Now We’re Here: 9 Athletes Who Powered Through

Professional athletes are perhaps the most American of American working professionals. Many of our most cherished stars didn’t come from any remarkable circumstances—they had to scrap for everything they earned. Derrick Rose didn’t have daddy’s age-activated trust fund to keep in the back of his mind when deciding whether or not all the work and pain is really worth it. Kids from middle class or impoverished backgrounds are playing throughout NBA arenas and NFL stadiums every season. Their stories are the most straightforward, easy-to-digest versions of the American Dream—that if you work hard, hone your talents, and practice at your craft enough, society will reward you richly. Athletes physically flex for us on live reality TV and get paid for it. Sounds awesome, no?

That alias of life, however, is only half the truth. As season three of House of Cards taught us, the American Dream is either dead or still dying. Paul Pierce and Venus Williams have elite work ethics, but relying on “hard work” to sell the American Dream is disingenuous to Pierce’s and Williams’ respective stories. Dreaming ignores day-to-day reality, and for Pierce and Williams, growing up as two kids in Compton trying to make it out, “hard work” was never going to be enough. Pierce and Williams—and Chris Johnson and Andrés Iniesta alike—have all faced difficult roads to stardom because of exceptionally disadvantageous circumstances. Read into their inspiring stories with Now We’re Here: 9 Athletes Who Powered Through.

If you’ve ever heard the song “California Love,” then you know about where Paul Pierce comes from. On the song’s outro, 2Pac raps, “Inglewood, Inglewood, always up to no good.” Pierce moved to Inglewood, Calif. after the sixth grade. He and his mother lived with his two athletically gifted older half-brothers (both would go on to have collegiate and professional sports careers), and although they weren’t around the house much, Pierce found his escape in sports, too. Instead of banging, Pierce balled.

He balled wherever there was an available hoop. Whether at the YMCA, the nearby blacktops, or at a local community center, Pierce traveled with the game, searching to use and abuse rims. It took until Pierce’s junior season to sprout into the outline of the 6'7" wingman that he is now (he was cut from varsity as a sophomore due to his pudgy 5'8" size), putting his persistence and patience to the test. By taking those early high school lumps—by channeling the rejection and putting it back into the game instead of the streets—Pierce developed a chippy resilience that’s made him the NBA that star he is. That’s just the truth, man.

In the realm of aspiring female tennis players of color, Venus Williams should be held in reverence the same way an OG is. Nearly 29 years after Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes,” Venus became the first African-American woman to become a world No. 1 in the Open Era.

Although Venus has received support and coaching since her father first put a racquet in her hands (this probably happened as soon as newborn Venus was able to make a fist), the idea of a girl growing up in Compton becoming the best female tennis player alive is a Walt Disney-type level of imaginative. For fighting and playing through adversity to break down subsequent color and gender barriers in a post-Arthur Ashe, post-Billie Jean King tennis landscape, Venus is a sporting treasure.

This guy is pretty famous, right? An NBA MVP award made his jersey the best-selling kit in the world at one point. Even as an uber-famous Trump Tower resident, Derrick Rose has been known to stay low in Chicago. But that’s kind of the point. He’s always been a head-down, work-first kind of guy. His makeup and his older brother Reggie kept Derrick on the winning path, even through a rough childhood timeline that played out like a run straight down the gauntlet.

Growing up in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side (the same side Kanye West and Barack Obama hail from), Rose had to dodge trouble. Reggie, along with brothers Dwayne and Allan, steered their younger brother clear of any crabs who could drag Derrick down—away from his lifelong path to basketball superstardom.

His brothers had combined their knowledge of Chicago’s basketball streets to make the best out of Derrick’s prodigious talents. Nobody would exploit their baby brother. He may have been brought into a rough world, but his family powered him through to create a better life for generations of Roses to come.

The spring semester for a high school senior is a joke. Schedules manage to find room for back-to-back free periods, and prom season makes everyone super flirty. It’s a joyous time. Chris Johnson’s senior spring semester of high school was not a joyous time. It was hell. A broken leg ruined his fall semester, but more importantly, his last high school football season.

Johnson was still a bright running back prospect within recruiting circles, but the injury was the least of his worries. His low grades and test scores made him ineligible for NCAA competition. No school in the country offered him a scholarship. He wasn’t worth the trouble.

To East Carolina head coach John Thompson, CJ pre-2K was worth his job. Thompson was on the hot seat after one year on the job, and needed a premier talent. With scholarships scarce, Thompson was willing to coach Johnson—not on the football field, but towards a stronger education. Without better grades, Johnson was stuck. Throughout that spring, he remained in recruiting purgatory—frozen out from making the most important decision of his life.

Like The Bride’s escape from that coffin in Kill Bill, Johnson miraculously freed himself. He went to night school for months, and into the summer, he kept his nose in-between books. Coach Thompson and his mother and grandmother pushed Johnson to study harder.

It took until a month before fall football camp, but eventually, Johnson got his grades and test scores up enough to earn an NCAA scholarship. He went on to gain 1,562 all-purpose yards his freshman year at East Carolina.

Nobody exists on purpose. When 16-year-old Varashon McQueen and 17-year-old Freddie Moreno had Knowshon, they weren’t ready. He ended up at his father’s side, wandering from homeless shelters to stranger’s homes to homeless shelters again and back to someone else’s home for the first eleven years of his life. He was directionless and destitute.

Fed up with her grandson’s situation, Mildred McQueen intervened. Able to provide a home and sense of family on the Jersey Shore, Mildred swiftly won custody of her grandson in a Bronx court. With a nurturing grandmother and football coaches in his life, Knowshon become a New Jersey prep star. He hasn’t been held down since.

Thank goodness for that 1992 Dream Team. When their superstar ethos added up to true invincibility, basketball’s status as an international game was set off to soar. Ibaka was two years old when the 1992 Olympics happened. He grew up in a new worldwide basketball economy, where people like his parents, two Congolese basketball stars, could potentially see their children shipped off to the NBA.

Ibaka depended on basketball to raise him. His mother died unexpectedly when he was young, and his father became a political prisoner during the Second Congo War. Death and war tore his family apart, but Ibaka’s basketball ability was able to stitch together a new life for him. It guided his move to France, and later to Spain, and then to the NBA. The league’s first draft pick from the Republic of Congo is now one of the world’s finest power forwards.

If you wanted to find out where Andrés Iniesta was born, you’d probably walk right through it without knowing. The place where Iniesta’s from barely exists on the map—Fuentealbilla, Spain has a population of 2,071. (I went to high school with more kids than that.)

Resting on the side of a hill, with flat plains stretching out into the horizon, Iniesta’s Fuentealbilla is nothing more than a tiny, dusty village. It took until the age of 12 for Iniesta to get noticed. Playing in Albacete, the capital city (which is smaller in population than Little Rock, Ark.) of Castile-La Mancha, scouts noticed Iniesta’s close control and technique.

With scouts abuzz, his parents convinced a Barcelona assistant coach to take him to La Masia. Soon thereafter, the small village boy was off to the big time, proving himself time and time again to be a cut above the La Masia elite. Since joining Barcelona, Fuentealbilla’s son has spent his career winning every available trophy on the planet.

It took more than two parents to raise Jadeveon Clowney. When his father robbed a cash-checking business in 1995, Clowney was only three years old. Father Clowney spent the next 12 years in prison. While away, Clowney, who was unfortunately known as "Doo-Doo" around town, was raised by his grandmother, mother, and mother’s boyfriend. His mother worked long shifts at the nearby plant to shell out $250 for pee wee uniforms, but she grinded so Jadeveon could grow into a football animal. Mission accomplished.

Just five years before Caron Butler was drafted 10th overall out of the University of Connecticut, he was staring at a concrete wall. The wall never looked back. It was a prison cell where Butler had to be sent. Though he was arrested 15 times in his early life and adolescence, Butler eventually saw the light and became a changed man. He also discovered basketball.

After getting out, Butler played AAU ball for two years to get his name out there. During that time he spent one year in high school and another two at a prep academy to get his grades up. When he was ready, Butler dashed to play two seasons under Jim Calhoun at UConn, and has spent the rest of his life playing the game that he loves. Butler is living proof that any type of life in this world is possible for you to achieve.