MIAMI _ Wayne Ellington brings more than 3-point shooting to the Miami Heat. He brings perspective. He brings tears. He brings hope. That's the part you may not know. That's the part he wants to make sure you know.
"There's no question that I'm still working through it," he says quietly but expressively, subject matter too raw to ever fully comprehend, too significant to allow to be forgotten. "But, at the same time, I realize that me being angry isn't going to help what happened."
What happened was so horrific that it forever changed the former North Carolina Tar Heel NCAA champion, anger eventually replaced by compassion, even as the pain endures.
On Nov. 9, 2014, as the 6-foot-4 shooting guard was preparing for a game with his Los Angeles Lakers against the Charlotte Hornets at Staples Center, Wayne Ellington Sr., while driving his red Oldsmobile in the family's Philadelphia neighborhood, apparently found himself in a heated argument with a stranger. A shot was fired to the head. A father, at 57, was slain.
This past February, 34-year-old Carl White accepted a plea deal to third-degree murder and other charges as the case was about to go to trial. No reason for the shooting was offered. Minimal solace was taken.
For many, it would end there. For the eighth-year NBA veteran who this offseason signed a two-year contract with the Heat, it didn't. It was why he was in Philadelphia last weekend as part of an ongoing tribute to his father, and the hope to prevent similar sorrow for another man's son.
By itself, the Peace Games basketball tournament staged at Girard College by Ellington's "The Power of W.E." campaign, with the initials a memorial to his father, stood as a mere sidebar to the scourge of gun violence ripping through inner cities.
But to the 50 or so at-risk participants it was a pledge to avoid gun violence, to promote peace, similar to the one offered at the Chicago Peace Tournament that Ellington had assisted alongside former Bulls center Joakim Noah a year earlier in Chicago. For that effort, Noah was voted the NBA's J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award in 2015. For his efforts, Ellington received the award this past season from the Professional Basketball Writers Association.
And yet, the blight of gun violence continues.
"You've got to have hope," Ellington says, pleased with the publicity his event received, hopeful of greater coverage to the overall issue of gun violence. "Obviously, it's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen in the next month or two or three or four. But my mindset is if you can touch one person or two people when you have an event like that, it changes someone's life. I really feel like that.
"It's something that I do that I understand it's a huge issue that not one man can change it. But, at the same time, as long as I can be a part of a positive gesture that changes one person's life, touches one person, and one person is led away from that event, then I did my job."
The words are measured, the issue weighty. While there has been resolution through the legal system over his father's murder, closure is not as expeditiously achieved.
"It started with anger," he says of the path from the awful November evening to Saturday's sobering discussions. "I was upset. I was hurt. I love my family. And then, as I continued to grieve with family, the platform that I have and the stage that I'm on as an NBA athlete, I felt like I could definitely change it and turn it into a positive, something so negative.
"I tried to do that with my family, do what I can to try to prevent other families from having sort of that same feeling."
If Wayne Ellington Sr. was still there to send messages of encouragement on game nights there may never have been the messages that that Wayne Ellington Jr. now offers.
"Obviously I was aware of the problem, aware of the issue before what happened to my father," he says. "But you don't really understand the feeling until it happens to somebody close to you. And I think that's what really pushed me to really, really want try to do something to make a difference, to try to bring some youth together. That's when we came up with the Peace Games."
But there isn't peace. Not after last year's event alongside Noah in Chicago. Not now in Philadelphia.
"It can be discouraging, when someone else falls victim to gun violence," he says. "I mean it definitely can be discouraging. But, at the same time, it's a marathon, without a doubt. And that's something that I've learned as I began to get more and more involved. It's a marathon and it's something that's going to take time. We need to understand that, but realize that every chance you get to change someone's mind, a decision, or a life, every chance that you get is well worth it."
And that brings him full circle. Because of a lesson passed from father to son.
"Athletes and all entertainers, anybody that's on the stage, that are watched, all should want to become role models," he says. "That's what was instilled in me when I was younger. I was taught, do the right thing, especially as I got more notoriety, coming through high school and Carolina and transitioning to the NBA. You sort of realize that kids really, really pay attention to you. They come and they ask for your autograph. They want to feel like you.
"So if you teach those kids to walk positively and do the right thing in life, then try to show 'em those positive tools, that's what they'll want to be like, as well."
