In the fourth game of the finals, Fred VanVleet "blood stained the field", he was unintentionally elbowed by the opponent, resulting in bleeding on the lower side of the left orbit, and his teeth also suffered a certain degree of damage. However, the tough guy who has repeatedly surprised fans in this year's playoffs has returned to the court after returning to the locker room for stitch treatment.
This is not the first time Van Vliet has shown his toughness on the court, and while many have linked his excellent performance in the playoffs to the birth of his son Fred Jr., Van Vleet himself doesn't think so. He prefers to attribute it to his own efforts and the confidence he has always had.
Part of VanVleet's confidence comes from his basketball career. In 2016, he came to the Raptors' training camp as a lost rookie, signed only a non-guarantee contract with the team, and the Raptors at that time already had 3 point guards on the team. For Van Vleet, who is not tall and fast, being able to serve as Lowry's number one substitute is already legendary enough.
And if you take the perspective of observation farther away, starting from VanVleet's childhood, you will find more touching elements. Originally from Rockford, Illinois, VanVleet grew up dealing with street violence and dealing with relationships with his mother, stepfather, and siblings. Now he has his own family and children of his own. All of this is what makes Van Vliet have to be strong.
"Everything is an added bonus for me right now, and I shouldn't have gotten that," VanVleet said, "so for me now, I really don't have a burden." Every game, I step on the pitch to play fearlessly, as if that were my career farewell. When I was a child, my father died of murder, and some friends died unexpectedly. Many of the children I grew up with didn't make it to high school. When I was a kid, I saw too many people in jail, and there were deaths and unfortunate things. So growing up in that environment and getting the chance to go to college for free was a godsend for me. So whether it's reading, playing or entering the NBA, making millions of dollars a year, these are all things that I cherish. ”
VanVleet's biological father, Frederick Manning, was forcibly murdered in 1999 for his involvement in a drug dealing case. At that time, VanVleet was only 5 years old, and he didn't even understand what kind of major changes had taken place in his family. "I just remember my dad never coming home after that," VanVleet said.
Manning left Van Vliet with nothing but this memory, as well as his basketball talent. In high school, Manning was also a star at a local high school. But his unexpected death placed the burden on The burden of the family on the shoulders of Van Vliet's mother, Sue VanVleet. Sue VanVleet, who was only 27 years old at the time, had to raise two sons alone.
"My family just had to bow our heads and try to move forward, and I didn't even have time to mourn because I had two small children to take care of, and I had to make sure of their lives," Sue VanVleet said. ”
In such an environment, the VanVleet family struggled to move forward. A few years later, 8-year-old VanVleet was sent by his mother to a local basketball camp with his brother Daniel, where VanVleet became the best of her age. However, in a "one-on-one" match, VanVleet met his opponent. A kid 2 years older than him and named J.D. Danvers beat him up.
In fact, in the duel between the two, VanVleet was the first to score. But Danvers' father, Joe Danvers, shouted at his son from the sidelines, "If you're defeated by that kid, see how I can take care of you." As a result, Danvers, under the "threat" of his father, eventually reversed the game.
The two children played hot on the field, and their parents also began to chat on the sidelines. Sue VanVleet and Joe Danvers found that they both had a lot in common, and the biggest thing they had in common was that they were single parents with multiple children, and the children were all about the same age. In this way, the two began to date, and eventually took their respective children and formed a new family.
"He treated all of our children the same, but at the end of the day, he wasn't our dad after all, and I wasn't related to him by blood," Van Vleet said.
After the children were a little older, Joe Danvers gathered them together and told them that their parents weren't financially strong enough to get every kid to go to college, so if they wanted a better education, the kids had to work on their own. For VanVleet and his brothers, basketball is what they're trying to do. It is also to see that several children in the family love basketball, so Sue VanVleet and Joe Danvers also bought a lot of basketball training books, just to be able to better guide the children.
Although ostensibly strict with the children, Van Vleet's stepfather also paid a lot for the newly formed family. To earn more money to support his family, Joe Danvers took on several jobs, many times arriving home at 2 a.m., sleeping for a few hours, getting up at 6 a.m., waking up several of the kids and taking them to training.
No child will like such a morning exercise, and Van Vliet is no exception. In addition to the boring dribbling and strength training, what was even more difficult for him to accept was listening to his father, who was not related to him by blood, and shouting at the side to teach him what to do. "I was a little bit resentful of him when I was about five or six years old, like most boys my age," Van Vliet said, "just to make myself look cool and do something I love." ”
In addition to the heavy training and annoying stepfather, another thing that upset VanVleet was his two older brothers. One was his brother Daniel, the other was his stepfather's older brother J.D. Danvers, both of whom were not only older but also physically strong, and did not save any face for Van Vliet on the pitch. But it was in this kind of tempering that Van Vliet grew stronger and stronger. The real understanding of his stepfather's good intentions was when he became the first start of the high school varsity team and received a Wichita State University scholarship when he graduated.
"To be honest, I didn't understand everything until I left home to go to college," Van Vleet said, "and when I started college life, the things he taught me slowly showed their truth." Especially after I started living independently, his previous rules set the norms for me. Later, I slowly became famous in college, and he began to be proud of me. When my school reached the final four of the NCAA, he started sending me warm text messages and telling me how much he loved me and something like that. I never thought he would give me this one day, but he did, and he did do it from a very early age. ”
Today, VanVleet's achievements are bound to make his family even more proud. And after he became a father himself, he was more able to understand what kind of effort the father who urged him to practice at that time poured into him. And on this uneven road, he himself is moving forward, what kind of hard work.