Dwyane Wade starts his season with a jump-stop to the block, whipping an underhand pass to a teammate for two. Then comes the crossover on the right side, foul line extended, and the swooping left-handed finish. Minutes into his first-ever appearance at Madison Square Garden, the sleepy-eyed, pigeon-toed Marquette star is coolly dismantling the Villanova Wildcats in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic -- much like that famous pigeon-toed Bull used to take apart the Knicks on this same floor.

And Wade hasn't even let loose with the good stuff. Early in the second half, the 6'5" guard takes a backdoor baseline feed and springs off two feet from just outside the lane, his body twisting out from behind the backboard before hands and ball reach the rim. He later tops that with a halfcourt alley-oop, catching point guard Travis Diener's pass with two hands a foot above the rim, then throwing it down.

If you missed it, you're not alone. Former teammate and Chi-Town homie Cordell Henry didn't see it either. Which is one of the reasons he's stopping by the cozy one-bedroom apartment that Wade, who turns 21 in January, shares with his wife, Siohvaughn, and their 11-month-old son, Zaire. It's a few days after the Golden Eagles returned from NYC and a few days before Henry leaves for the French pro league. But first he wants to get the lowdown on something he saw on the late-night highlights: Wade getting roofed at the rim.

"I didn't see your game," Henry says. "But I saw you got your shot blocked."

At this, the normally reserved Wade nearly jumps out of his seat -- except that he's balancing little Z on his knee: "Aw, man, that's the first thing you bring up when you come here? That I got a shot blocked?"

"That's the first thing they showed," Henry says with a smile. "I was like, 'Looks like D had a rough night.' "

Truth is, DWade seldom sees a rough night lately. He's averaging 25.2 ppg (through Dec. 20), and has Marquette sitting in the Top 15. So he can forgive Henry for the ribbing. Just as he can forgive the high school coach who didn't promote him to varsity until his junior year. Just as he can forgive the shoe companies that never invited him to camp, or all those college coaches who quit on him too soon, or even the folks who dissed him in the voting for Illinois Mr. Basketball (1999-2000), ranking him seventh behind Darius Miles, Eddy Curry ... and some guy named Clint Cuffle.

He can forgive you, too. He can let it slide if you don't have a clue who he is, despite a monster debut season in which he led his team in scoring, rebounding, assists, steals and blocks. He is, quite simply, the chillest act in college hoops. And there's a good reason he can shrug off all those apparent slights. Ever since he was an overlooked high school sophomore, Dwyane Wade has dreamed of one thing -- a chance. But not even he imagined how much he would do with it once he got it.

***

Who can predict? There are moments, flashes, hints of possibility. But who really knows? Go looking for the next Jordan, and you're almost sure to walk away disappointed. Go looking for something else, anything else, and you just might find yourself coming back for another look. For every Kobe or T-Mac, there's an awkward teen who's yet to blend coordination, athleticism and intelligence into one slick package, but who still shows enough of a spark to make someone's list. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can even find him on the same floor, on the same team, as one of those precious prodigies everybody's hyping.

The first assistant Tom Crean hired after taking the Marquette job in March 1999 was Tim Buckley. And the first thing Buckley suggested to his new boss was that they take a look at a skinny kid playing alongside Miles on the AAU Illinois Warriors. Buckley had yet to see the kid for himself, but Warriors coach Larry Butler had convinced him that this one might be a sleeper. When Buckley finally did catch him in action at the Nike Peach Jam that July, Wade wasn't exactly rocking the rim. Though almost a junior, he couldn't even dunk yet. (That wouldn't happen until senior year.)

"There was no highlight-reel stuff," Buckley recalls, "but we liked his intangibles." Wade got a lot of deflections, attacked the glass and always had a hand in big plays down the stretch. "I don't know if anyone can ever predict a player is going to be that special," Buckley adds. "But you have glimpses where you think there could be greatness there."

Wade's path up until that point was a bit unusual, not unlike the spelling of his first name, which he inherited from his father. At age 9, Dwyane left the South Side of Chicago, where he had lived with his mother, sister and two stepsisters, and moved to the Chicago suburb of Robbins with Dwyane Sr., his stepmother and three stepbrothers. The elder Wade, who worked at a printing plant, coached a team of junior high kids at the nearby Blue Island Recreational Center -- and he had a little game himself. Throughout their early teens, young Dwyane (no Jr.) and stepbro Demetris McDaniel were constantly coming up short against the old man in games of 21 on the battered rim behind their house. But that wasn't the hardest pill to swallow. "My father played every sport, was always athletic," Dwyane says. "So I wondered, 'Why ain't I athletic?' "

It was a question he would ask again and again in 10th grade, as Jack Fitzgerald's loaded Richards High team went 28-2 with Demetris leading the way -- and Wade relegated to the sophomore squad. That summer, Wade and varsity assistant coach Gary Adams ran through ballhandling and shooting drills three or four days a week inside the school gym. When the sweltering Midwest heat set in, Adams kept the overhead lights off, leaving Wade to shoot 500 to 600 jump shots by the faint glow of emergency lighting. There, in the shadows, his game began to emerge.

Wade averaged 20.7 points and 7.6 boards for the varsity that winter, while growing two inches (from 6'1" to 6'3"). His inspired play got the attention of Butler, who knew him from Blue Island, where the Warriors practiced and where Wade had been balling for years with best friend Odartey Blankson. The Warriors were already stacked with talent, including Blankson (now at UNLV), T.J. Cummings (UCLA) and Matt Lottich (Stanford). But Butler needed a guy to rev up the transition game with his headline player, DMiles.

After the Peach Jam, Marquette coaches started showing up for all of Wade's games. There was something different about his style. He was unselfish and unassuming on the court -- not a hint of arrogance. And if his team lost, he took it seriously. Though the Golden Eagles made the first recruiting call, Wade's performance next to Miles was turning heads elsewhere. Now, schools like DePaul and Illinois State were phoning too. But there was still another hurdle to clear. "Coming out of AAU, I had a lot of schools interested in me," Wade says. "Once they found out I was having problems with my ACT, they backed off."

***

Tom Crean can't sit still. He prowls the sideline like an evangelist, constantly talking, chomping on his gum, adjusting his pants. "I think better moving," he says. "I'm actually calmer in games than in practice." True enough. Like his former boss, Michigan State's Tom Izzo, Crean emphasizes rebounding and defense. And at a Marquette practice, everyone from managers to assistant coaches gets a workout. When a player takes a charge, the entire team sprints to pick him up off the floor. Crean's also a stickler for detail. Every practice is filmed and graded, and he frequently stops the action to correct any flaw, whether it's a simple jab step or squaring up a defensive stance.

Two years ago, Crean was joined on the sideline by his prize recruit. As a partial qualifier, the first ever at Marquette, Wade was forced to sit out his freshman season. He had committed to the program in the fall of his senior year, and though he had yet to achieve the required ACT score, Crean's staff continued to follow his every move. "Our relationship was forged on the fact that I was going to stick with him no matter what," the coach says. Wade cemented his new rep by scoring 88 points in one day (two games) to help his prep team win a Christmas tourney. When he failed to make his test score, Crean convinced Marquette officials that Dwyane could do the work and maintain his grades -- just as he convinced Dwyane that a year of practice could make him a better player.

"It was hard not being able to showcase my talent," Wade says. "But it's the best thing that happened to me. I grew as a person. I grew as a teammate. I got a lot smarter by watching."

He played every position when the Golden Eagles ran through game situations, often standing in as the opposition's best player. One day he'd be Steve Logan running the point; the next he was Bobby Simmons playing the post. Crean also moved Wade to the front of the bench, asking him what he saw as games unfolded. He told Wade to write down what he learned every day, then quizzed him on it. After road games, the Golden Eagles would call Dwyane back in Milwaukee (he wasn't allowed to travel), passing the phone from player to player.

Wade's honesty impressed Crean. The player didn't do a lot of talking, but when he did speak, his words were carefully measured. Occasionally, as the coach addressed his team at halftime of home games, Crean would turn to Wade and ask him what he saw from his seat on the bench. At first, Wade was understandably wary, but he soon found acceptance. "Dwyane would say, 'Guys aren't playing hard enough on the glass,' or he'd give us individual pointers," says former guard Brian Wardle, who often went head-to-head with Wade in practice as a senior. "I respected what he said because I knew how hard he played."

Wardle, the third-leading scorer in school history, says Wade's month-to-month maturation that year is one of the most amazing things he's seen as a player. (It helped that Wade packed on 20 pounds; he's up to 210.) "Early on, you could run him around and score on him pretty easily," says Wardle, now with the CBA's Rockford Lightning. "By December, it wasn't so easy. By January, it was tough. And by the end of the year, it was real tough. It was scary how fast he was improving."

The first time he pulled on a Golden Eagles uniform last season, Wade went for 21 and 9. In his third college game, he torched Tennessee for 30 points on his way to winning MVP honors at the Great Alaska Shootout. By midseason, he was showing his full repertoire. Strong enough to isolate, he attacked the rim at will. And when help defense came, he always seemed to find the open man.

A Jan.19 homecoming was extra special for Wade, as he dropped 35 on DePaul, the school that two years earlier had given its last scholarship to Imari Sawyer, a guy who's now at Des Moines Area CC. Late in the game, Wade punctuated the victory by catching a Henry alley and reversing the oop -- not bad for a guy who had never jammed backward until throwing one down in practice the day before.

Even better was a Feb.2 upset of No.4 Cincinnati, as Wade scored 25 and the Eagles ended the Bearcats' 20-game win streak in front of 18,698 fans, the largest crowd ever to attend a college basketball game in the state of Wisconsin (until 18,788 showed for the DePaul rematch). Following the 74-60 win, the crowd flooded the Bradley Center floor, swooping up their smiling hero. It was a fitting tribute to the player who was lifting Marquette hoops back into the big time. A photo of Wade atop the fans' shoulders now hangs in Crean's office.

But D's defining moment would come a little more than 24 hours later at a Chicago hospital. Rushed south by his father after the game, Wade made it in time to see his son's birth early Monday morning. The arrival of Zaire Blessing Dwyane Wade has given new meaning to all of Daddy's hard work. In just two years, he's gone from partial qualifier to 3.0 student, from practice player to potential lottery pick -- finding joy in the land of smokestacks, gothic spires and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Pretty exciting stuff, even if most sports fans have yet to catch on.

So is Wade ready for a bigger stage? This much is certain: student, star, husband, father -- through it all, he has changed very little. The shy kid who once dreamed of a chance is now an introspective man who knows that with opportunity comes responsibility. All he has to do is look into the eyes of his husky 40-inch son to remember that lesson.

Ask him what he thinks when little Z climbs into his arms, and this is Wade's reply: "Everything I have to teach him. All the things I have to learn."

This article appears in the January 6 issue of ESPN The Magazine.