Fathers Get Big Assist From NBA Vet Etan Thomas
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By DERON SNYDER
Former Washington Wizards forward Etan Thomas was a youngster when he came home one day and found his mother watching an “ABC Afterschool Special.” Tears welled in her eyes as she listened to depressing statistics about kids from single-parent households, which hers became due to divorce when Thomas was 7.
“They said if you come from a single-parent household, you’re not going to make it,” Thomas said during a recent panel at First Baptist Church of Glenarden, Md. “We made a pact. I told her I was going to make right choices and make right decisions.”
He kept his word, playing four years at Syracuse before the Dallas Mavericks selected him 12th in the 2000 draft. He was traded to Washington and spent seven of his 11 NBA seasons with the Wizards before ending with Atlanta in 2010-2011.
Thomas is working out in hopes of landing a roster spot next season. If successful, he’ll try to improve his career averages of 5.7 points and 4.7 rebounds. But he’s much more concerned about the dreary statistics on jail, teenage pregnancies, suicide rates and high school dropouts that worried his mother and continue to inundate society.
That’s why he speaks regularly at schools and correctional facilities and why he wrote a new book, “Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge.”
