‘I cried the whole time.’ Fans react to Wade’s new documentary ‘D. Wade: Life Unexpected.’
Dwyane Wade’s three-day L3GACY Celebration concluded Sunday afternoon with an exclusive screening of his documentary.
Roughly 2,000 people gathered at AmericanAirlines Arena to get one of the first looks at “D. Wade: Life Unexpected” which details the three-time champion’s journey from Chicago to the greatest player in Miami Heat franchise history. The documentary premiered later that evening on ESPN.
“I want to tell the story [of my career] to wrap it up,” Wade said to the crowd prior to the film. “... I feel like you can take something away from my story because it’s not just about the game of basketball.”
To fans, learning Wade’s story was moving and inspirational.
“I cried the whole time,” Sabrina Aponte, 26, said.
“It was definitely emotional seeing him from the start and seeing everything he had to go through,” her friend Carina Feria, 25, added.
As cinematographer Bob Metelus alluded to before the documentary premiered, Wade really wasn’t supposed to be here. The odds were stacked against him from the start considering that his mother was addicted to drugs and he became a father in college. But that’s all part of the beauty in Wade’s journey.
“You just never know where you’re going to go,” Metelus said.
Jermaine Simmons, 45, fell in love the energy that Wade brought to the city so much so that he had season tickets despite living more than 100 miles away in Indian River County. He made the two plus hour drive then and was more than happy to do it again to watch the documentary.
“It brought a couple tears out,” Simmons said of the film. “I loved it.”
This story was originally published February 23, 2020 at 8:22 PM.
