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Traditionally when big time athletes sponsor summer camps for little kids, it's supposed to be about the kids. Can someone get that message to Dwyane Wade? The Miami Heat guard was acting like bit of a baby at his D Wade All Star Basketball Camp this week when the pint-sized ballers were faring better than him.
The kids whose families paid $249 for them to get to play with an OIympic Gold Medalist and member of the Eastern Conference Championship Heat, learning how to play basketball, were instead treated to a show of bad sportsmanship from a guy who was losing to people half his size, and a third of his age (he's 29) in a game of Knockout. Check out D. Wade acting like a d.bag right around the 47-second mark in this video of the camp:
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Oooh, big man knocks a ball straight out of the hands of an elementary schooler (it's hard to judge the kid's exact age, but the camp is for kids 7 to 18, and he's definitely on the lower end). What a guy! D Wade's fans will probably say he was just joking around, he was teaching the kid how things happen in a real game, yadda, yadda, yadda.
But this wasn't a real game. It was Knockout, and the rules are pretty clear. You can use your ball to knock another person's ball out, but NOT your hands. And you can't simply knock a person's ball away for the heck of it -- you need to give them a fair chance. A veteran player like Wade should know that. A DAD (he won the Fatherhood Award from the National Fatherhood Initiative this year) should know better.
More to the point, a guy who is throwing a basketball camp for kids should have a heightened awareness of what he's there for -- to show kids how to play the game, and to make them fall in love with it. That includes sportsmanship. And learning to be a good loser.
This isn't the first time a player has pulled a stunt like this at one of his camps; Wade's teammate LeBron James' was so afraid of losing that he knocked a kid OVER as he charged to the basket a few weeks ago. It's time these guys put their egos aside and realize they're there for the kids . . . or just cancel the camps.
Do you think this was a jerk move?
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