Key Takeaways
- Dwyane Wade stopped engaging with toxic jokes and language in the Miami Heat locker room as his family privately navigated Zaya Wade’s gender identity.
- Wade created a “safe conversation” with longtime teammate Udonis Haslem, who responded by changing his thinking, language, and actions.
- Wade and Zaya later founded Translatable to build supportive spaces for LGBTQIA+ youth, extending the family’s advocacy beyond their public conversations.
Long before Zaya Wade publicly came out as transgender, Dwyane Wade says something had already changed inside the NBA locker room: him. The Hall of Famer revealed that he began pulling away from certain jokes and language around his teammates as his family privately navigated Zaya’s identity.
That eventually led Wade to confront one of the people closest to him, longtime Miami Heat teammate Udonis Haslem, in a conversation Wade now says showed him how much can change when people are given room to listen instead of being written off immediately.
“Before we came out and talked about Zaya in the locker rooms, I started to, like, become a little different,” Wade said during an appearance on the Conversations With Cam podcast with Cameron Oaks Rogers. “I started listening a little bit differently.”
Wade said that shift made him reconsider behavior he had previously accepted as part of NBA locker-room culture. “I realized that masculine, toxic environment that we grew up in,” he said. Eventually, Wade stopped participating altogether. “I wasn’t in on the jokes no more. I wasn’t laughing. I was leaving out of the locker room when I would hear certain things.”
That became complicated when Haslem, whom Wade described as his “brother,” continued using language Wade was no longer comfortable hearing. Haslem didn’t yet know what Wade’s family was dealing with privately, but Wade chose to talk to him rather than let the friendship fracture in silence.
“He didn’t know, and he eventually changed his thinking, his verbiage, and then his actions,” Wade said.
For Wade, the exchange became an example of what he calls the power of a “safe conversation”—particularly between people confronting subjects they were never taught how to discuss.
He said Haslem trusted him enough to have that conversation in an environment where he could learn about something he hadn’t “grown up knowing anything about or being comfortable talking about.”
“[There] needs to be more spaces provided for those moments,” Wade said.
Zaya publicly came out as transgender in 2020 at age 12, with Wade and his wife, Gabrielle Union, becoming outspoken advocates for her and other LGBTQ+ young people.
In 2023, a Los Angeles County judge approved Zaya’s legal name and gender change. She has since built her own public profile through fashion, modeling, and LGBTQ+ advocacy while continuing her education.
Now 19 and in college, Zaya has also spoken about what it means to establish an identity beyond her famous family. Earlier this year, she admitted that being away from Wade and Union was “really hard,” but said college had also been “exciting,” “freeing,” and an opportunity to become more social.
Union later said Zaya had found a community around her interest in science, including research, data and astrobiology.
The Wade family’s advocacy has extended beyond interviews. Dwyane and Zaya founded Translatable, an organization designed to create supportive spaces for LGBTQIA+ youth, and Wade has repeatedly described his own role as one of listening and learning.
