Dwyane Wade’s Wife Gabrielle Union Not Impressed by His Attempt to Ski

Dwyane Wade may be a NBA star, but even he can’t be a perfect athlete all of the time. On a ski trip, he noticed that his wife, Gabrielle Union, wasn’t impressed by his struggle on the slopes. 

“When I tell you I could not stand up,” Wade, 43, told his costar Jenna Bush Hager during his week-long stint as co-host of Today with Jenna & Friends. “I looked back at my wife one time when I was on the ground floor snow and the way she looked at me, it was the most unattractive I’ve ever felt.”

Wade said that his wife, 52, had asked him to go skiing. He relented, even though he had no desire to try it out. Cue the embarrassing fall.

“I feel like she [thought], ‘This is not for me,’ ” said Wade, who played for the Miami Heat for 15 seasons. “The way my wife looked at me, I was like, ‘I don’t want to ever see her look at me like that again.’ ”

His co-host had questions. “How would you describe the face?” Bush Hager, 43, asked. “Like, ‘Oh, I thought you were an athlete?’ ”

“Yeah, yeah, right, I think I’m a great athlete. I’ve got this build. I try to walk with a little swagger,” Wade told her. “But at that moment, my knees were shaking. I was falling over. And she was looking at me with this disgrace in her face. ‘You’re embarrassing me.’ ”

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The athlete said he was unaware that Union can ski. “She grew up in Nebraska,” he said. “She was just on the slopes.” 

While it didn’t alleviate his embarrassment, Wade was able to ease his sore muscles with a massage and a dip in the hot tub. 

Wade’s appearance on the show has been filled with humor and celebrity interviews, but he also opened up about his cancer diagnosis, which came as a shock to his family. 

The NBA star announced the news of his health scare on his podcast, The WY Network, in January. He revealed that he’d had a cancerous tumor removed from his kidney in December 2023. 

Through the experience, the three-time NBA champion learned the true meaning of family, he said on the podcast.

(The couple share 6-year-old daughter Kaavia James. In addition, Wade is a father to Zaire, 23 and Zaya, 17, with ex-wife Siohvaughn Funches, and has a son named Xavier, 11, with Aja Metoyer. He is also the legal guardian of his nephew, Dahveon Morris, 21.)

“My own journey to have that surgery, I think it was the first time that my family, my dad, my kids, they saw me weak,” Wade shared on The WY Network. “That moment was probably the weakest point I’ve ever felt in my life.”

He added, “The moment I was by myself, I was struggling, dog.”