Dwyane Wade shares thoughts on Dallas Mavericks getting first pick
NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade shares his thoughts on the NBA and whether or not the Mavericks getting the first pick in the draft is a “coincidence.”
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Jase Richardson always had one of those mini basketball hoops in his house and always envisioned playing in the NBA like his father did. But he does not view Jason Richardson, who played 14 seasons in the league, as the driving force behind his love and passion for the sport.
“My mom really got me into this. She gets on me way more than he does,” Jase Richardson said last month, and then he began to detail how his game was molded by Jackie Paul Richardson, a former women’s basketball player at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
She was the one who coached Jase from the time he was 4 years old until he reached high school, when the family’s home base was in the Denver area. Jason Richardson equated his wife’s intensity as a coach to that of Tom Izzo, who coached both Jason and Jase Richardson at Michigan State. Jason credits her for molding their son into the kind of NBA talent expected to be chosen in the 2025 NBA Draft beginning Wednesday, June 25.
So Jason Richardson was usually the parent on the sidelines for Jase’s games, and it was from there he began to notice the increasing number of players like his son, with parents he once played with or against.
“It’s actually unbelievable,” said ESPN NBA draft expert Jonathan Givony. “You go down the list and almost every single player that’s going to hear their name called (in the 2025 NBA draft) comes from some sort of basketball background.”
NBA Draft 2025: ‘There’s clearly some advantage there’
Richardson will join a growing NBA trend this week when he becomes the league’s latest second-generation player. He and Rutgers guard Dylan Harper, the son of longtime NBA player Ron Harper, are projected to be first-round picks ahead of the 2025-26 season. It would be the seventh time in eight years multiple players were drafted with a father who played in the NBA.
The rise can be attributed to a variety of reasons, according to experts, from genetics to exposure, access and socioeconomic factors thanks the rising cost of youth sports. The number of NBA alumni is also bigger now with the league more than 75 years old. But the pattern is more distinguishable than ever.
This past season, there were at least 33 second-generation players who appeared in an NBA game (or more than 7% of the league’s players). Of the 30 NBA teams, 21 had at least one second-generation player on their roster at some point.
“There’s clearly some advantage there, and we know that genetics plays a role in performance and in the traits that underlie performance,” said Steven M. Roth, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland whose research focuses on human genetic variation and its implications for health and exercise-related traits.
“What’s interesting about basketball in particular is that height is important and we know that height is a strongly genetic trait,” he added. “NBA players also tend to have longer arms than would be predicted from the rest of their body height. That’s going to be genetically determined. So if height and arm span give somebody an advantage in NBA trajectory, then presumably the offspring of people who succeeded in the NBA, who had some of those same traits, they’re going to be likely to have some of these same traits, too.”
Beyond that, though, these second-generation players are contributing in big ways on the court. This has become a golden age for NBA alumni.
Kobe Bryant, son of former NBA player Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, is the leading all-time scorer among second-generation players, according to an analysis done by USA TODAY Sports using statistics from Pro Basketball Reference. But six of the next seven all-time leading scorers among second-generation players are still active, led by Stephen Curry (Dell Curry), Klay Thompson (Mychal Thompson) and Devin Booker (Melvin Booker).
Givony said lineage “matters quite a bit” to NBA teams these days, with some now including it as part of their evaluation models due to how many second-generation players have outperformed their draft slots in recent years.
“You almost forget that a lot of these guys are second-generation players because they’re not only exceeding the levels their father was at, they’re becoming superstars in the league,” said Jason Richardson. “It’s almost like all of these guys have built in answers to the test since their dads went through it.”
Why there’s ‘pressure’ as second-generation NBA player
For Richardson, that manifested itself in what he taught his son.
Richardson was a two-time NBA Slam Dunk champion known for his athleticism. He didn’t become more effective as a ballhandler and shooter until later in his career. He considers Jase, a point guard, to have a better basketball IQ than him at this age. He also believes his son is more skilled and a better shooter because “I stressed those things when he was a kid to develop, so if he did have the opportunity to become an NBA player, those weren’t a question at all about his game.”
But comparisons, however faulty they might have been, were inevitable once Jase chose to play in college for the same coach at the same school as his father. “Everybody expected him to be me,” Jason Richardson said.
“When I got to Michigan State, a lot of people tried to do that, tried to equate my dad to me,” Jase Richardson added. “But I don’t really see it in that way because we play two totally different ways and two totally different styles of basketball. I kind of feel like I’m my own, but in the end I still have that last name on the back of my jersey, so a lot of people try to put that pressure on me.”
When the Los Angeles Lakers chose Bronny James in the second round of the 2024 NBA draft, nepotism complaints arose almost immediately. Throughout this past season, when LeBron and Bronny James became the first father-son duo to appear in an NBA game together, Bronny James mostly appeared in the G League. But his worthiness of being on an NBA roster was debated often, to the point that LeBron James confronted ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith in March about his commentary regarding the situation.
Dylan Harper, who most NBA draft experts predict will be the No. 2 pick by the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday, said he embraced the psychology that comes with this dynamic following behind his older brother, Ron Harper Jr., who has mostly played in the G League the past three years.
“A lot of people say there’s privileges and handoffs but at the end of the day, they aren’t the ones playing for you. They aren’t putting in the work in the gym with you,” Harper said. “There’s definitely pressure out there knowing your dad, your brother played in these great leagues. But for me, you should want pressure. If you have pressure, you’re doing something right. That’s how I look at it.”
ESPN NBA expert Bobby Marks acknowledged “the last name brings a certain level of expectation,” for second-generation NBA players. But he thinks NBA front offices see benefits to that because these second-generation players “know the NBA life. They know the dynamics of the locker room. They know the dynamics of the travel part of it. Everything outside of on the court, I think there’s value because they’ve been around it for their whole life,” Marks said. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to play. … Teams are drafting based on how they evaluated you.”
This, Jase Richardson emphasized, is why draft night will feel like both the end and a beginning.
He is about to get to the NBA just like his father did, just like he dreamed of as a child getting schooled in the game by his mother, and yet his last name means it also comes with a gnawing feeling. He still must “show people we actually belong here.”
“It’s a crazy experience just to have somebody like that in your backyard. It’s beneficial,” Jase Richardson said of his father. “He has the blueprint for me and I’m just taking any keys and advice I can get.”