Refreshing poster boy

If you are willing to take Shaquille O'Neal out of the equation, if his thigh bruise hasn't already, consider the four biggest name players on the four teams remaining in the NBA playoffs.

There is the league MVP, Phoenix's Steve Nash, who spent much of his youth playing hockey.

There is the former MVP, San Antonio's Tim Duncan, who spent much of his youth swimming.

There is the defensive player of the year, Detroit's Ben Wallace, who played his college ball at Virginia Union, which is an actual school not a bank.

And then there the Miami Heat's Dwyane "Flash" Wade, the breathtaking, breakout star of the spring who leads the Heat against Detroit on Monday in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, but in high school was hardly recruited by any colleges.

"The summer before his senior year it was a situation where Dwyane was on an AAU team with a lot of other good players," said Marquette coach Tom Crean, who managed to find the diamond on the bench, provided Wade's only major scholarship offer and then rode him to the 2003 Final Four.

And just who were those other good players who overshadowed a guy now averaging 28.6 points per game in the NBA playoffs?

"Darius Miles," Crean said.

OK, fine.

"T. J. Cummings."

T.J. Cummings?

"Matt Lottich."

Matt Lottich??

"Brett Melton."

Brett Melton???

Come on, Dwyane Wade was overshadowed by Brett Melton, who, wait, we need to look this up, ah . . . just finished at the University of San Diego with a 5.8 career scoring average?

"Yeah, he was," laughed Crean.

Critics always are whining that NBA players are just spoiled undeserving thugs. But the vast majority of players simply aren't. This spring there has been some complaining that the playoffs lack star power, which is only true if you are looking for hype, not real heroes.

Just like the rest of the big four, Dwyane Wade may not have been a household name at 16, but he's still chasing a title while all the Nike spokesmen watch.

These four guys are reality overcoming perception.

Basketball has an elaborate, if unchecked, star-making system. It is full of traveling teams, All-America camps and "high schools" with recruiting budgets. Everything is funded by shoe companies and leech agents interested in flushing out the future stars and cashing in on them.

Some of the league's best players come out of that system.

But this year, here are our big four: no one's teen megastar, no one's shoe company poster boy, no one's prep prima donna.

Which to those who know them all of them is just perfect.

"It is nice to see [Wade's] success for this reason," said Crean. "He never expected it. It was never given to him. He had to earn everything he gets.

"He's earned it all."

Here are some great things about Wade. He didn't make the varsity at Richards High outside Chicago until he was a senior. He's married to his only serious girlfriend, whom he met in the fourth grade. He tithes to his hometown church.

It took Crean just one recruiting call to be sold on him.

"I just fell in love with him," Crean said. "The first couple of conversations, it was so much fun to talk to him. You just hoped he'd be close to the kind of player as the kind of kid he sounded on the phone."

And then there is this ...

"We had a forward named Jon Harris, who is 6-foot-7 and in practice one day, Dwyane just jumped right over him, just dunked on top of him," Crean said. "We kind of knew we had someone pretty good when that happened."

Three years later, Wade joined Magic Johnson and Andre Miller as the only players in the history of the NCAA tournament to record a triple-double. And his 29 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists didn't come in some first-round mismatch, it ended Kentucky's 26-game win streak and sent Marquette to the Final Four.

"In my mind it was a quadruple-double because he had 15 defensive deflections," Crean said, meaning Wade wasn't padding stats while resting on defense.

This is called having the game for the city and the smile for the suburbs.

Or being everything Kobe Bryant was supposed to be.

All of which makes Dwyane Wade, the self-made star who retained a dose of humility, a wonderful new poster boy for the NBA.

Only this year, he sure isn't alone.