Miami Heat guard gets richer by enriching others
miamiherald.com
Posted on Sunday, 08.09.09
 James Jones said playing in his hometown allows him to repay the debt he believes he owes the community for giving him 'everything I ever needed to succeed.'
C.W. GRIFFIN / STAFF PHOTO
BY DAN LE BATARD
dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com
The temptations are all right outside for this basketball millionaire on a day off amid the sun and surf. Women in bikinis. Noon drink specials. Shopping and luxury cars and rich-people toys. You already can hear the weekend starting too early on a Friday on Ocean Drive, but the Miami Heat's James Jones isn't as interested in South Florida's vanities as he is in bringing out her inner beauty.
``I want to show you something,'' he says, flipping through the files on his phone.
You've asked one question. Why do you give so much, James? And now his black beans and rice have gone cold over lunch as he spends his 10th uninterrupted minute going over ``talking points'' and ``life-skills curriculum'' and ``community enrichment.'' He talks about ``educational and environmental strategies'' and ``changing social norms'' and ``destructive coping behaviors'' and his dream of building his own school near where he grew up in Miami Gardens. He is, in more ways than one, just getting started here.
You hear a lot about the bad in sports. Too much, probably. But there are more athletes who don't get in trouble than those who do. And while Antoine Walker is getting arrested for $800,000 in gambling debt, there are plenty of untold financial stories like this one: Alonzo Mourning once saw a newspaper photo of a mother who had just lost her home in a hurricane. He went around his locker room asking teammates for thousands of dollars. Then he got team owner Micky Arison to match what they raised. And that's how the Heat, very quietly, bought her a new house.
Jones is just 28. On Thursday, he was swimming with autistic kids in Weston. Last week, he was announcing an initiative in which he will pay the closing costs on foreclosed homes to help struggling families become credit-worthy. Just before that, he was hosting an outdoor party for migrant workers in Naranja and was humbled as 40, 75 and then more than 100 children and adults rushed from the bounce house and snow-cone stands to play with him on a basketball court, touched as they were that a member of a big sports team would make time to go way out there for little people like them. Humbled, too, he can admit through a smile, because the kids kept asking why the heck he didn't bring Dwyane Wade.
``One hour of my time,'' James says. ``You can do a lot in an hour.''
He never does, in those first 10 uninterrupted minutes over lunch, answer the question of why. Why, in a league and a world with so much me-me-me, would he spend his offseason bouncing all over South Florida helping all kinds of strangers? But he drops a pretty good clue later in the conversation:
When he finally got rich, James went to his mother and stepfather to share. He wanted to retire them and buy them a new home. It is tear-soaked beautiful and also a sports cliché. But his parents said they would keep working, thanks. So you will find this millionaire's folks still toiling in the kitchen of the Dade County correctional facility, where they have been employed for two decades. And you will find them still living in the home in which James was raised.
``We can help ourselves,'' Jones' mother told her son. ``Go help someone else with your money so that they can help someone else, too.''
A POWERFUL TOOL
Help. Such a big, little word. Jones knows its power, which is why he will seek out the teacher with the longest tenure at the schools where he speaks to ask what they need most. It also is why he will grill Dan Marino when he runs into him at Publix about the most efficient ways for athletes to give.
``Athletes aren't great about asking for help,'' he says. ``We dictate.''
Although he was a finance major at the University of Miami, and though he is the secretary-treasurer for the player's union, Jones still needed help in learning the right ways to help with his money. He couldn't just keep doing what he did as a rookie in Indiana, seeing a single mother blizzard-stranded in a beat-up car with her kids and giving the family a ride and a stack of cash.
It felt good to parachute in like that (more for him than her), but how could he help earlier in the journey by providing better keys to an easier ride? That's why he began this project of paying closing costs on homes for poor families -- because he has an uncommon appreciation for Miami and because he knows what support and stability did for him and because he wanted to merge all those things (love of city, love of self and love, period). Turn the home into a community and, one by one, you can turn the community into a home.
``You don't just address problems after they arrive,'' he says. ``You change the environment in which they are produced. You give the parents pride and accomplishment of ownership and building. And they in turn can give the kids a stable haven.''
Home. Such a big, little word. Jones knows its value more than most, which is why and how he came to be a member of the Heat. He had offers from Boston, Detroit and Portland a year ago but instructed his agent to get him here no matter the cost. He just wanted to eat lunch again at the Latin places near his old high school -- American. He just wanted to be closer to his boyhood friends from 211th Court, just west of Calder. And he just wanted to finally do his community work in his community.
LONGING FOR HOME
The less colorful places he had played -- Indiana, Phoenix and Portland -- left him so longing for Miami's crazy flavors that he would pack several days before any season ended. He missed everything. ``All the different tastes, smells, languages,'' he says. And now, when asked how it feels to be back, he says, ``Man, I wake up every day, and it's like I'm still dreaming.'' There aren't very many South Florida guys in the NBA. But a lot of them -- Eddie Jones, Udonis Haslem, Keyon Dooling and now Jones -- have made the round-as-that-rim journey back. And that can be a pretty awesome thing, wearing the uniform of the team whose games you used to attend at the old Miami Arena by MetroRail as a child.
Last season, though, was kind of a disaster soothed only by being here. Jones broke his wrist and missed months, death for a touch shooter, and the game's blurry pace left his heavy legs behind upon return. But he did have one moment that overwhelmed him. It lasted 11 seconds. He scored an unheard of eight points on two four-point plays in that stretch in a playoff game against Atlanta, and it felt so good and right that he screamed at the sky after it happened and immediately sought out his bobbing, clapping, yelling parents in the stands to make eye contact. He couldn't help but notice that the entire old neighborhood was up there gyrating around them. Turn the home into a community and, one by one, you can turn the community into a home.
Hope. Such a big, little word. People can fill you with it if you look in the right places. It isn't always easy when Rashard Lewis is getting suspended for steroids and J.R. Smith is using Twitter with gang language and Stephon Marbury is broadcasting his disintegration on ustream, eating Vaseline and dancing shirtless to Lil Wayne. But as Jones gets up from lunch and walks outside to resume his work fixing the hometown he so loves, it washes over you with a warmth as strong as that sun.
``Miami is the best place in the world, but, having grown up here, I see the things we lack,'' he says. ``Miami gave me everything I ever needed to succeed. Now it's time for me to repay that debt.'' |
