Danny Manuel came into Miller boys basketball’s locker room ahead of the Mavericks’ first clash with Blue Ridge this season with kind of a wild question for his team.
“Who’s ready to taste their own blood?” Manuel said.
Manuel wanted to know who was prepared to put it all on the line through even a possible busted lip or nose or tongue or tooth. He wanted to know who was all in for the Mavericks right then. He found a lot of players ready in Miller’s win later that night. He found one right away.
“Shaun is like ‘yeah me’,” Manuel said.
That’s just who Deshaun Wade is. Tough. Smart. Ready.
The 6-foot-2, East Carolina bound standout lives what Manuel was asking for because he’s all-in, all the time and still for a split second he paused.
“At first I was like, hey this guy is off the chain,” Wade said. “But he’s just being real. That’s what it takes, that’s what you’ve got to do. I was all for it. Just being the enforcer on the court.”
Wade averages 13.4 points per game and dishes out 5.5 assists per game. His offense is a big reason why the Mavericks are back in the VISAA D2 playoffs as the No. 1 seed. But it’s his defense and the way he approaches the game that defines him and, in a way, has come to define this year’s edition of Miller’s proud basketball program. He has a pathological need to compete.
“I think it’s just an uber competitiveness with everything, being a little crazy is okay,” Manuel said. “To be able to intimidate by play playing hard. He’s just always trying to prove himself. He’s super competitive athletically and he’ll go in the classroom and be super competitive there as well. I think that’s why he’s good at everything that he does.”
Duke alum and ESPN commentator Jay Bilas popularized the idea that toughness is a skill, a learned behavior, a few years back in his book Toughness. Wade is living proof of that fact.
He came into Green Run High in Virginia Beach because he was accepted into the school’s International Baccalaureate Academy for academics. When it came to basketball, the Green Run coaching staff looked to take his skill and talent and help him add that edge, that toughness.
“I didn’t have that grit to my game yet and they knew it,” Wade said. “They were like ‘we’re going to make you tough.’ They were pushing me, making me dive on the floor, they were pushing me forward.”
He quickly became one of the top point guards in the Beach District, a district packed with Class 5 and 6 schools that can often eat young players alive if they’re thrown in the fire in front of big crowds night in and night out. You can either wilt from that or meet the moment. It’s not hard to guess what Wade did.
“It helps you, being in the light,” Wade said. “I remember when we played Bayside and the game was just sold out, packed. If you didn’t come to show up, people were just going to be like ‘man, who is this guy.’ I knew it was time to step up.”
His transfer to Miller was about sharpening that edge and focus that Green Run helped instill and add in Manuel’s own particular brand of tenacity, which Wade seemed to connect with right away. Being at Miller allowed him to lock in more than any previous situation and become a gym rat. Like toughness, that work ethic is a learned behavior for Wade.
“I know coach Danny is going to be around and I know there’s a gym like 50 steps from where I sleep and it’s going to be open just about any time of day for me,” Wade said. “And there’s a weight room downstairs and I could just really focus on books and basketball. I wasn’t always a gym rat, I’ll be the first one to tell you that.”
It didn’t hurt either that when he arrived he found a deep Miller squad with a lot of weapons any point guard would love to run with on offense. Whether it’s Aundre Hyatt or DaeDae Heard or Tariq Balogun, Miller is loaded this year.
“You’ve got Dre who can get hot at any second, DaeDae who brings that tough mentality just like me,” Wade said. “We’ve got Jaylin Reed who lights it up from 3-point range and my two roommates Brent Rice and Teemu, I just love playing with those guys. Now we actually have two bigs, so now I get to throw lobs. We’re just always looking to have fun.”
Wade has become a complete point guard, a relentless presence who can intimidate, who can erase or at least limit the opposition’s best player and can then set the table for his teammates. He has minimized mistakes, posting a 1.69 to 1 assist to turnover ratio, and he’s given the Mavericks a jolt of energy during games at key moments.
Whether it is the crowd, the player he’s marking or any aspect of the game, Wade takes everything about basketball personally. It drives him nuts when players talk about individual scoring numbers.
“You hear a guy say I scored 30 or I scored this or I scored that, I hate when guys say that,” Wade said. “Because I just think ‘If I was in front of you, you wouldn’t be able to do none of that stuff.”
He’s probably right too. Wade is at his best when he’s chasing any one of the many heralded guards that the Mavericks square off against. Even when they get their points against him, they have to work for every single one of them.
See, Wade is willing to taste his own blood and keep going. That forces his opponents to answer Manuel’s question too. Are they willing to do the same?
They better be, because Wade is going to be willing.
