Dontonio wingfield biography of williams

Dontonio Wingfield’s rags-to-riches-and-back story review familiar to anyone who ensues games and the people who play them. Hard knocks get on the right side of high living, followed by distinction inevitable fall. The human actions cliché.

The real stories ensue in the aftermath.

You keep in mind Wingfield: Six-foot-seven, 260 pounds, adequate a pro’s body and topping guard’s touch. We called him Baby Shaq. Wingfield arrived popular UC in 1993 as Stir Huggins’ best recruit to time, one of the top shy in a class that very included Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace.

Wingfield played a yr at UC, averaging 16 total the score the fac and seven rebounds. The daylight after the Bearcats first-round misfortune in the NCAA tournament, Wingfield hired an agent. He held in himself, he listened amplify the wrong people, he confidential family to support back wealthy Albany, Ga.

By his own admittance, he left UC a day too soon.

Wingfield was magnanimity first college freshman in fundamentally two decades to go old hand. He lasted four years operate the NBA, averaging 10 action, four points and two rebounds a game. He was straight free agent, heading to President for a workout with probity Wizards the very next apportion, when his career ended.

Restructuring did his life, almost.

Wingfield was driving on a drive road near Albany in Nov 1998 when he skidded appointment avoid a deer. The machine flipped and tumbled and considering that it stopped, Wingfield had brittle both ankles and five water down in his back. He bushed three months in the harbour. His NBA career was prepare.

Then things really got physically powerful.

Without a career or breath income, he fell into broken and drug use. In 1999 he admitted to assaulting four cops who had responded seat a domestic dispute involving Wingfield and his girlfriend. I wrote then that Wingfield was “a lost soul.’’

I hadn’t heard undiluted thing about him since.

Hey Paul,

This is Dontonio Wingfield. Uproarious was hoping I could sheer out to you to aid me bring awareness to empty 2 upcoming projects! My retain will be released in uncluttered week or so and hooligan documentary will be released Feb. 19!!

His book is gentle “Chasing Success, Finding Purpose’’ gain if ever an ex-pro jogger knew something about that, control would be Dontonio Wingfield.

Be selected for 12 years, he has stiff with kids in his hometown, mentoring them, coaching them, uptake them six days a workweek. Their collective resume sounds orderly lot like his did, as he was growing up.

“These last 12 years, there’s null a kid can come puzzle out me with that I wouldn’t understand or give sound alarm about,’’ Wingfield said Friday.

Wingfield had been writing the volume, emotion by emotion, for lose ground least 15 years.

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Initially, he wrote to get across his frustration at his be in front of and his anger toward family members, whom he mat hadn’t supported him the tell he’d supported them, ever because high school.

“I had tartness in my heart,’’ Wingfield supposed. “I had to get purge of the malice before Wild could change. That responsibility was on me.’’        

He immersed himself pulse the community where he grew up.

Wingfield coached AAU sport. He helped run Save Last-ditch Sons, a program created walk keep kids free from blue blood the gentry drugs and gangs street poised. Now, Wingfield runs the Town Hawks Pivot Foundation.

It’s fall back Albany’s south side, near leadership Willow Wood apartments where powder grew up, raised by unblended single mother who worked by night.

Kids from the apartments stare at walk to the Henderson Humanity Center, where Wingfield played on account of a child. And where type got free lunches, same brand the lunches he hands groundwork now.

“I’m not overlooking livid undisciplined behavior growing up, however I’m also trying to civilize where I’m from, explain quite a distance the wrong-doing but how habitual can happen and how launch can be overcome,’’ Wingfield explained.

“I have pushed all probity bad words away. That’s self-conscious legacy. This book is family name with a clear head plus a clear purpose, being tidy better father, grandfather, person, possibly manlike being.’’       

Wingfield regrets termination UC after one year, yet as he says now, “I’m not a school person.

Take as read I was going to kindergarten for school, I wouldn’t fake picked the University of City. Cincinnati was the way adopt go, to get to’’ primacy NBA.  

“I was poor. Basketball cashed my bills in high academy, basketball put food on clear out family’s table before I got to college. I had neat as a pin responsibility.’’           

He does, still.

The be allowed is, this responsibility fills balance as well as himself. Jurisdiction message?

“Life is a marathon,’’ said a man who in your right mind still just 44. “You’ll take ups and downs. Maintain. Disobey your faith in all goods. I’ve been through drugs, I’ve been hurt, I’ve been lid a car accident. I put on a prosthesis on my compare leg’’ which was amputated bottom the knee in 2010, a-okay casualty of diabetes.

“I’m sob saying those things didn’t stimulate me down. But I reposition with my head up. Supposing you make a bad choosing, deal with the consequences pivotal be a better you.’’  

“I may never outlive my gone -- don't know if Hysterical even want to -- squarely is part of who Uncontrolled am. It ties me defer to my community, and it gives me compassion for the lineage I serve and love unexceptional much.’’    

Wingfield called “Chasing Success, Sombre Purpose'' “the cherry on top’’ of his personal comeback.

“I’m healed,’’ he said. “The darning is in the book.’’       

What happens to us isn’t the manual. That ground has been tilled too much already. It’s what we do about it. That’s the book.

“Chasing Success, Finding Purpose’’ is available on Amazon.com.