A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (44 page)

After the game, I rush home and sit up until late, worried to death, crying, trying without success to block a terrible feeling that I’ll never see my sons again. Finally, I fall asleep for the remaining part of the night.

As soon as I wake up on Saturday, I call Hank. No breath in my voice, I ask, “Anything?”

“We’re still trying.”

Three hours later the phone rings and we’re informed that Zaire is in the hospital.

Thanking Jesus that he’s alive and been found, I’m still freaking out. Feverishly, I get the phone number of the hospital and am connected to the doctor assigned to his care. We get to the bottom of the problem that he’s having headaches—which the doctor has been informed could be connected to the fall he had when he visited me over Christmas.

I’m thinking—
What the . . . ?
This was a story that began as him horsing around and slipping and falling down, then mutated later on into him banging his head, falling into the pool, almost drowning, and having severe chronic headaches. That was enough to have his safety at my house questioned. The expert in the case called these details “embellishments.”

Other facts about how all this had gone down would come out later. Siohvaughn would say that the school had called because Zaire was having headaches and she picked up the boys, went to the hospital with Zaire and one of her friends, possibly after having her mom take Zion—although his whereabouts weren’t known by any of us. The reason for not calling anyone? Oh, she had lost her phone but had said she left a message for her lawyer. Then, as we would learn, she borrowed a camera supposedly from the hospital staff and took photos of Zaire on a gurney—which she later sent to me, knowing the horror of my reaction. Apparently she wanted the photos in the hospital records, along with information she supplied that the headaches were caused by the scrape on his head and “almost drowning” back in early December at my house. The eventual diagnosis? Later in the week he was found to have sinusitis. We knew that because six days later she didn’t appear in court and her lawyer said the reason was that Zaire was being treated for that.

Not knowing these specifics yet, I listened as the doctor painted a picture of a child brought in on a gurney who could have something wrong with him, based on the description of the symptoms, but couldn’t say anything conclusively. He then put me on the phone with Siohvaughn.

Well. Something snapped, big-time. I had been calm and controlled most of the time in our interactions up until this point. But I lost it with her.

The mental anguish came pouring out of me. What I couldn’t understand, I said, was why wasn’t I contacted? Why didn’t she call me? Why didn’t she get somebody to reach out to me? She knew it was my visitation. She knew that I would be worried out of my mind. She needed to let me know where my kids were and that everybody was fine. And I went off over the phone like the way that I’d been playing on the court for the last two seasons. Eventually she hung up the phone. I knew that I shouldn’t have lost my temper and spoken that way, but I had no more emotional bandwidth for the high road.

And that was my moment of truth.

That night as I sat in bed and asked myself whether I was doing enough and fighting hard enough for my sons, I took a close look at everything else I needed to do to make sure that I could give my kids the life they deserved. With everything that I had worked so hard for them to receive and have, what more would keep them safe and happy and healthy? The answer was that I thought that having them living with me would be better—and I knew that was probably impossible without seeking full custody. Even just the goal of seeing my sons consistently would probably only be possible if I had full custody. We had seen their mom’s refusal to follow court orders and what I saw as her gaming the system. There didn’t seem to be any other recourse. Above all, I was so scared at that point for what might happen to my kids, I knew I had to fight for full custody. Even if I lost, I’d be in the same situation as we already were.

The decision to fight was ultimately about them doing better in the care of me and my family. Enough was enough. I called my agent Hank, then my lawyer Jim, and they both said, “Yes, it’s time.” There was no question.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, as if they’d all been waiting for me to make the call. We all took a deep breath and started to get ready for the really big battles to come.

JUST LIKE IN ANY OTHER TIME IN MY LIFE, EVEN IN THIS crazy period I never felt rejected or let down by the game I loved. The Heat that season, still in a rebuilding stage, should have gone further in the playoffs but we were stopped by a surging Celtics team. I had some great games in that series, however. The question in the minds of the sports world was whether I had put up my last points for the Heat.

There had long been some thought about me going back to my first hometown and playing for the Bulls. Later that would be an issue in the custody trial when the accusation came up that I didn’t make more of an effort to seek employment closer to the boys. The truth is that I would have loved the opportunity to fulfill that dream. But my heart was with the Heat. My career had been built in Miami and everyone in the organization—from Micky Arison, the owner, who once told me he was the Heat’s biggest fan and really meant it, to Pat Riley, who had shared his own trials and tribulations with me as a way of stressing that mine wouldn’t last forever—had shown me nuthin’ but love and support. And then there was the fact that Chris Bosh was coming to the Heat from Toronto. CB’s decision helped me solidify mine. Then Bron decided to join us.

As the 2010–2011 season was gearing up, the courtroom was where the real heat seemed to be developing, the worst wars raging. Just when I thought that I had steeled myself and couldn’t be shocked anymore, after I filed for sole custody back on March 29, 2010, Siohvaughn fired off multiple lawsuits—starting with a defamation suit against our friend Andrea, godmother to both of our sons. Filed in April, the lawsuit was dismissed in June.

Also at this time, Siohvaughn began filing lawsuits on behalf of Zaire and Zion against the court-appointed children’s representative (pretty unheard-of) and, to my horror—against my girlfriend, Gabrielle Union. The lawsuit was for damages in the amount of fifty thousand dollars against Gab, based on God knows what. The motion to dismiss was filed but not granted until August, four months later. During that period, the intended hurt occurred.

In early May, just before Mother’s Day, I had finally been given court-ordered makeup visitation time. The order was to allow Tragil to pick up the boys at school on the 5th, and then to allow me to take Zaire to the doctor when I was in Chicago on the 6th and for Siohvaughn to meet me there. Once again, Siohvaughn filed an emergency motion to have the order reconsidered, but it was denied. However, that afternoon when Tragil went to school to pick up the boys, they weren’t there. Ignoring the court order, Siohvaughn had picked up Zaire and had someone else pick up Zion. Once again, the opportunity to be with my sons, and in this case to attend Zaire’s appointment, had been denied to me. Tragil was frantic about not being able to locate them. Finally, Zaire called me when I was at the airport worried out of my mind.

I was able to see Zaire and Zion for the next few days, and then I returned them to Siohvaughn on Mother’s Day and had them bring her flowers. She was still the mother of my children and I knew she loved them, regardless of how she felt about me. Goodwill? Partly, yeah, and I thought it was the right thing to do and the right example to set for my sons.

But as far as I could tell, goodwill wasn’t in the cards. This wasn’t the same person I knew; it wasn’t her anymore. In fact, right after Mother’s Day and the flowers, she filed a complaint against me for intentional infliction of mental distress, alleging all kinds of abuse that would be introduced in time for our actual custody trial. In her later filing in the custody case, she went so far as to ask the court to supervise my parenting time with the children. The court would eventually dismiss the complaint of infliction of mental distress even though Siohvaughn would file another motion (ultimately unsuccessful) to reverse the dismissal.

As for the May 5–7 makeup visitation, she told the court it had been without incident, an issue that the judge who later decided custody would raise. That was troubling. But worse to me, it was clear by this point that Zaire’s brainwashing by his mom, as I understood it to be, included not only hostility to me but also Tragil. This was TT, the aunt he had adored all his life. By now there were as many as eight signs on the gates outside the house (including one that implied Tragil wasn’t allowed to pass through to pick up the children). Although the expert never visited the house or had knowledge of the signs, one of the judges who was deciding motions was stunned that Tragil was barred from entering and that Zaire saw her as a threat because of what he was being told.

This was the shock-and-awe stage of warfare, one that put our sons on the front lines. My hopes rose when we were interviewed by the court’s expert, who was present during a question-and-answer session between me and Zaire. It seemed to me that Zaire was asking questions that he had been told to ask. For example, he asked questions about the fall that had happened months earlier, as if he were trying to show that it was connected to his headaches. Then out of left field, he suddenly asked, “What does Zion mean to you?” I wasn’t sure why he had been told to ask that but I could hear the anger and accusation in his voice and it didn’t sound like the Zaire I knew.

I looked at Zaire and spoke from my heart, saying, “Zion means the same to me that you do: everything. I think of you both every morning when I get up, throughout the day, and every night. I love you. You mean everything to me.”

When the initial report was turned in before trial, the expert had said in all her years of evaluating parents and children with respect to alienation, she had never seen a child act as Zaire had. She also noted that I exhibited “patience, empathy, and love” in my responses. They seemed to bode well, as we heard about it, for the trial.

By the end of May, I didn’t think any of this could become any worse. The weekend of my visitation in Chicago had been planned by us to celebrate Zion’s third birthday and Tragil went to get the boys to bring them to me. In the typical tension that occurred when she arrived, Zaire appeared not to want to go, and as Tragil held on to Zion, the older boy, as though being told what to do, kicked her as hard as he could. Tragil noticed that he was looking back toward someone she couldn’t see, as if following directions. In Tragil’s effort to calm the situation by telling him to stop and starting to take his hand, she was accused of punching him with a closed fist.

Siohvaughn then filed a restraining order against Tragil and brought a criminal suit against my sister that went to trial the following September. If that had been the only nightmare we had to endure in this period, it would have been unacceptable. Tragil and Siohvaughn had been caring sisters-in-law and close friends.

I could never understand what any of my loved ones had done to deserve any of this—especially Zaire, who was required to testify during the criminal trial and to make the accusations against Tragil that weren’t true. At one point, under questioning, he was asked if he loved his aunt and he said yes. When asked if he wanted anything bad to happen to her, he was obviously not prepared for that question, and he replied as a little boy would in a sad voice, saying no. The case was dismissed.

As of June 25 the divorce was finalized in terms of the dissolution of the marriage. There were issues still remaining, including the custody phase and the settlement. Meanwhile, in another courtroom, I went to trial to fight the $25 million lawsuit and was happy to tell my side of the story to the jury. With a settlement hammered out behind the scenes for that suit and the other bad investment cases resolved in the same week, I survived those ordeals. It cost me but I walked out finished with that litigation.

With Siohvaughn, the hits just kept on coming. During my spring vacation time with Zaire and Zion, she would complain that she hadn’t been told where we were going and would claim emotional distress from things, like seeing us in Boston at the NBA Finals game that was shown on TV or finding out that I had taken the boys to Disney World at another point. Upon the boys’ return to Chicago, she took them for X-rays and CT scans, allegedly because they complained of backaches after going on rides. There was more during a third visit that she claimed involved an injury to Zaire. This time she went after my brother Demetrius as being abusive.

Wedged in between that drama and the actual custody trial that was set to begin in early September, all of the decision making had come to pass for the arrivals of LeBron and Chris in Miami. In such stark contrast to everything else that was happening, I was pumped with anticipation. The younger me wouldn’t have been able to share the stage with a LeBron James. The need to prove that I could still be the face and have someone come in and follow me would have been too great. But when you get older, as I was at almost twenty-nine, you understand what it takes to win, what it takes for a team to go the distance. That mattered more.

I was at the place in my career where I could look back and laugh at the need for supremacy. Family and team were now where it was at.

For me to have held on and continued to be the only face of the Heat would have been selfish and not productive for the whole team. Plus it’s hard. It’s hard on the body—well, my body for sure—and it’s hard mentally. Besides, I had proven myself over the last two seasons. What else did I need to put in the history books on my own? If I wanted to keep winning and on a consistent basis, I couldn’t do it by myself. Plain and simple. And if I had to give $17 million back on my last contract to get LeBron James and Chris Bosh to come so we could have an opportunity to succeed for everyone, that’s what I was going to do. Selfishly, I could have taken all the money but we wouldn’t have had the team. And vice versa with the other two.