The oral history of Dwyane Wade’s recruitment at Marquette
First in a four-part series on former Marquette star and NBA great Dwyane Wade as he prepares to be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Aug. 12.
Dwyane Wade wasn’t always a lock for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Before the NBA championships, Olympic medals and career earnings north of $200 million, he was an unknown, skinny kid in Chicago trying to attract the attention of college basketball coaches.
Wade will be inducted into his sport’s pantheon on Aug. 12 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first former MU player to earn that honor. His three years in Milwaukee were a crucial stop on his path to basketball immortality.
People at MU saw the potential in Wade as an overlooked recruit, then helped prepare him when Wade had to sit out his first season as a partial-academic qualifier and finally watched him ascend to the No. 5 pick in the 2003 NBA draft before he reached global superstardom.
Golden Eagles coaches and teammates shared their memories about all those steps. Up first: Wade’s recruitment to MU.
Dwyane Wade was under-the-radar at Richards High School and with Illinois Warriors
Wade was a good player at Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois, but he didn’t get a lot of recruiting notice with his AAU team because talented teammates overshadowed him. But then-MU head coach Tom Crean and his assistants saw something in Wade.
Todd Townsend (MU forward, 2001-05): “Dwyane and I have known each other since eighth grade. He grew up on 59th and Prairie in Chicago and I grew up not even a mile away on 60th and Wood Street in the Englewood area of Chicago. And then we played AAU basketball together for a team called the Illinois Warriors, which was filled with talent.”
Tim Buckley (MU assistant coach 1999-2000): “Coach (Jack) Fitzgerald, his high school coach, was somebody that I knew through the years and we were talking about him. Obviously we went out to watch him play with the Illinois Warriors. They had a lot of…
