desk came back to me. I plopped my nervous, shaking body there sometime late in the game, hoping a change would reverse Pitt’s karmic fortunes.

And yet now, I realize there’s a certain intrigue and power in this recollection. There are plenty of unspectacular players who for one moment in a game, execute a no-look pass or photogenic windmill dunk, then retreat back into relative mediocrity. It takes another kind of player to completely lay waste to a team that for six months had you dreaming of a national championship. They are so complete, so transcendent as athletes that the best way to witness them is listening on the radio alone, where looks can’t be deceiving.