Dwyane Wade opens up on what hoops means to him

Since he began playing basketball as youngster, says Dwyane Wade, basketball has always been his first love. Courtesy Converse, Inc.

MIAMI -- Dwyane Wade is running up and down the steps of American Airlines Arena. Zigzagging around every section in the lower bowl, he finally pauses atop Section 118 and looks down onto the court. "No one can ever say I haven't seen every seat in the building," he huffs. "I love it."

There's a lot of love in Wade's heart on this day. As he takes a break from his personal tour of the arena, he sits down and opens up about a love letter he wrote this summer.

No one was supposed to see the letter but his stepbrother, Donny McDaniel. While the two were sitting down, passing time in a New York City hotel room in August, McDaniel, who played with Wade in high school, showed Wade a letter he had written to the game that shaped their lives. Immediately the competitive and creative juices in Wade started flowing.

"OK, let's see who could write the best letter," Wade told his stepbrother. "Let's see who can make it seem like it's not about basketball and then bring it back to basketball. I'm going to my room and write something."

Less than an hour later, Wade had written a heartfelt sonnet to the game that floored his stepbrother. It was a rare glimpse into the inner-most feelings of one of the game's best players that surprised even his closest friends and family members who read the letter.

It wasn't until Wade was back in Miami, sitting at the head of the table in a conference room, surrounded by executives looking to devise an ad campaign for his new shoe, the Converse Wade 3, where he actually read it aloud for the first time.

He hadn't planned on the impromptu poetry reading -- it just happened, three hours in, when someone innocently asked him about his love for the game. After trying to put his feelings into words, Wade soon went into his pocket and pulled out his letter and began reading his ode to basketball.

"In the summer of 2000-2001, high school had ended and it was time for college. I did everything in my power to take you with me, but you didn't wanna go. You said I needed to become a man and that I counted on you too much ... So you left me -- feeling unsure, unloved and confused. How could you not love me anymore?"

Wade still becomes emotional when he reads the words he wrote. While some athletes put their pain in the past and refuse to look in the rear view mirror, Wade understands that it's his past that has made him the player he is today.

"I wanted to talk about the year that I went without basketball," he says. "It's kind of like a long lost girlfriend. Like we split up for a while and then she comes back to you."

After breaking school records for points and steals at Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Ill., and leading his team to the title game as a senior, he was ruled academically ineligible for his freshman year at Marquette and was forced to watch his teammates play from the sidelines. Wade knew he would be leaving his friends and family behind when he went to college, but he hadn't planned on leaving basketball behind as well.

"That was tough. My last summer at high school I take the SATs and find out I'm not going to play next year because I didn't score high enough," he says. "I knew I was going to go to college and college is a different experience for me and anyone in my neighborhood. To go to college and to go to a school like Marquette is a big deal but I'm going without everybody, going without basketball. For the first time in my life I didn't have it to fall back on."

Basketball was more than a fallback for Wade. It built him up. It gave him a new identity and was his way of communicating with people he didn't know. Growing up, no one paid much attention to Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr., the shy little boy from Robbins, Ill., who kept to himself and scribbled his thoughts into a journal. That all changed when he picked up a basketball.

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