Dwayne Wade Is Changing the Game, On and Off the Court

After 13 years with the Heat - and three NBA championships - Dwyane Wade is the King of South Beach. But now the basketball legend is working on a whole new set of moves.

- Thomas Golianopoulos

Dwyane Wade has a routine on road trips. When he climbs aboard the Miami Heat’s charter plane, his inflight entertainment consists of watching game film. “I want to get into it immediately, so I can see what we did right and what we did wrong,” Wade says. “I’m always looking to see how I can improve.”

That approach is part of the reason why Wade, now a 13-year veteran, has accumulated a Hall of Fame résumé: three NBA championships (2006, 2012, 2013), the 2006 finals MVP, the 2009 league scoring title and 12 All-Star Game selections. It’s also why the shy, awkward shooting guard from Chicago’s South Side is now a global luxury brand, with a movie star wife (Gabrielle Union) and footprints in the world of business, fashion and philanthropy. In 2011, President Obama even appointed Wade to the Fatherhood & Mentoring Initiative, a White House task force that aims to build healthier communities through role models. (On the president, Wade quotes the late sportscaster Stuart Scott: “Cool as the other side of the pillow.”) The following year, Wade became a New York Times best-selling author with the release of his first book, A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball.

As a boy in Chicago, Wade could hardly have imagined he’d make it to the White House. “Where I come from, growing up in the inner city without having a lot, you are unsure of yourself for many different reasons,” he says. “When you’re a kid and you don’t have material things—like living in a house with the lights cut off and no water—that affects you. That affects how you think people are looking at you. Maybe they’re not, but it affects you mentally.”