Name: Dwyane Wade - A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball
Uploaded: 2020-01-02T10:43:01.000Z
Duration: 48 min 51 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

>>Male presenter: Thank you, welcome to Google in New York.

The imperative

>>Dwyane Wade: How y'all doin'? How y'all doin'?

>>presenter: You've never been here before, right?

>>Dwyane Wade: No, I've never been here before only been on the website.

Now we're really, we're really excited to have you here today. There's a lotta big fans.

I myself I grew up on South Florida so I was like an original Heat fan, like Rony Seikaly,

>>Dwyane Wade: How many people here are from Miami?

>>Dwyane Wade: Alright represented, we've got a few.

>>presenter: But so I read, you have a new book out this week and this is part of the

Authors@Google series and the memoir is called A Father First and I thought we could talk

a little about that today and your experience and some of the stuff you discuss in that

And I think, like many people in this room, I and a lot of us knew you as the NBA final,

the two time NBA champion, the NBA Finals MVP, and the guy who took Marquette the Final

I think that story which you definitely tell in the book is sort of almost secondary to

this other sort of set of tales about you. This kid who grew up in a tough life in a

rough part of Chicago and who learned to be, learned he was going to be a father at 19

and I think that, that, do you feel like that's true that, that part of that story, the story

of the guy who had to learn how to make all these tough decisions very early and learn

how to be a father and all that is the primary story of the book?

>>Dwyane Wade: Well, yeah, I think it would have been easy for me to write a book about

basketball but I also think y'all can Google it. [chuckles]

I didn't even think about that one it just came to me.

But no, I felt that if I was gonna go down this path I wanted to write something that

I felt was meaningful and I felt that can help others in a sense. So I talked a lot

about my childhood, I talked a lot about my upbringin'.

And I do a lot of foundation work so I know kind of the same struggle that's goin' on

in the inner city, kinda the same way I grew up. So I see kids everyday that's just like

I was and goin' through some of the same issues that I went through. So I took this opportunity

to kind of express that and talk about it because when kids see me and I come and talk

to them they see Dwyane Wade, the two time NBA champion and all these accolades, but

I don't think they necessarily understand that I was them and I remember being in that

same seat and I remember bein' told that I wasn't gonna be successful and I couldn't

So I thought I would take this time in this book and kinda share those personal experiences

through my life. And also the title of the book is A Father First and it's not necessarily

directed to just fathers, I wanted to really express to families that's gonna through the

same issues that I went through whether it's a divorce, or whether it's the battle between

the custody from the kids, and kinda just share my experiences the negative and a positive

of it and hopefully it can help someone look at things in a different way or it can help

them in some facets of their life so hopefully I accomplished that. Oh a little basketball's

So why did you decide, I mean the book opens with you getting full custody of Zion and

>>presenter: and so why did you decide that you wanted to get this out there?

>>Dwyane Wade: It just, I really don't know. I've never really thought that I was gonna

write a book, I never thought I'd be an author before I always looked at it as hard work,

>>Dwyane Wade: but I just felt that I go through everything in life for a reason. It's some

reason I went through this process for many, many years and still going through it today.

And I just know that a lotta guys especially in my league, in the NBA, that come up to

me had a lotta questions, gave 'em hope in a sense.

Before I got custody, I got appointed to the Fatherhood Initiative from our President himself

and to be seen in that field as bein' someone who can speak for fathers in a sense I just

thought it was my duty and my job and obligation to kind of share those experiences with others

hopefully, like I said hopefully it can help them, hopefully it can give them a different

>>Dwyane Wade: on how to handle somethin' because when I was goin' through this custody

battle, it was kinda like shootin' in the dark. You didn't know what was gonna happen

and where the ball's gonna end up. So hopefully if anybody's gonna through the process they

can kinda see, "Well, you know what this is how D. Wade said he dealt with it, this is

what he went through," and they can see this is how hard it's supposed to be, this is as

hard as it's gonna be, just so many different things so.

>>presenter: Yeah. You describe yourself as an introverted guy in the book but there are

some very personal things that you share in there. Were there parts of it that were difficult

for you to sort of explain or put out there and share with the world?

>>Dwyane Wade: Yeah, I mean anytime you're talkin' about your personal life in a sense

is always difficult. I've had to live my life under the microscope in a sense and it's very

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Dwyane Wade - A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball

stuff

perspective

tough

therapy